BetterWork
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Doing Well by Doing Good
[As originally in Virginia Business by Nicole Anderson Ellis] In 2002, Matt Bauer’s telecommunications career was at a crossroads. In the wake of Enron’s collapse and more than a trillion dollars in global write-offs, the industry was slogging through what Bauer calls its “darkest period.” He’d had enough and faced a choice: leave the field or change it. ... -
Bridging the digital divide
It’s high time to re-imagine how and where we work By Matthew Bauer As originally in the May/June Sustainable Industries Issue, Bridging a Digital Divide If you have been following the news as of late, it is likely that you have seen one or more articles on the virtues or the downside of telework, all taking cues from Yahoo!’s (Nasdaq: YHOO) recent decision to recall its teleworkers back to the “factory.” The debate has covered the pros and cons extensively, so I will spare you the emotion here and focus on the past, present and future of work as we know it, and where it’s going, whether you like it or not. Just the facts, ma’am! ... -
BizWestMichigan Interview – BALLE 2012
BetterWorld was out making change with fellow local businesses at this year’s BALLE (Business Alliance for Local Living Economies) conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The 2012 BALLE Business Conference: Real Prosperity Starts Here conference connected more than 700 community innovators, business owners, and investors to people, resources and ideas to unleash local prosperity.... -
Why Your Company Needs Remote Work – The San Francisco BART Closure
Business and commutes are at a standstill today after an extreme fire in West Oakland put the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) system completely out of service between the East Bay and San Francisco. The resultant traffic and chaos from commuters attempting alternate methods of ferry, buses, and carpooling will likely result in something of a local holiday – as highways turn into parking lots. The growing density of the Bay Area and many urban corridors, puts individuals and businesses at the mercy of transit systems that are both fallible and already pushed to capacity.... -
Inevitable Change – Part 3
As originally featured in SustainableIndustries.com by BetterWorld President Matthew Bauer. A three part series: Reading the tea leaves, accepting the inevitable and bringing focus to the most promising sector of our economy. _Part One discussed how we got to where we are. Part Two focused on Trends and Facts helping support the shift to a small business-focused economy, Part Three now pulls it all together and discusses concrete solutions for moving forward into the new Access Economy. _ All too often we are just looking at the issues in silos and not seeing the opportunity for truly shifting our economy, society and our species’ detrimental and growing impact on the earth’s biosphere. Taking a page from the wisdom of E.O. Wilson, his book, Conscilience, touches brilliantly on a new approach – managing strategy and policy across multiple silos of specialty at the same time.... -
Future of Work launches BetterWorld Forum
The BetterWorld Forum kicked off yesterday with the first of many events focused on the cross section of the new broadband economy, the future of work and the opportunities that exist for businesses and communities in this field. The inaugural event was hosted at the new BetterWorld headquarters in San Francisco, in partnership with Varsity Technologies. Joining in the discussion on the future of work were seasoned experts including:... -
Inevitable Change – Part 1
As originally featured in SustainableIndustries.com by BetterWorld President Matthew Bauer. A three part series: Reading the tea leaves, accepting the inevitable and bringing focus to the most promising sector of our economy. For eons, civilization on Earth evolved slowly, innovation and change took place over decades and centuries, until the past few hundred years. Suddenly, an explosion of invention and progress gave society airplanes, cars, global wars, computers, skyscrapers, the Internet, global movement of goods and money, beauty, opportunity and destruction on a level never imagined. For the first time since we pulled our knuckles off the ground, humanity had gotten way out ahead of itself. So who could blame us for buying into the religion of growth for growth’s sake, materialism, globalization and all the ensuing collateral damage. ... -
With spread of high-tech devices, telecom expecting explosive growth
As originally featured in Washington Post.com by Matt Bauer, President, BetterWorld Telecom. By all accounts, the telecom carrier industry is set to grow again in the coming year. In a world of 7 billion people, almost every one of them owns a handset. And more than 10 percent of the globe is now wired on broadband. BetterWorld has been a part of the telecom industry’s tremendous growth and was fortunate to make the 2011 Inc. 5000 List. We are on pace to be there again in 2012 due, in part, to industry growth, growing demand as our customers use more teleconferencing and telecommuting and BetterWorld’s firm commitment to social and environmental sustainability. This commitment has engendered customer loyalty through tough times, and it helped us build partnerships and goodwill rarely found in our industry. ... -
Lessons from Jack Dorsey at GigaOm RoadMap
A little while back BetterWorld was out at GigaOm's RoadMap conference listening to Jack Dorsey, famed Founder of both Twitter and Square, a new company poised to cut the red tape on transactions and merchanting. This is just some of the wisdom he had to share in his interview with Om Malik, Founder of GigaOm. **Role of Technology ** Jack believes that technology creates empathy, which helps to end conflict. In this way, it makes the world feel closer and moves us towards a more compassionate future. Country boundaries are convenient for organization, but really are arbitrary; the human tendency is to create “temporary autonomous zones”, or places where people come together for a purpose and then naturally disperse. Both Twitter and Square bring peer-to-peer interactions to the forefront and allow for more transparency and access, to share information (Twitter) and goods (Square). ... -
San Francisco Steps up Big for B Corps – Board of Supervisors President, David Chiu, Proposes Incentives for CA B Corps
San Francisco Board of Supervisors President and SF Mayoral Candidate, David Chiu, today held a press conference at the Hub SoMa and laid out his plan for San Francisco to become the beacon and capital of Social Entrepreneurialism, starting with a plan for the City to provide contract bid preferences to CA B Corps or Benefit Corporations. BetterWorld has stood by Supervisor Chiu through this process, which began at a Silicon Valley Leadership Group event a few months ago and culminating recently in a roundtable with Supervisor Chiu with many SF Access Economy and B Corps leaders, including Jeff Marcous of Dharma Merchant Services, Brian Back of Sustainable Industries, David Brodwin from the American Sustainable Business Council, Alex Michel from the 5M Project and others.... -
Virtual Work, Real Success
** Telecom for Good** BetterWorld Telecom provides services that enable and support a virtual work environment, as a donation partner with TechSoup Global. However, BetterWorld itself works as a virtual team, with team members scattered literally across the U.S. With TechSoup’s focus on virtual work this month, we thought we’d share some of the tips and practices we use to make ‘virtual work’ work for us.... -
Sustainable at Work
Are we applying the same principles of environmental sustainability to people in the workplace? This was the topic for a recent panel discussion put together by the Sustainable Business Alliance at the Hub Berkeley. The panelists included: Matt Bauer, President of BetterWorld Telecom, Jennifer Freitas, Human Resource Manager at Clif Bar, and Dr.... -
Silicon Valley Leadership Group � White House CTO
President Barack Obama said in his State of the Union address that the US needs to out-innovate, out-build, and out-educate the rest of the world. To that end, members of the administration have been traveling around the country to meet up with business leaders in roundtable discussions and learn how best to support them.... -
WorldBlu: Most Democratic Workplace!
What if companies were evaluated not just by their profits, but by the way they treated their employees and the democracy of their workplaces? WorldBlu does exactly that by providing in-depth surveys for organizations and their employees to anonymously rate their workplaces on transparency. Working to create happy, engaged workplaces – their rating system creates standards for what would otherwise be largely intangible.... -
TEDx Presidio
What does business 3.0 look like? How are successful companies reshaping the landscape and the workplace? With a packed schedule of speakers, TEDx Presidio was a heavy hitting dose of trailblazers from the Bay Area and beyond. Hosts Deb Nelson of Social Venture Network and Darian Rodriguez Heyman of Code Green Agency, started off the day with the question: What’s the difference between a dreamer and a visionary?... -
BetterWorld Telecom 2010 Signpost
As is our annual BetterBlog tradition, we mark the passing of each January 1st with some reflection and highlights of the previous year. As we make the turn into 2011, the BetterWorld team is excited as 2010, on almost every front, was our best to date – from new partnerships, to customers, expanding our mission and furthering our efforts to provide a concrete example and direction for how the telecoms industry can be a social and environmental leader, our pathway has never been more clear.... -
BetterWork Becomes Law
This past week, President Obama signed into Law H.R. 1722, the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010, into law. The House of Representatives passed the bill last Thursday with a bipartisan vote of 254 to 152. The Senate passed the final version of the legislation by unanimous consent on September 29.... -
SEA – BetterWorld Partnership To Benefit Social Entrepreneurs Across North America
Our team is abuzz this week with the news of our new partnership with the Social Enterprise Alliance (SEA). SEA represents the largest network of social enterprises in North America and the leading membership organization in North America for social enterprises, service providers, nonprofit organizations, corporations, and venture capitalists that is actively building the field of social enterprise through networking opportunities, educational forums, strategic partnerships, and impact legislation.... -
TechSoup and BetterWorld Launch National Donation Program
This past week, the excitement ran high at BetterWorld as we launched our national national donation program alongside partners TechSoup Global and Aptela. The TechSoup+BetterWorld+Aptela partnership creates a unique bundle of telecommunications services that are now available to nonprofit organizations and public libraries as a combination of donated equipment and discounted rates.... -
NetImpact 2020: Vision for a Sustainable Decade
Wow – we are always amazed at the energy and power of the annual NetImpact Conference and this year was no exception. There are so many forums, conferences and get togethers throughout the year now but NetImpact always is able to rise above most anything else out in the fray. This year over 2,500 people descended on the Ross School of Business in Ann Arbor, MI, and hundreds of top notch speakers and experts in social and environmental sustainability engaged packed rooms (mostly students from around the country and world) on issues of the day and most importantly, pathways to a new and better world.... -
BetterWorld Awarded $2.5M Grant From U.S. Commerce Department/NTIA
We try not to toot our own horn much in the BetterBlog and keep the focus on our customers and partners, but hard to resist here as we got a great affirmation in last week on the BetterWork front. As part of the National Telecommunications Information Administration’s (NTIA) stimulus program, BetterWorld was awarded a $2.... -
BetterWork, NetImpact and the Future
Last week we had the fortune of presenting the BetterWork framework to most of the staff at NetImpact in San Francisco. We had a great discussion about the nature of work and changing how we work can cut the carbon output of America by 50% in the coming decades. With NetImpact really serving as the training ground for our next generation of sustainable leaders and hopefully helping to produce the first generation that elevates environmental and social responsibility to the top of our list of priorities, we were so encouraged by the amazing questions and dialogue that ensued during our time with the NetImpact staff.... -
California Teleconnect Fund – Great Opportunity for Non-Profits
BetterWorld Telecom is fortunate to now be an approved carrier for the California Teleconnect Fund. This amazing program offers qualifying non-profits essentially a 50% discount on many commercial telecommunications service such as DSL, T1s, PRIs, VoIP, Unified Communications, IP Trunking and many more. The California Teleconnect Fund (CTF) Program was established by Decision 96-10-066 on October 25, 1996....
