Portola Institute

The Portola Institute was a "nonprofit educational foundation" founded in Menlo Park, California in 1966 by Dick Raymond. The Portola institute helped to develop other organizations such as ''The Briarpatch Society'' and Bob Albrecht's ''People's Computer Company''. It was also the publisher of Stewart Brand's ''Whole Earth Catalog'' beginning with the first issue in 1968. The first issue of ''The Whole Earth Catalog'' notes that the catalog is one division of ''The Portola Institute'' and that other activities of the Institute include: "computer education for all grade levels, simulation games for classroom use, new approaches to music education, Ortega Park Teachers Laboratory."

The aim was always practical. Carol Goodell, PhD was co-founder of a partnership called Real World Learning, Inc. Goodell was an educator and education theorist whose husband worked for IBM. Raymond learned of Goodell's work and invited her into Portola’s late-1960s collaborations. Some thirty years later, writer June Morrall drew out some of Goodell's memories of those years, and she related that many of the eager idea people attracted to the Institute were young. Goodell said that Dick Raymond embodied “a nice mix of compassion, enthusiasm and realism. Raymond’s role was to ferret out the most doable ideas.”

As an offshoot of Portola Insitute and the success of the Whole Earth Catalog, Raymond and Brand collaborated to form the Point Foundation. Provided by Wikipedia