Today's HotD is not a towering giant of industry or ingenious revolutionary thinker. As much as I admire those folks and enjoy researching them as subjects for HotD articles, today I'm waxing all warm and fuzzy, I think it's the freezing cold weather. Today's HotD is Dave Eggers - writer, editor and publisher.

Dave Eggers and his wife Vendela Vida are the founders of 826 Valencia.

826 Valencia is the name and address of a nonprofit writing workshop and tutoring center in San Francisco, United States, whose aim is to help students ages 8-18 "with their writing skills, in the realm of creative writing, expository writing, or English as a second language."

There are three key areas of programming:

The above programs are all free, and are funded by various efforts, including adult seminars run in the evenings, where a panel of established writers discuss topics such as writing and publishing a novel, or creating your own magazine.

So what, you ask? What is so special about Mr Eggers and his charity work? Is it his pirate supply store, housed in the same building as 826 Valencia, that stocks an extensive range of eye patches, peg legs, jolly roger flags, treasure maps and spyglasses? No, despite the fact that pirates are the next coolest thing after ninjas, that is not the reason. (Actually, I just worked that part in to point out that when Eggers first purchased the building at 826 Valencia - he discovered that city ordinances stated that any businesses in that particular area of the city must be either retail or catering, so the Pirate Supply Store was developed as the "legitimate" business front for the writing center. Neat huh?)

No, the reason I commend David Eggers to your attention dear readers is along with his excellent work on creating a self sustaining non profit creative writing program using a mixture of business and charity, and the fact that a further 6 "826" chapters have become established (all with different themed store fronts); Dave Eggers has also lent his time and skills to the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research as a researcher.

The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research is a conservative free market think tank established in New York City in 1978 by Antony Fisher and William J. Casey, with its headquarters on Vanderbilt Avenue in Midtown Manhattan.[1] They describe their mission as to "develop and disseminate new ideas that foster greater economic choice and individual responsibility." The Institute, known for its advocacy of free market-based solutions to policy problems, supports and publicizes research on taxes, welfare, crime, the legal system, urban life, race, education and immigration among others.

So there you have it, he may not be of the world shaking calibre of Norman Borlaug or Matthew Boulton, but he's a guy who has done and continues to do some good. His charity gives me the warm fuzzies, and he's a free market advocate!