In anticipation of Fractor’s spring launch (whisper, whisper), we want to announce that Fractor’s code is Open Source. We utilized Drupal as our content management system and created a number of customizations, including a java based news and action platform and a java based recommendation engine.

We are currently looking over our site to determine what useful functions can be abstracted and returned to the Drupal community and hope that this announcement will serve as a starting point to a fruitful and rich relationship with the Open Source community .

Preparation for the preparation. September raced by and Fractor has developed its ideas and capacity to the point where we are ready to make use of more funding. We have put our house in order, developing new materials, applications and a three part sustainability plan based around our free public website, news portals and educational interfaces.

As we looked more closely at the issues surrounding service and need, it became clear that in order to create a vibrant online/offline ecosystem of service, we would have to be engaged in understanding and building tools for students and teachers that at once allowed them to achieve their curricular goals while integrating sympathetic action based on the empathic currents that are so strong in young people.

Learn, Act, Love.

“In the 21st century we have to change society and the world, not with the ancient methods, but through education and technology.” – The Dalai Lama

Not much to add to this one. Back to work!

Fractor joined the Mind and Life Conference last week in Washington D.C. The Mind and Life Institute sponsors multiple events each year but this one, Educating the World Citizen, was particularly interesting to us. The panel discussion, which ran two full days, focused on the integration of activities that inspire empathy and compassion in the classroom and was described by the Dalai Lama as the future of education in the 21st Century.

I’ll write more in coming entries about this conference and the fascinating discussions that ensued but begin with a quote from Matthieu Ricard from the first morning: “Students need several elements to achieve a level of competency as compassionate human beings: quite moments where they can integrate their thoughts and feelings, a mentor in whose benevolance they have deep confidence to create a sense of safety and perhaps most important, responsibility for others. By taking care of those younger or weaker than themselves, students learn ethics. Ethics is not what is good to do, it is what is good to be!”

Yes!!

Amid the many exciting features of Fractor, the formation and regulation of our corporate structure may not quite top the list. But its been something we’ve been working hard on for a year now, aided always by the guiding hands of our pro-bono attorneys, David Miller and Lauren Ro at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft. We recently entered round 3 (at least) of our wranglings, trying to understand how best Fractor can function as a social enterprise; a business that fulfills a charitable mission and serves the public good, and that is also able to operate like an agile, responsive start-up. More to come on this question, but after answering hundreds of questions, we’re moving onto the next stage of our corporate development. Thrilling!