In the beginning…

Alrighty then…we all have to start somewhere. The purpose of this site is to catalog my work around Samaritan-Web, which will become part of my doctoral thesis surrounding the social applications of network science and collaboration technology. I welcome input from anyone interested int he space, but I reserve the right to reuse any comments posted on this site which do not already have copyright protections. In most cases I will be sure to contact the author for permission – but I may use comments anonymously.

My background is in business – I have a BA in Marketing and an MBA in Technology Management, but the bulk of my career has been in technology in senior project, product, and program management roles. Since 1997, I have been involved in several companies and side projects involving collaboration technology – from ad hoc, web-based collaboration tools to fully-integrated supply chain collboration solutions. I have been fascinated by the developments in this space over the past decade. I have also been interested in finding ways to give something back to society.

And that is where Samaritan-Web came from. While there are philanthropic entities and website, such as VolunteerMatch and Network for Good (which is powered by VolunteerMatch), I believe there is an opportunity beyond these tools and websites to reach people. The underlying premise to my work is that people want to help people – but unless it is easy for people to find service opportunities, they won’t necessarily seek them out. Existing tools are fine for people looking for opps, but I am interested in finding ways to make it more viral – using network science and collaboration technology to push knowledge of these service opportunities out to a broader audience.

That’s it, in a nutshell. More information coming soon. Please feel free to share your thoughts and work in this area, or to contact me directly at buckley@redhillpartners.com