SAN JOSE, CA - The Software Development Forum (SDForum), Silicon Valley's leading source of information and education in the technology community for more than twenty years, is a driving force behind a new Valley initiative that is seeing the development of applications like SMS being used in South Africa to remind people to take medication, and the networking of rural India.

SDForum is credited for securing fellows and sponsors for The Digital Vision Fellowship, at Stanford University, which attracts technologists to drive social entrepreneurship and design and incubate programs for humanitarian reasons that are being rolled out around the globe.

The Fellowship is now in its third year and the new team began work recently and runs through to June 2005.

SDForum hosted a program on Technology for the Developing World several months ago. Valley veteran and executive director of Reuters Digital Vision Fellowship Stuart Gannes said: "of all the events and functions he has attended in recent years the SDForum program was probably the best I have experienced."

"We secured a sponsor and three of the 15 fellows working on Digital Vision humanitarian technology now are people we met at that event, it was sensational the whole place was buzzing," Gannes said.

"This is the type of program we strive to support as we believe it is important that the next generation of technology companies coming through SDForum programs are aware there is more to technology than business and financial successes," Merling said.

She said SDForum events had an outstanding success rate for companies wanting to secure funding, business partners, specialist staff and business advice as well as keeping up with trends and technologies.

Gannes said there had been a significant mind shift in the Valley and that the region was now taking a leadership role for social entrepreneurship in the US.

"The recession forced many of those here for the money to leave and we are back to the core tech people who have seen the whole cycle, perhaps a few, and want to give back to the community."

"This change is happening on an individual level and also on the corporate level with HP, CISCO, Microsoft, and Intel as the leaders in this field.

"We now have tech firms talking about how many jobs they have created and the emergence of a new term the "double bottom line" - that is profit, and the give back value to the community."

On a similar theme of technology giving back to the community, the SDForum 2004 Visionary Awards recently recognized technology leaders such as John Chambers, Craig Barrett, Marc Benioff, and Scott Cook for their corporate philanthropy initiatives.

Software Development Forum, The

Software Development Forum, The

More from Software Development Forum, The