Orogen

Sparked by the image of tectonic plates colliding, I am after all in California, I decided to build this blog and dedicate it to orogenesis.  A word with its roots in the greek oros-mountain and genesis- creation I want to profile mountain builders.  But not just your standard mountain builder but those people who have hit new heights through innovation that melds typically separate fields towards a common good.

These might be people who creatively blend technology with non-profit work, "impact entrepreneurs"- business owners with a eye on community improvement, or those individuals or institutions that tap into the collaborative power of the internet to tackle complicated challenges.  Who knows what type of innovators I might find!

The timing of this blog is especially pertinent as the first profile I plan to do will be a multi-entry feature on Proyecto Mirador in Honduras. This carbon-credit certified, fuel-efficient stove project is implementing a monitoring and evaluation system for their 23,000 stoves using the powerful cloud computing platform Salesforce.com.

Stevan Simich the salesforce.com platform builder, who describes his work as being about streamlining and personalizing technology so that it powerfully alters and improves the effectiveness of impact development work, will be in the country with me to conduct training, troubleshoot, and ease the technology transfer to the Honduras team.  The platform I get to help conduct training for relies on iPhones and laptops to: instantaneously track with GPS the location of current and future stove builds, monitor the progress of different village stove installations and construction teams, conduct surveys on wood consumption, stove maintenance, usage, and sustainability, and record every household contact PM works with (23,000 households means a lot of contacts!).  Pretty potent stuff, we leave tonight!