I'm blogging from the Social Venture Network fall gathering in Philadelphia, PA where I just attended a session that explored current and near-future trends in technology and how they relate to the social impact business world. The moderator was long-time SVN member, Josh Knauer of Rhiza Labs and he was joined by Jessica Trybus, Founder and CEO of Etcetera Edutainment and faculty member at Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center and Dan Whaley, Founder of Hypothes.is and the coder and entrepreneur who build the first web-based travel reservation system.

There wasn’t time to dive deep into any specific technology area, but the session did effectively provide a broad overview of some trends, so I will attempt to list and briefly define some of those here while connecting readers with resources that they can use to learn more about the topics that interest them the most. None of these concepts are new to the Singlebrook team or many of our clients, but they may be quite interesting to many of the social impact companies and investors out there who are not living and breathing technology on a day-to-day basis.

Note that the speakers each had amazing stories and companies that I won’t have time to fully describe in this blog and you should definitely check out their sites and learn more about them! We will do future Technology for Change (T4C) blog spotlights on each of them, so stay tuned by subscribing to the Singlebrook blog to get future updates!

Here are the topics that came up during the session:

Decision-Making Technology

Hypothes.is helps people sort through all the data and information that’s out there and determine what’s credible and what’s not, so that they can make better decisions about major issues such as climate change, political conflict and more. IBM’s Artificial Intelligence: Watson is another example of technology-aided decision-making. Watson will be used to help doctors make more informed diagnoses and will have applications in several other industries as well.

Game-Based Learning

Etcetera Edutainment builds game-based training simulations that train the workforce of the next generation. One example is a training simulation game that helps electrical workers learn important safety information by demonstrating the injuries that can happen when they don’t follow certain safety guidelines. These games can literally save lives! For most people, this method of learning is far more effective than sitting in a classroom and listening to a traditional lecture. (Image courtesy of Etcetera Edutainment Inc. All rights reserved.)

Agile

Agile is a methodology that’s used in the programming world that allows for quick, flexible iterative changes. It doesn’t have the rigidity and the upfront planning requirements of the more traditional waterfall method. Extensive adoption of automated testing, as well as several other programming practices make this method possible. In brief, it’s a system that allows you to “plan” for change and has profoundly disrupted the way the world of technology entrepreneurship works. Singlebrook is a completely Agile shop and we’re a big fan of this process!

The Lean Startup

This methodology was written about in Eric Ries’ book and has made waves in Silicon Valley and beyond. The idea is that you can apply the Agile method to your business leadership as well and launch quickly, fail early and often and iteratively and continuously improve your software product or company with a small group of users before scaling up.

Radical Transparency

The world of social media has transformed the way we think about transparency for individuals and companies. This is in many ways a positive development. However, a valid concern that came up a number of times during the session was privacy and control of personal and financial data. Gifford Pinchot commented from the audience: “If the government and corporations are going to have this power over us, then we need to have this same power over them.” Most of us can agree that using technology for greater transparency in government and corporations is a good idea! The B Corps movement is a great example of how this can work in the business world. Also check out Singly, Rhiza and Unthink.

Some other concepts that were touched on include: Makeshops, Augmented Reality (Yelp Monocle , Junaio ), 3D Printers, Gameification, Crowdsourcing, Location-Based Mobile Services such as Foursquare, Mobile Artificial Intelligence (such as Siri ), and Mobile Payments (using Square, Near Field Communications, Voice Recognition Technology and more!) Singlebrook is exploring the mobile payments/donations space with WhatCanI.Do.

One of the goals of the session was to stretch the minds of the social impact community with regards to technology. If you’re interested in these topics and really want to blow your mind, you should read the work of Ray Kurzweil and learn more about the Singularity. The Singularity Summit that I recently attended in NYC explored ideas such as transcending the human body and achieving immortality through technology. Some optimists believe this could be possible in as little as 20-30 years!

How does all this apply to the social enterprise world? That’s up to all of you entrepreneurs out there who see opportunities to use Technology for Change!