I've been casting about for ways of reframing our language relating to the health care system, and come up with "Disease Industrial Complex." If we look at things from this perspective, the DIC is a very efficient process, efficiently absorbing an ever increasing percentage of our gross national product. This industry has little to do with health - its all about disease, how to categorize it, and how to sell things to fix it.

I'm holding a workshop on the Good Ancestor Principle at my home in San Diego Feb 19-20, 2008, a successor to last year's workshop. This year's theme will focus on various perspectives of Resilience, as well as some theoretical notions of retro information.

Videos from 2007 Good Ancestor Workshop:
Good Ancestor Workshop Summary

I'm planning to hold a workshop at my home on Micro philanthropy and Really Simple Social Actions (RSSA) sometime in mid March, 2008. Details to follow.

I have nominated Ethan Zohn, the winner of Survivor Africa who used his $1 million winnings to help start Grassroot Soccer, for the 2008 Charles Bronfman Prize.

I am collecting the many innovative ideas about improving the philanthropic process over the years into a theme I am calling "Smart Philanthropy". The thrust of modern philanthropy tends to focus on fundraising - an organization's ability to attract attention and money from donors. Unfortunately, what happens with that money - the program activities that it supports - is not as visible.

Peter Deitz has done some interesting work around the notion of syndicating donor activity for micro philanthropy. Here is an image of what he envisions, and here is a working mockup.

Below is a growing collection of articles, discussions, and blog posts about micro-philanthropy. 

The engineer
Micro-philanthropy: Tiny gifts of cash, credit, and service identified and delivered through computer networks and the Internet.

The network theorist
Micro-philanthropy: Gifts of cash, credit, or service awarded collectively by groups of individuals in which each donor makes a proportionately small contribution.

The philosopher
Micro-philanthropy: The long-term impact on grant-making of increased decentralization in decision-making and the erosion of hierarchy.

This is a list of some innovative models of giving that involve peer to peer connections between "Helpers" and "Doers"

Really Simple Social Action (RSSA) is a an Uplift Academy theme for developing a software standard for supporting scalable small activities.

Here is the main RSSA web site, and here is an Uplift Academy RSSA Sandbox for exploring tools and protocols, as well as the Uplift Academy RSSA Wiki Page.