[00:00.000 --> 00:10.400]  We're here representing Geeks Without Bounds, which is a humanitarian... an incubator for humanitarian response.
[00:10.800 --> 00:12.520]  And I'm Willow.
[00:13.540 --> 00:18.920]  I'm Diggz, and procurer of DVI to VGA adapters.
[00:20.960 --> 00:24.980]  And when we rehearsed this talk earlier, it was pretty amazing.
[00:25.260 --> 00:27.040]  So we're hoping it holds.
[00:29.780 --> 00:30.520]  Things, stuff.
[00:30.720 --> 00:32.120]  Okay, so first of all, first world problems.
[00:32.280 --> 00:33.360]  We do a lot of different stuff.
[00:34.040 --> 00:39.600]  We have a lot of fun breaking a lot of puzzles and building a lot of cool things and playing with our phones.
[00:40.240 --> 00:43.400]  And it's fun, and we live in a really blessed and cool world.
[00:44.860 --> 00:48.360]  But we can also apply those skill sets to other things.
[00:49.060 --> 00:50.560]  Why don't you tell us about the Stiggs?
[00:51.540 --> 00:52.980]  I'm glad you asked me that, Willow.
[00:54.900 --> 00:59.640]  So it started as far back as 2001, 9-11.
[01:00.140 --> 01:04.040]  And there was the tsunami in the Indian Ocean.
[01:04.040 --> 01:06.980]  There was the Hurricane Katrina.
[01:08.280 --> 01:09.940]  These events happened.
[01:10.760 --> 01:13.340]  I watched them, as many of us did.
[01:14.660 --> 01:16.600]  And I felt kind of paralyzed.
[01:16.600 --> 01:17.600]  I wanted to do something.
[01:17.600 --> 01:22.820]  When the hurricane hit Katrina, I was glued to a LiveJournal feed.
[01:22.940 --> 01:24.060]  Does anybody remember LiveJournal?
[01:24.500 --> 01:28.340]  It was like pre-Myspace.
[01:31.320 --> 01:32.760]  Yes, yes.
[01:33.980 --> 01:39.940]  So some guys I knew that lived in New Orleans had...
[01:40.700 --> 01:41.880]  They all worked for an ISP.
[01:42.280 --> 01:48.720]  And as the hurricane came in, or started to come in, they prepared, and they got their generators full of diesel fuel.
[01:49.440 --> 01:57.180]  And after the hurricane blew through, they still had power and were live blogging on LiveJournal about what was going on.
[01:57.180 --> 02:05.820]  And to me, at a certain point, they were getting like 2,000 hits a minute on their LiveJournal.
[02:06.700 --> 02:10.440]  Because they were the only people that had access to information on the ground.
[02:10.660 --> 02:12.140]  And they quickly started...
[02:12.140 --> 02:15.420]  They just naturally started directing, you know, we need water over here.
[02:15.540 --> 02:15.920]  And this and that.
[02:15.980 --> 02:19.880]  This was, you know, way before state or federal aid started coming in.
[02:20.900 --> 02:22.720]  And I thought that was really cool.
[02:22.880 --> 02:30.960]  And it sort of germinating this idea in my head that, you know, maybe we could harness that natural passion for problem solving that geeks have.
[02:31.880 --> 02:37.180]  For something other than playing World of Warcraft, we could maybe do some good in the world.
[02:37.600 --> 02:45.680]  And so I kind of naively got in front of a couple conferences and said, Hey, we should just save the world with geek power.
[02:47.480 --> 02:49.100]  And Willow kind of called me out on it.
[02:49.120 --> 02:50.480]  And she was like, So how are you going to do that?
[02:50.500 --> 02:52.740]  Because it kind of sounds like a great idea.
[02:54.420 --> 02:57.380]  But you didn't really say how you're going to do that.
[02:58.440 --> 03:05.240]  So anyway, we started talking and decided to kind of join forces and see if we could figure out how to do it.
[03:07.220 --> 03:07.760]  Well done.
[03:08.540 --> 03:09.340]  I like WoW.
[03:09.480 --> 03:11.340]  I prefer StarCraft, but that's okay.
[03:12.100 --> 03:17.460]  Okay, so we're all pretty aware of traditional response organizations.
[03:17.800 --> 03:21.700]  They tend to have red logos and they tend to have a lot to do with children.
[03:23.880 --> 03:26.940]  They also do a lot of good work and they're very established.
[03:27.140 --> 03:28.160]  They understand the environment.
[03:28.300 --> 03:32.600]  They understand what they're doing, what the needs are, what the parameters are, things like that.
[03:33.800 --> 03:45.900]  As an example of how many of these organizations there are, after the Indian Ocean tsunami, 600 organizations responded in the first six weeks.
[03:46.900 --> 03:48.040]  That's still a lot.
[03:48.240 --> 03:49.300]  Like, that's a fair number.
[03:49.420 --> 03:50.520]  That's not just individuals.
[03:50.660 --> 03:52.260]  Those are organizations that you have to juggle.
[03:53.180 --> 04:00.560]  In contrast, after Port-au-Prince, which is the Haitian earthquake, there were 4,000 in the first 10 days.
[04:02.720 --> 04:03.220]  Massive.
[04:03.440 --> 04:06.720]  Okay, so here's one representation of what that looks like.
[04:06.820 --> 04:11.140]  There's a link to an awesome presentation on this that I'll share with you later.
[04:12.420 --> 04:22.860]  This is sort of... we started filling in the logos, but that orange square on the upper left is Prezi's safe word for please don't add anything else.
[04:23.680 --> 04:25.240]  So this is how far we got.
[04:25.420 --> 04:31.920]  And not all of these are from Port-au-Prince or after, but they're called digital humanitarian organizations.
[04:34.880 --> 04:38.560]  So all of these groups have to worry about a lot of different things.
[04:38.560 --> 04:41.760]  Does the infrastructure that they're operating on even exist?
[04:41.960 --> 04:42.840]  Is there enough bandwidth?
[04:43.100 --> 04:44.120]  Is there enough power?
[04:44.380 --> 04:46.020]  What is the government structure like?
[04:46.140 --> 04:47.440]  What all are your worries?
[04:47.940 --> 04:49.460]  Is it culturally appropriate?
[04:49.640 --> 04:51.020]  Will people even use it?
[04:51.100 --> 04:51.740]  Do they care?
[04:51.860 --> 04:52.660]  Is it necessary?
[04:53.520 --> 04:56.460]  Is it approved by the participating organizations?
[04:56.460 --> 05:01.440]  Are you just sweeping in and undercutting them and trying to get information that people only want to give once?
[05:02.200 --> 05:05.840]  So, as you can see, there are a lot of things at play.
[05:06.920 --> 05:14.760]  There was a great example earlier today from the technology to change society, things to not do.
[05:15.040 --> 05:18.360]  About how there was even an oral wiki that people wanted.
[05:18.920 --> 05:21.460]  The local community really wanted it.
[05:21.580 --> 05:26.840]  The technology existed and yet it wasn't quite right and so it didn't work.
[05:27.460 --> 05:30.580]  So even when you think everything is aligned, sometimes it doesn't work.
[05:33.060 --> 05:34.960]  But it's still worth the effort.
[05:36.040 --> 05:39.260]  Because this is democratizing things in a very new way.
[05:39.580 --> 05:47.120]  People on the ground, people in these communities suddenly have the ability to speak for themselves in a way that we haven't had the ability to listen to them before.
[05:47.220 --> 05:49.460]  They've been speaking but we can't hear them.
[05:50.700 --> 05:52.220]  And it's flattening access.
[05:52.520 --> 05:57.140]  So it's not just white dude in cape showing up and being like, I found the solution to your problem.
[05:57.260 --> 05:58.160]  There are no solutions.
[05:58.420 --> 06:02.540]  Also white guys in capes, unless they're embroidered, kind of sketchy.
[06:04.080 --> 06:07.260]  And so this has a lot of really cool potential.
[06:07.260 --> 06:10.900]  And it also opens up the gateway for new communities.
[06:10.900 --> 06:18.280]  We can close the digital divide and close other discrepancies in socioeconomic class and other fancy words that I learned in college.
[06:19.640 --> 06:24.600]  But at the end of the day, anyone can participate but should they?
[06:24.800 --> 06:26.120]  There's a massive learning curve.
[06:26.140 --> 06:29.780]  Is it worth closing that when there's a disaster?
[06:30.720 --> 06:33.820]  We worry about documentation and continuation.
[06:33.820 --> 06:36.060]  Is it possible to hand these...
[06:36.060 --> 06:37.860]  Is where I'm holding the mic okay?
[06:38.160 --> 06:38.500]  I'm sorry.
[06:38.760 --> 06:40.140]  I also speak really quickly.
[06:40.280 --> 06:41.300]  I'll try to slow down a little bit.
[06:42.500 --> 06:43.600]  Documentation and continuation.
[06:45.440 --> 06:46.860]  How is this being handed off?
[06:47.020 --> 06:52.480]  Because people get really compassionate and involved when things are their shittiest.
[06:53.200 --> 06:54.820]  And then they go away.
[06:55.560 --> 06:56.940]  And you have all this code.
[06:57.060 --> 07:02.180]  And if you think uncommented code for work is bad, try...
[07:02.180 --> 07:03.720]  You don't even know what it's supposed to do.
[07:03.840 --> 07:07.620]  You just know that it was supposed to link these two things together and save lives.
[07:07.840 --> 07:09.520]  And where were they even thinking?
[07:09.720 --> 07:10.680]  And what language is...
[07:10.680 --> 07:12.240]  It gets bad.
[07:12.400 --> 07:14.440]  And you also have to worry about security.
[07:15.160 --> 07:17.580]  Especially when you're trying to open-source and share things.
[07:17.700 --> 07:19.860]  And everyone should know what's going on.
[07:21.180 --> 07:23.000]  Refugees are refugees for a reason.
[07:23.980 --> 07:26.000]  They're going away from something.
[07:26.000 --> 07:33.660]  And if you're asking them to contribute more information so that you can make sure that they're checking in with a loved one and you know where people are missing and all this other stuff.
[07:33.860 --> 07:41.040]  If that information could even be triangulated when cross-referenced with other data sets, you're putting actual people at risk.
[07:41.240 --> 07:42.760]  And that is unacceptable.
[07:44.260 --> 07:50.640]  So we run into this thing where in software we're taught to release early and release often and fail fast and fail hard.
[07:50.840 --> 07:53.000]  Fail fast and fail hard, totally good.
[07:53.240 --> 07:55.320]  But do so in your closed environment.
[07:56.500 --> 08:00.400]  Do so at the consent of the other people that are using what you're building.
[08:01.500 --> 08:05.560]  Because a lot of these people, they don't know what risk you're putting them in the way of.
[08:07.100 --> 08:08.500]  But we can deal with this.
[08:08.740 --> 08:10.320]  And it's worthwhile to do so.
[08:11.460 --> 08:12.600]  With big green arrow.
[08:13.440 --> 08:23.280]  Okay, so one of the things to deal with these huge groups that we showed you with the orange square is to work together.
[08:23.700 --> 08:26.120]  All of these groups are very specific in what they do.
[08:26.260 --> 08:28.420]  And people sign up to those groups because they fit with them.
[08:28.480 --> 08:30.140]  They fit with the culture and they fit with their ideals.
[08:30.540 --> 08:36.380]  And then those groups working together make it possible to make a meta object of response.
[08:37.900 --> 08:44.300]  So with traditional response communities, there's a group called NetHope, which oversees a lot of different organizations.
[08:44.660 --> 08:47.280]  And some of these groups I'm not okay with.
[08:47.460 --> 08:48.660]  Some of them I am.
[08:49.500 --> 08:58.640]  But what really matters is at the end of the day we can all sit down and talk to each other and figure out what it is we're aiming for and how we can not get in the way of each other.
[08:58.640 --> 09:02.500]  And call each other out, too, when it comes down to it.
[09:05.020 --> 09:08.900]  And then there's digital humanitarians, where that's the huge group.
[09:09.260 --> 09:13.020]  And the big plus and close perrin is our group.
[09:13.220 --> 09:14.560]  I like it because it's pretty.
[09:16.520 --> 09:18.060]  And for other reasons, obviously.
[09:18.920 --> 09:29.060]  So Random Hacks of Kindness is a bi-yearly hackathon that mostly developers but also some hackers and hardware hackers and designers...
[09:29.700 --> 09:30.440]  Thank you, Diggz.
[09:30.580 --> 09:31.140]  That was well done.
[09:32.560 --> 09:38.320]  Get together and they gather around what are called challenges or problem definitions that subject matter experts bring to the table.
[09:38.500 --> 09:40.060]  They say, these are some things that we've been facing.
[09:40.380 --> 09:44.900]  People have a concerted effort over the weekend and they get really passionate and they come up with a really...
[09:46.120 --> 09:50.540]  a prototype that works for the presentation time, right?
[09:50.720 --> 09:51.940]  We all know about this.
[09:52.080 --> 09:54.160]  It works for that one time and then it doesn't work again.
[09:54.540 --> 10:05.340]  And so what our group does is if you want to continue that into a business that sustains you or you want to turn it into a nonprofit or whatever else, we provide you mentorship for that.
[10:05.480 --> 10:06.580]  I'll explain more later.
[10:07.180 --> 10:10.680]  Social Coding for Good is a part of Benetech and they...
[10:10.680 --> 10:19.040]  If you just have a few hours during your week or during your month, they match up your skill sets and your time availability to organizations that need those things.
[10:19.700 --> 10:20.740]  They're fantastic.
[10:21.260 --> 10:32.520]  And we're together creating this way that anyone, regardless of what your background is, will figure out a way for you to engage in a way that's healthy for everyone involved or at least less wrong.
[10:35.790 --> 10:37.400]  We have also done things.
[10:39.790 --> 10:41.960]  I can talk about these because I know what we've done.
[10:43.670 --> 10:50.520]  So, a lot of the work that we've done over the past two years since we started Geeks Without Bounds.
[10:50.540 --> 10:51.690]  Actually, we're coming up on two years.
[10:51.900 --> 10:55.340]  We started it on 10-10-10 because it was a really geeky date.
[10:57.660 --> 10:58.340]  Forty-two!
[10:58.980 --> 10:59.600]  Forty-two!
[11:04.500 --> 11:06.420]  So, one of the things that we did...
[11:06.420 --> 11:10.720]  Actually, this project, Tweet3PO, started before Geeks Without Bounds even launched.
[11:11.500 --> 11:16.040]  Me and a friend of mine were sitting around scratching our heads trying to figure out what Twitter was good for.
[11:16.980 --> 11:26.160]  And I went to a conference here in New York, actually, called the 140 Characters Conference and was kind of...
[11:26.160 --> 11:31.520]  The same weekend, like the weekend before the conference was the kind of...
[11:31.520 --> 11:33.720]  All hell had broken loose in Iran.
[11:35.090 --> 11:38.740]  And the, you know, the Internet got shut down.
[11:40.320 --> 11:41.280]  They kicked...
[11:41.280 --> 11:42.140]  Yeah, I know.
[11:42.800 --> 11:43.880]  I'm talking about...
[11:43.880 --> 11:45.100]  Well, that one's next, but no.
[11:45.340 --> 11:46.660]  I'm still talking about this one.
[11:47.760 --> 11:48.580]  Thanks, Willa, though.
[11:53.460 --> 12:05.440]  But, anyway, I got back and I was talking with my buddy and we were like, well, you know, Twitter is kind of, you know, we've been through Facebook and MySpace and I just couldn't figure out what we needed another social media platform for.
[12:06.660 --> 12:12.700]  And as we're literally, as we're talking about this, these two police officers go racing by and we're like, I wonder where they're going.
[12:12.860 --> 12:19.720]  And we look up on the city website and we find that there's a police data feed of all the active calls that go through.
[12:19.980 --> 12:28.360]  The problem with the data feed is, you know, it's got information about, like, the date and the type of call that somebody called into the police, but you had to be watching it.
[12:28.460 --> 12:34.940]  Like, we were looking on the screen for, like, an hour trying to see, like, the information that we were looking for to scroll by.
[12:35.420 --> 12:40.260]  And we were like, well, this could be made so much more useful.
[12:40.480 --> 12:53.480]  And so we just took the data feed and instead of, you know, scrolling it on a web page, we created Twitter accounts and they tweet out the active calls and you can just subscribe to your neighborhood.
[12:53.700 --> 13:07.220]  So if you want to get a text message without actually installing any additional software, you just subscribe to a Twitter account and you subscribe to your local neighborhood and you can get information about break-ins or crimes that are happening in your local neighborhood.
[13:07.220 --> 13:12.340]  We also have stuff for weather alerts and we're also working with other cities now.
[13:12.540 --> 13:13.160]  It's been expanding.
[13:13.280 --> 13:14.820]  We just expanded to the county.
[13:15.520 --> 13:18.920]  And Seattle is also... we're getting ready to launch in Seattle as well.
[13:19.620 --> 13:22.540]  So this is, like, a very simple...
[13:23.320 --> 13:24.980]  Anybody know what a crisis map is?
[13:25.720 --> 13:27.020]  Have you ever heard of crisis mapping?
[13:27.260 --> 13:29.660]  So this is a very simple version of crisis mapping.
[13:29.660 --> 13:35.620]  It's basically taking incidents that happen and you put them on a map and you can create heat maps out of it.
[13:35.720 --> 13:44.500]  And when there's a big crisis or, like, say, in the case of the earthquake in Haiti, you can really see where aid needs to go first or what type of aid needs to go where.
[13:47.140 --> 13:50.520]  This was another project that kind of came up shortly thereafter.
[13:51.060 --> 13:58.900]  This was directly in response to the January 25th uprising in Egypt.
[13:59.220 --> 14:00.380]  The government shut off the Internet.
[14:02.060 --> 14:08.660]  And so some friends of mine, because we had launched Geeks Without Bounds, got in touch with me and said, hey, can we do something to help?
[14:08.780 --> 14:14.080]  So we set up some phone numbers that people could call and leave a message.
[14:14.080 --> 14:16.740]  And those messages were then put into a Twitter feed.
[14:16.900 --> 14:20.760]  And volunteers could go to the Twitter feed, listen to a message and transcribe it.
[14:20.820 --> 14:24.640]  And this is actually the screenshot of the Google Doc that got set up.
[14:25.120 --> 14:29.500]  And so the first in yellow there is the Arabic transcription.
[14:29.980 --> 14:34.120]  And then as you go down, you see the, you know, English translation.
[14:34.120 --> 14:37.240]  And then they had other volunteers translated into German and French.
[14:37.520 --> 14:45.900]  And so every tweet that, every message that got left in the phone line was getting retweeted out 20 times over because it was being translated and transcribed in multiple languages.
[14:49.720 --> 14:51.040]  This one Willow worked on.
[14:51.140 --> 14:51.780]  You want to talk about this?
[14:52.020 --> 14:52.200]  Sure.
[14:53.520 --> 14:56.880]  Okay, so this one is called Mad Pub, which is Mobile Assessment of Damage for the Public.
[14:58.240 --> 15:02.480]  When a disaster blows through your town, you can...
[15:02.480 --> 15:03.660]  Sound effects.
[15:04.180 --> 15:05.960]  You can get federal aid.
[15:06.140 --> 15:09.580]  You've all heard about federal aid being called into your county, right?
[15:10.460 --> 15:14.360]  Your county has 72 hours to assess how much damage has happened.
[15:14.560 --> 15:20.880]  And then as a percentage of what the value of the county is and all this other stuff, they figure out if they get federal aid or not.
[15:21.360 --> 15:23.320]  The thing is, here's their process.
[15:23.480 --> 15:24.940]  They call your landline.
[15:25.240 --> 15:26.640]  Who has a landline?
[15:27.700 --> 15:29.860]  Who's had a landline in the past two years?
[15:31.240 --> 15:37.780]  Okay, so if they can't get a hold of you via your landline, they go and knock on your door.
[15:38.000 --> 15:49.400]  And then someone fills out a form with a pen and then faxes it in to someone who does data entry, who then figures out if you qualify for federal assistance or even if your whole county does.
[15:49.500 --> 15:50.840]  They have 72 hours to do this in.
[15:52.360 --> 16:00.660]  So rather than do that, we figured out we'll just do data entry on the front end.
[16:00.800 --> 16:02.020]  So people can use their smartphone.
[16:02.340 --> 16:03.180]  They can do a phone tree.
[16:03.420 --> 16:04.260]  They can text in.
[16:04.380 --> 16:05.280]  They can use a web portal.
[16:05.540 --> 16:08.800]  Whatever means they can get to it by is fine.
[16:09.040 --> 16:10.820]  They can do it by their landline if they want to.
[16:10.820 --> 16:14.340]  And then it takes care of all the other stuff on the back end.
[16:15.500 --> 16:21.900]  Because we've been talking to people at the county emergency management, we're able to actually deploy this.
[16:22.100 --> 16:25.580]  It's going to take them a few years, even though we'll have it built far before then.
[16:25.820 --> 16:28.340]  But it actually goes into production.
[16:28.880 --> 16:34.080]  And because we built it on an open-source model, we can then share it across all the other counties.
[16:34.340 --> 16:40.180]  What usually happens is one county will dump all of their finances into building something like this and then hoard it.
[16:41.520 --> 16:43.220]  Because why would we ever share it?
[16:43.280 --> 16:43.960]  We paid for it.
[16:44.100 --> 16:44.460]  It's ours.
[16:45.680 --> 16:46.200]  Guys.
[16:48.780 --> 16:49.740]  So that's that.
[16:51.300 --> 17:02.080]  I actually like this illustration also because it got entered into the congressional record with Willow down there in the bottom saying, it's so reasonable.
[17:04.720 --> 17:14.400]  But yeah, this was submitted as an example of volunteer technology organizations that are producing actual results.
[17:14.580 --> 17:20.160]  And some people that we work with actually testified before Congress and used this as an example.
[17:20.740 --> 17:21.380]  Oh.
[17:21.760 --> 17:27.160]  And then when Christchurch happened and they were trying to figure out what all had happened, and we're like, oh, we have this code.
[17:27.620 --> 17:28.800]  It's commented out.
[17:29.520 --> 17:30.740]  Would you care for it?
[17:30.860 --> 17:33.620]  I don't even know if they used it, but it was just a, here's a thing.
[17:34.000 --> 17:34.540]  Have at.
[17:35.180 --> 17:35.360]  Yeah.
[17:36.080 --> 17:36.840]  That's pretty cool.
[17:38.980 --> 17:49.360]  This project, I almost had forgotten that we worked on it, but I just got an email from the lead guy at Carnegie Mellon last week.
[17:49.360 --> 17:55.300]  And he was like, hey, you remember that help you gave us last year and helped us get some free licenses for software?
[17:57.740 --> 18:23.080]  And anyway, so what they did, the Carnegie Mellon University, the Language Institute, wanted to figure out how to, if they could use telephone-based interactive voice game to help low-literate rural workers in Pakistan to get information, whether it be like health information,
[18:23.360 --> 18:29.620]  or information about clean water, or information about available jobs, because these people don't normally have access.
[18:29.740 --> 18:33.140]  They can't just go up to a job board and read it, or they can't read the newspaper.
[18:33.440 --> 18:38.060]  So they created a little interactive telephone game, and it was a very simple thing.
[18:38.180 --> 18:47.960]  You just, they seeded it with like five university students, and they, the five university students called up, and it would play them, give them some instructions, and they could record a message.
[18:47.960 --> 18:53.260]  And then they could put a little filter on that message, and make their voice sound like Mickey Mouse, or Darth Vader.
[18:54.340 --> 18:58.840]  And then put in their friend's phone number, and it would call their friend, and then play the message.
[18:59.460 --> 19:09.360]  And the friend would listen to the message, and then get an option to hear some information about local job listings, and then get instructions on how they could play the game as well.
[19:09.360 --> 19:23.960]  And so, since they launched this last year, they've had over 40,000 participants, over 500,000 phone calls, and over 70,000 people listened, chose the option to listen to job listings.
[19:24.220 --> 19:25.560]  So I thought that was kind of cool.
[19:28.540 --> 19:32.700]  One of the other projects that we've been working on is in the crisis response.
[19:33.560 --> 19:41.760]  One of the things that we've identified that is very, very important is that people can communicate in a disaster situation.
[19:42.540 --> 19:44.120]  When, you know, when there's a...
[19:44.120 --> 19:47.620]  In Haiti, basically, all the infrastructure was wiped out.
[19:47.780 --> 19:51.380]  And, you know, in Japan, when they had a tsunami, all the infrastructure was wiped out.
[19:51.380 --> 19:52.620]  There was no cell phone towers.
[19:53.780 --> 20:03.100]  And so we wanted to see if we could find a test bed, a place where we could test some of these ideas that were coming out of our hackathons, and help people communicate.
[20:03.700 --> 20:17.880]  And so we took it to the biggest disaster area we know, the middle of the desert at Black Rock City at Burning Man, and set up a cell network with our partners at OpenBTS.
[20:17.980 --> 20:21.040]  It's an open-source base transceiver station.
[20:21.920 --> 20:30.580]  And set up a network and set up some simple apps so people could text each other on the playa, and they could leave messages for other people in their camp.
[20:32.060 --> 20:41.240]  And basically, you would just, like, roam into this playa network, and your phone just goes off and says, hey, welcome to the playa network.
[20:41.720 --> 20:46.780]  Enter your phone number, because we wanted to be in the spirit of Burning Man, where you could pick your own name or your own identity.
[20:46.780 --> 20:47.940]  You could pick your own phone number.
[20:49.020 --> 20:55.140]  And that phone number was yours for as long as you wanted it, only on the playa, so it only did playa to playa calls.
[20:55.960 --> 20:57.220]  And we're going again this year.
[20:57.540 --> 20:57.600]  What?
[20:58.280 --> 20:59.680]  And it also...
[21:00.260 --> 21:05.200]  No one knew your playa number unless you contacted them first, which was super cool.
[21:05.200 --> 21:07.960]  So your boss couldn't get a hold of you unless you got a hold of them first.
[21:09.340 --> 21:11.060]  So we're going back this year.
[21:11.700 --> 21:15.860]  And I didn't actually get to go last year, but I get to go this year.
[21:16.900 --> 21:29.000]  And so we're going to test out some additional equipment and some, actually, perhaps some aerial drones that we can use to sniff and find cell phone signals.
[21:29.720 --> 21:35.900]  That would be very important in the case of, like, an earthquake where people are buried under their house or something.
[21:36.220 --> 21:42.200]  That, you know, there's a very short period of time while people still have battery power that they can send out signals.
[21:42.260 --> 21:48.640]  And if there's no towers listening, there's no power to the towers, you need a way that you can find out if there's people to be saved.
[21:51.820 --> 21:52.980]  And then there's events.
[21:55.620 --> 21:56.060]  Hooray!
[21:57.520 --> 21:58.400]  Okay, so...
[22:00.120 --> 22:02.580]  Ella, earlier today, had the lovely line of...
[22:02.580 --> 22:06.040]  You remember back at the beginning of the talk how Diggz was saying...
[22:06.040 --> 22:11.860]  He was talking about this idea at conferences, and then I ran into him and was like, Hey, so how are we doing this?
[22:14.940 --> 22:15.740]  We immediately...
[22:15.740 --> 22:16.660]  I was like, what are we doing?
[22:18.260 --> 22:20.600]  Ella said, so Diggz started it and you finished it.
[22:20.700 --> 22:22.840]  And I was like, yes, that is exactly what happened.
[22:24.400 --> 22:29.220]  So we went on a tour of about a dozen hackerspaces in about four weeks.
[22:29.220 --> 22:30.600]  It was pretty intense.
[22:31.120 --> 22:33.900]  We didn't talk to each other for about four months after that.
[22:34.720 --> 22:38.360]  But it was important to us because this community...
[22:39.400 --> 22:40.640]  We're building the future.
[22:40.980 --> 22:42.180]  The future that we want.
[22:42.500 --> 22:44.700]  Not the future that we're sleepwalking into.
[22:45.360 --> 22:56.300]  And so if we're gonna start dealing with things that put us in gray areas, because if you're talking about drones sniffing out signals, you're also talking about the ability that we might not want some militaries to have.
[22:56.600 --> 22:58.760]  Like, what is that gray area?
[22:58.880 --> 22:59.840]  How do we walk it?
[22:59.980 --> 23:03.080]  How are we dealing with these really hard questions?
[23:03.860 --> 23:06.400]  And want it to be an open dialogue constantly.
[23:07.480 --> 23:08.800]  So that's what we did.
[23:09.340 --> 23:10.940]  And we're still doing.
[23:12.460 --> 23:16.380]  We also do Random Hacks of Kindness, the bi-yearly thing that I was telling you about.
[23:18.200 --> 23:19.080]  It's incredible.
[23:19.360 --> 23:27.800]  They're a coalition between Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, NASA, and the World Bank.
[23:27.800 --> 23:28.260]  I think...
[23:28.800 --> 23:29.880]  I'm kind of...
[23:29.880 --> 23:32.280]  The last one, I'm really...
[23:32.280 --> 23:32.900]  Freaks me out.
[23:33.460 --> 23:35.800]  But they're there, and you have to deal with it.
[23:36.060 --> 23:38.060]  So how do you negotiate that?
[23:38.220 --> 23:40.080]  But the people at Rock are fantastic.
[23:41.140 --> 23:47.140]  And it's locally, and then it all ties into other places during the same weekend.
[23:47.140 --> 23:57.120]  GameSave was a five-week long challenge to game developers to create basically better UI for a lot of these disaster response ideas.
[23:57.880 --> 24:06.880]  There were a lot of groups from international universities who really wanted to participate, but were worried about my grammar usage.
[24:08.580 --> 24:12.920]  So I had a hot key for a while to the wiki article of all your bases belong to us.
[24:13.200 --> 24:15.280]  It's like, I promise I'm making a joke.
[24:15.440 --> 24:16.260]  I'm not dumb.
[24:16.540 --> 24:17.240]  At least not in this.
[24:18.360 --> 24:22.020]  And most recently, we had the Space Apps Challenge, which was my favorite.
[24:22.880 --> 24:31.560]  NASA has done a really good job of being a part of the OpenGov initiative, where they opened up a lot of their data sets and satellite imagery in formats that are useful.
[24:31.560 --> 24:36.560]  A lot of people that do OpenGov think that releasing PDFs is helping.
[24:37.920 --> 24:39.160]  It's better than nothing.
[24:39.640 --> 24:44.140]  But NASA has actually done a really good job of, like, we want you to see this and use it.
[24:44.520 --> 24:48.420]  So they did a many-city plus Antarctica.
[24:48.420 --> 24:49.840]  It was on every single continent.
[24:50.020 --> 24:50.580]  Plus Antarctica.
[24:50.740 --> 24:52.180]  And the space station.
[24:53.260 --> 25:05.620]  I fangirled the entire time and got to do logic puzzles of which time zones were happening, like, where the time zones were, or when people were doing their announcements so that people in Nairobi could listen to the announcement in New York.
[25:05.780 --> 25:08.940]  And it was better than the LSATs.
[25:08.980 --> 25:09.540]  It was amazing.
[25:10.520 --> 25:12.120]  And far more useful.
[25:12.340 --> 25:12.720]  Who knew?
[25:13.780 --> 25:15.340]  So we're hoping to do one of those again.
[25:16.560 --> 25:19.780]  There's also something called Star Tides, which is based...
[25:19.780 --> 25:21.300]  Oh, that's super pixelated.
[25:21.520 --> 25:22.040]  That's okay.
[25:22.040 --> 25:33.380]  It's basically a trade show for up-and-coming humanitarian response technologies, specifically off-the-grid stuff, without all the customers.
[25:33.640 --> 25:35.180]  So it's people getting to know everyone.
[25:36.160 --> 25:39.820]  It's also with the Department of Defense and the Defense College.
[25:40.500 --> 25:42.780]  So, again, gray areas.
[25:42.980 --> 25:43.460]  Military?
[25:43.780 --> 25:45.980]  Really good at moving stuff and disaster.
[25:46.900 --> 25:48.900]  You're going to have to interact with them somehow.
[25:49.240 --> 25:50.540]  Why not figure out how?
[25:52.560 --> 25:53.380]  Or not.
[25:53.620 --> 25:54.440]  Up to you.
[25:54.820 --> 25:55.020]  Whatever.
[25:55.780 --> 26:05.860]  And then there's something called relief, which is not just a display of what's going on, but actual test deployment of a lot of these technologies in the field at the same time.
[26:07.300 --> 26:09.360]  So, what sort of bandwidth are we using?
[26:09.460 --> 26:10.520]  What frequencies are we on?
[26:10.660 --> 26:12.320]  Oh, those two run into each other?
[26:12.460 --> 26:13.900]  It's a good thing we tested that now.
[26:14.220 --> 26:22.520]  And while the pretense is on the technological overlap and playing nice that way, it's actually about policy and about face-to-face time.
[26:22.740 --> 26:32.300]  Because too often, what we basically run into is it's someone who knows someone else in different organizations making a phone call to make it happen.
[26:33.100 --> 26:44.980]  If you saw Avitz talk earlier about EFF and the nymwars, the people who were able to have the name that they chose were initially the people who knew someone at Google and could just call them up.
[26:45.180 --> 26:47.520]  That's what nearly everything boils down to.
[26:47.760 --> 26:50.440]  And so, this is establishing those sorts of relationships.
[26:53.320 --> 26:55.260]  So, what this boils down to for me...
[26:56.340 --> 26:57.720]  Is everyone happy, by the way?
[26:57.920 --> 26:58.120]  Yeah.
[26:58.580 --> 26:58.920]  Okay.
[26:59.180 --> 26:59.420]  Good.
[26:59.680 --> 27:00.640]  Sorry, it's really late.
[27:00.940 --> 27:01.140]  Okay.
[27:02.060 --> 27:02.460]  Okay.
[27:02.580 --> 27:04.520]  So, for me, it boils down to sustainability.
[27:04.960 --> 27:16.200]  There's this huge discrepancy between traditional response, people who know what it looks like and know what it can look like and know what solid is, but could be so much better if they just tried some new things.
[27:16.200 --> 27:21.660]  And people who are so into the shining and quick deployments that they forget how to be stable.
[27:22.040 --> 27:23.420]  I am one of those people.
[27:23.680 --> 27:24.360]  It's okay.
[27:25.280 --> 27:33.160]  So, we've started taking some of the most promising projects and teams out of Random Hacks of Kindness and inviting them to take place in the accelerator.
[27:33.620 --> 27:51.460]  We've provided them six months of mentorship in business development, in security, in a legal entity, all the things you need to make a business so that it's not just sustainable and respectful for the people that are using it, your user base, but also for the people building it.
[27:51.460 --> 27:52.620]  So, they can focus.
[27:52.620 --> 27:54.920]  So, it's not just a weekend and then they walk away.
[27:56.000 --> 28:05.380]  And that builds into responsible business practices and transparent accounting and how to do a non-profit and you don't need to make a whole lot of money, but you can...etc.
[28:06.160 --> 28:07.480]  So, we have three teams.
[28:08.260 --> 28:09.480]  How are we doing on time?
[28:10.680 --> 28:11.480]  I'm distractible.
[28:11.740 --> 28:11.860]  Okay.
[28:11.860 --> 28:21.900]  So, biomed tech links up medical technologies with the geography and people, populations that are best suited to them.
[28:22.040 --> 28:29.700]  So, the same thing that you would deploy in South Africa might not actually work in Russia.
[28:30.080 --> 28:31.060]  Who knew?
[28:31.500 --> 28:33.260]  The environment is different.
[28:33.420 --> 28:34.520]  The cultures are different.
[28:35.280 --> 28:36.300]  For teachers?
[28:38.260 --> 28:41.140]  For teachers, I like to call it...
[28:41.140 --> 28:43.100]  It's a GitHub for lesson plans.
[28:43.460 --> 28:50.080]  It's allowing teachers to share their own knowledge with other teachers so they don't have to reinvent the wheel.
[28:50.460 --> 28:53.380]  They're all, you know, basically teaching the same things.
[28:53.980 --> 29:08.120]  And so, using the, you know, letting the sort of crowd, you know, thumbs up and thumbs down lesson plans and you can get a much more effective way to educate.
[29:09.480 --> 29:20.860]  In theory, it frees teachers up to have more time to be creative with their students and the people who are building it are aware that they don't just want to provide another opportunity for some lackluster instructors to slack even more.
[29:20.860 --> 29:23.860]  So, we're trying to build that out responsibly.
[29:24.460 --> 29:25.460]  That's what it's about.
[29:26.800 --> 29:32.680]  Water Me is about taking that NASA data and the satellite imagery and tracking droughts.
[29:34.140 --> 29:36.440]  Seeing how... what it looks like.
[29:36.780 --> 29:40.760]  And then talking to people on the ground of what did you plant?
[29:40.880 --> 29:42.020]  How are you doing crop rotation?
[29:42.180 --> 29:42.840]  What does it look like?
[29:42.840 --> 29:44.600]  How can we cycle better?
[29:44.800 --> 29:45.760]  How can we be more responsible?
[29:46.740 --> 29:52.460]  And it's fascinating to me especially because drought data is super political because most droughts happen because people are stealing water.
[29:53.740 --> 29:57.620]  So, not being careful about that sort of information can be really dangerous.
[29:58.160 --> 29:59.080]  There's an example.
[30:01.440 --> 30:02.000]  Activate!
[30:03.500 --> 30:06.620]  So, if you want to get involved, jump onto a local rock.
[30:06.780 --> 30:07.960]  They happen all over the place.
[30:08.100 --> 30:13.360]  And it's a really good way to see where your local subject matter experts are, what they need.
[30:14.320 --> 30:16.540]  I am Guab's algorithm right now.
[30:16.760 --> 30:17.660]  I do all the matching.
[30:19.360 --> 30:21.760]  It's the same thing with social coding for good.
[30:23.100 --> 30:25.160]  With Celine, but you don't... whatever.
[30:25.800 --> 30:28.500]  She's awesome, but that doesn't enter into this talk.
[30:28.540 --> 30:29.660]  I don't know why I just brought that up.
[30:31.160 --> 30:31.640]  Okay.
[30:31.820 --> 30:35.000]  So, that will connect you to what is locally relevant to you.
[30:35.820 --> 30:39.580]  You can also champion open data, open gov, open-source.
[30:40.140 --> 30:41.880]  Let's keep this going on the track it is.
[30:41.960 --> 30:45.500]  Let's not let it be taken by people that don't care and don't get it.
[30:46.080 --> 30:49.260]  And you can also volunteer your time to local organizations.
[30:49.600 --> 30:51.740]  Oftentimes, they don't need another app.
[30:51.880 --> 30:58.640]  They just need someone who understands crossover cables to go in and make their office more efficient.
[30:59.400 --> 31:04.760]  The amount of time that people spend just waiting for the computer to load when it could just use a good scrubbing.
[31:05.880 --> 31:07.060]  Go in and help them.
[31:07.260 --> 31:13.460]  And then the relationship is started so that when shit gets real, you already know who you should be talking to.
[31:13.680 --> 31:14.720]  And they know the same.
[31:15.740 --> 31:18.920]  I know it's not as alluring, but that is what counts.
[31:20.160 --> 31:22.520]  And then think of a fourth thing when you're listing things.
[31:22.660 --> 31:24.420]  I would recommend telecomics.
[31:24.500 --> 31:25.400]  You saw their talk earlier.
[31:25.400 --> 31:26.060]  They're incredible.
[31:26.300 --> 31:26.820]  I adore them.
[31:27.080 --> 31:28.680]  Get engaged with them in some way.
[31:28.680 --> 31:28.740]  Okay.
[31:29.600 --> 31:30.000]  Yes.
[31:30.960 --> 31:31.880]  Do you want to add anything?
[31:33.320 --> 31:34.900]  I just wanted to say thank you.
[31:36.240 --> 31:39.840]  And if anybody has any questions, we're here for those.
[32:19.610 --> 32:20.570]  I'm down.
[32:21.010 --> 32:25.510]  We'll be quick about it because I usually go to bed like an hour ago.
[32:27.510 --> 32:29.330]  But yes, we can do that afterward.
[32:29.330 --> 32:32.830]  Let's do some other Q&A really quick and then we'll figure that out.
[32:47.060 --> 32:52.140]  There are a lot of applications that are built for smartphones, for like people tracking and all sorts of other stuff.
[32:53.860 --> 32:55.840]  We've been told that cell phones are ubiquitous.
[32:56.060 --> 32:58.360]  That does not mean that smartphones are ubiquitous.
[32:59.560 --> 33:02.180]  They use a lot of bandwidth and a lot of power.
[33:02.920 --> 33:08.680]  And they also assume usually some level of literacy in the language of the developer.
[33:10.380 --> 33:15.460]  And so just pay attention to people who have been there.
[33:15.680 --> 33:20.560]  And even though we're really used to as a subculture, actually I think I know better.
[33:20.740 --> 33:21.500]  You don't.
[33:21.860 --> 33:28.040]  You might come up with a really incredible way to route around what issue they're having.
[33:28.040 --> 33:32.300]  But you still have to understand at its core the issue that they are having.
[33:35.460 --> 33:39.760]  Yeah, I think that, you know, there's...
[33:40.560 --> 33:46.460]  It's really easy to think that you can solve all the problems with technology.
[33:46.460 --> 33:48.420]  And many times that's...
[33:51.100 --> 33:53.040]  It's actually like a hindrance.
[33:53.800 --> 33:54.740]  And you can...
[33:54.740 --> 33:56.440]  And the other thing is that...
[33:57.480 --> 34:02.980]  It's really easy in this space to step on other people's toes.
[34:03.280 --> 34:05.460]  Other organizations that have been...
[34:06.680 --> 34:09.560]  You know, I can't say like put their time in.
[34:09.860 --> 34:16.440]  There's a weird thing that happens in disasters where people want to own the thing that they're good at.
[34:16.620 --> 34:22.260]  And there's a reason for that because usually they've done it a lot and they're just getting in their way.
[34:24.960 --> 34:30.860]  There's a friend of ours actually saw this firsthand in Haiti where they...
[34:30.860 --> 34:33.280]  There was a...
[34:33.820 --> 34:35.360]  In Haiti after...
[34:35.360 --> 34:37.000]  You know, this is months after the earthquake.
[34:37.160 --> 34:43.000]  And there's still work going on in Haiti, but they kind of broke up the Port-au-Prince and zones.
[34:43.000 --> 34:47.520]  And they had different organizations that had sent, you know, volunteers down.
[34:47.740 --> 34:49.840]  And they kind of blocked them off in blocks.
[34:49.840 --> 34:54.900]  And they were kind of responsible for helping develop in this area.
[34:56.200 --> 34:58.420]  And so one of the organizations...
[34:58.420 --> 35:01.120]  There was like a house that was on the border.
[35:02.500 --> 35:05.080]  And there was a woman in a wheelchair that needed...
[35:05.080 --> 35:07.280]  That had no access up to her front porch.
[35:07.680 --> 35:11.360]  And so they just saw this problem and they went and they built a ramp.
[35:13.260 --> 35:19.580]  And part of the challenge is that these organizations, they get funding from things that they do.
[35:19.600 --> 35:27.620]  And if you're responsible for this area, that could threaten your funding if somebody else is doing the things you're supposed to be doing.
[35:27.960 --> 35:32.460]  So the second organization came in and made them remove the ramp that had been built.
[35:33.280 --> 35:44.220]  And just this kind of like red tape-ish type policy stuff can really interfere with the overall, you know, doing good stuff.
[35:44.740 --> 35:47.760]  But yeah, that...
[35:48.260 --> 35:49.900]  And that's not really answering your question.
[35:50.100 --> 35:52.660]  But it was a little story I wanted to tell.
[35:53.200 --> 35:54.320]  I have a way to tie it together.
[35:56.740 --> 35:57.300]  So...
[35:58.500 --> 36:02.320]  Technology we often think can solve really strange issues.
[36:02.740 --> 36:03.300]  When...
[36:03.300 --> 36:05.440]  Technology can only make things more efficient.
[36:05.640 --> 36:09.140]  Like it can extrapolate what human intent is.
[36:09.620 --> 36:12.840]  Most of the problems that we run into in humanitarian response are human problems.
[36:12.840 --> 36:14.380]  Because people can be dicks.
[36:15.500 --> 36:17.120]  Such as in the case of the story.
[36:17.120 --> 36:21.740]  So what good technology can do is get out of the way of people being awesome.
[36:22.220 --> 36:24.380]  And get in the way of people being bad.
[36:26.260 --> 36:26.760]  Cool?
[36:27.880 --> 36:28.380]  Okay.
[36:38.340 --> 36:42.520]  So favorite projects or projects that we're most proud of.
[36:43.320 --> 36:45.000]  The ones that we told you about.
[36:46.340 --> 36:48.000]  I'm really pleased with...
[36:48.000 --> 36:49.180]  Let me see if I can find...
[36:49.780 --> 36:50.280]  So...
[36:52.160 --> 36:59.220]  If we zoom around on this Prezi, there are some organizations that are on here that I just find phenomenal.
[37:02.160 --> 37:03.980]  Telecomics is obviously one of them.
[37:04.080 --> 37:05.900]  I have a total organizational crush on them.
[37:07.740 --> 37:08.740]  There's also...
[37:10.480 --> 37:12.840]  Like OpenStreetMap is what they built...
[37:12.840 --> 37:18.160]  There were no good maps of Port-au-Prince or any of Haiti before the earthquake.
[37:18.460 --> 37:21.200]  And so suddenly being like, actually where is that thing no one knows?
[37:21.380 --> 37:21.880]  Awesome!
[37:22.280 --> 37:24.320]  How are we going to get this thing there?
[37:25.300 --> 37:25.780]  So they...
[37:26.320 --> 37:28.900]  OpenStreetMap is basically a wiki of maps.
[37:29.020 --> 37:29.280]  People...
[37:29.280 --> 37:35.600]  They do these walking papers that are really cool where you have a piece of paper and you walk around and it has a tiny QR code in the corner and you pace.
[37:36.120 --> 37:38.020]  Like, okay, it was this many paces to this building.
[37:38.200 --> 37:40.540]  And then there was a road and I think it was called this.
[37:40.660 --> 37:42.040]  And then it was this many paces to this.
[37:42.040 --> 37:48.580]  And then you go back to the group and you take a picture of the paper and the QR code and it auto-uploads it into this thing.
[37:48.740 --> 37:52.920]  And then you can detail it more in, like, on the computer.
[37:53.140 --> 37:54.100]  It's incredible.
[37:54.520 --> 37:57.220]  And that's what things like Ujahidi are built off of.
[37:57.340 --> 37:58.220]  Of here...
[37:58.920 --> 38:03.000]  Then you plug in the response things and the request for help and all this other stuff.
[38:03.000 --> 38:07.320]  And it auto-populates a map so that your first responders have a much easier time being more efficient.
[38:08.180 --> 38:09.100]  It's awesome.
[38:10.560 --> 38:11.480]  There's also...
[38:11.480 --> 38:13.240]  There's a group called Datakind.
[38:15.000 --> 38:16.420]  They're really good at big data.
[38:16.620 --> 38:18.080]  And they go through all sorts...
[38:18.080 --> 38:19.260]  I don't even get it.
[38:19.360 --> 38:21.440]  I hope someday I can understand it.
[38:21.520 --> 38:25.660]  But they use big data science for helping people.
[38:26.640 --> 38:28.060]  They're also really good folk.
[38:29.320 --> 38:30.800]  There's Crisis Mappers.
[38:32.440 --> 38:34.320]  Synergy Strikeforce, also one of my favorites.
[38:34.640 --> 38:39.560]  Because they use weird government funding to do really crazy stuff.
[38:39.740 --> 38:43.480]  Like, get midwives into at-risk areas of Afghanistan.
[38:44.180 --> 38:47.080]  Where no one wants to go because they go in and figure out the culture.
[38:47.260 --> 38:49.200]  And then they figure out how to get them there and support them.
[38:49.320 --> 38:50.320]  And then they just disappear.
[38:51.080 --> 38:52.460]  Like, we took care of this.
[38:52.520 --> 38:53.020]  Everybody's cool?
[38:53.140 --> 38:53.620]  Everybody's cool?
[38:53.760 --> 38:54.380]  Okay, bye.
[38:58.120 --> 39:01.280]  Yeah, they're Standby Task Force.
[39:02.120 --> 39:04.780]  So, Standby Task Force is a bunch of...
[39:04.780 --> 39:06.220]  Basically, a crisis mapper group.
[39:07.180 --> 39:18.300]  They were actually activated by the United Nations to set up crisis maps for Libya when the violence there erupted.
[39:19.760 --> 39:21.520]  They do really, really good work.
[39:21.680 --> 39:29.060]  And the people that are part of that group are very, very responsible people.
[39:29.220 --> 39:39.480]  They're very aware that these maps that they're building can very easily be used in a way that they don't want them to.
[39:39.480 --> 39:44.160]  And so, it's really treading a very, very tight line.
[39:45.300 --> 39:54.300]  Because the difference between a rebel and a protester is not always easy.
[39:54.980 --> 39:57.640]  It really depends on which side you're on.
[39:57.880 --> 40:02.180]  So, I really like the work that they've been doing.
[40:03.360 --> 40:04.540]  Who else is on there?
[40:05.220 --> 40:05.520]  Tether.
[40:06.760 --> 40:08.480]  It's up in the upper right-hand corner.
[40:08.600 --> 40:12.940]  Tether is a little crisis communication system in a box.
[40:13.140 --> 40:15.920]  It's like 3G, Wi-Fi.
[40:17.140 --> 40:18.040]  It works.
[40:18.220 --> 40:19.500]  It does ham radio.
[40:20.240 --> 40:22.080]  It works off a car battery.
[40:22.340 --> 40:28.560]  And you can take one of these boxes and stick it somewhere, presumably somewhere high up as possible.
[40:28.660 --> 40:32.780]  And you can blanket an area and let people communicate.
[40:32.920 --> 40:37.460]  And even if it's not connected to the Internet, it's got built-in crisis mapping software.
[40:37.460 --> 40:43.160]  So, it can start collecting data and people can just text message into it or call into it.
[40:43.160 --> 40:45.940]  It's got a phone system, an IVR system built-in.
[40:46.360 --> 40:49.440]  And get requests for help in there.
[40:49.580 --> 40:56.980]  And then when the box gets connected to the Internet, it can upload all the information immediately and get into the hands of responders that can help.
[40:59.340 --> 41:00.620]  So much information.
[41:01.360 --> 41:01.840]  Awesome.
[41:13.520 --> 41:17.280]  The question is about dealing with bureaucracy, other NGOs and the like.
[41:19.980 --> 41:21.560]  Face-to-face time really helps.
[41:22.660 --> 41:24.560]  Charming the pants off someone will...
[41:25.120 --> 41:25.680]  Not actually.
[41:25.900 --> 41:26.800]  That would be awkward.
[41:28.780 --> 41:32.400]  But going and meeting someone and having drinks with them and just saying...
[41:32.400 --> 41:33.980]  Even before stuff happens.
[41:34.260 --> 41:35.920]  Hey, I heard you were doing this thing.
[41:36.140 --> 41:37.240]  I think you're awesome.
[41:37.620 --> 41:38.860]  Here's how I think we overlap.
[41:39.500 --> 41:40.480]  I'll catch you later.
[41:41.020 --> 41:43.260]  Even just that is a really big deal.
[41:43.820 --> 41:49.300]  There are groups out there who relate strongly to their local governments and figure all that out.
[41:49.440 --> 41:50.440]  We're not them.
[41:51.200 --> 41:57.400]  We put technological groups in touch with people who know the lay of the land, who are local to that.
[41:59.400 --> 42:01.160]  So I don't know the answer to your question.
[42:01.160 --> 42:04.100]  I just talk to the people who've already figured it out.
[42:04.100 --> 42:09.360]  I have no desire or ability to muck through that.
[42:14.540 --> 42:39.700]  To give you an example, most of the time that we've been kind of watching this space and learning, one of the earthquake and resulting tsunami that happened in Japan, one of the things that we try to do is wait for a request from help, a local request from help.
[42:40.740 --> 43:00.580]  And we've been intending to do that to wait for if there's a local hackerspace or a local humanitarian organization that has put out a formal request for help rather than just start shipping them blankets when they actually might need bottles of water or sending them ham radios when they need radiation detection kits.
[43:02.040 --> 43:16.920]  But in the case of Japan, that request never really came because Japan was in a very good place to respond to that, or at least from their perspective they were.
[43:16.920 --> 43:20.500]  And so there was no real formal request for help.
[43:20.760 --> 43:24.180]  We did get some requests from the Tokyo hackerspace.
[43:26.580 --> 43:30.920]  But if there's no request for help, you can't force help on a community.
[43:31.080 --> 43:32.140]  You can't force that.
[43:32.320 --> 43:40.260]  And so usually it's only after the request comes out that the humanitarian organizations respond.
[43:40.260 --> 43:49.600]  And once that request comes out, the, you know, political barriers and bureaucracy kind of starts to fade away very quickly.
[43:50.880 --> 44:02.500]  It's also really good if you can have awesome stuff lined up that requires open-source ideology and requires that they're on board with some of your more radical beliefs.
[44:02.500 --> 44:08.300]  Because right then is when you can affect huge policy change without dealing with all the bureaucracy.
[44:09.080 --> 44:10.740]  And guess what you just signed on to.
[44:11.940 --> 44:14.240]  Which is awful, but they play the same game.
[44:14.700 --> 44:16.120]  So, there you go.
[44:20.410 --> 44:23.310]  Any projects that also do local skills development?
[44:23.710 --> 44:28.430]  Or come in and provide assistance, but then can help people in business?
[44:32.330 --> 44:38.410]  So the question is about basically a transition between a global effort and a local effort.
[44:38.410 --> 44:41.790]  They're like training someone to be good at taking care of it.
[44:42.610 --> 44:43.710]  Or have the ability to.
[44:44.690 --> 44:46.030]  There are some groups out there.
[44:46.430 --> 44:49.030]  Ushihiti has a huge presence in Nairobi.
[44:49.290 --> 44:50.530]  They're a part of the iHub there.
[44:51.530 --> 44:55.990]  They make a really big effort to engage with the folk there.
[44:57.770 --> 45:00.370]  I don't know much more on that.
[45:00.590 --> 45:01.450]  We're working on it.
[45:02.010 --> 45:07.630]  Especially through things like hackathons and making sure that people are connected to the global community so they know they can ask if they need to.
[45:09.230 --> 45:11.050]  But we're trying.
[45:11.290 --> 45:12.350]  It's a huge problem.
[45:13.070 --> 45:13.710]  It's something that...
[45:13.710 --> 45:15.050]  There's a group called UN OSHA.
[45:15.290 --> 45:19.650]  Which is for the organization of...
[45:19.650 --> 45:23.790]  Or the Office of Coordination of Humanitarian something.
[45:24.130 --> 45:31.490]  And their sole purpose is to coordinate this huge number of response organizations.
[45:31.490 --> 45:36.650]  And one of their big things on their plate is transition.
[45:37.030 --> 45:39.510]  And someone missed a call with me earlier this week about that.
[45:39.630 --> 45:41.550]  Otherwise, I would have a better question or answer.
[45:43.130 --> 45:44.990]  But it's known as an issue.
[45:45.230 --> 45:45.970]  They're working on it.
[45:45.970 --> 45:47.170]  There are some...
[45:47.170 --> 45:49.530]  There's a group called ROXA.
[45:49.750 --> 45:51.850]  Which develops on OpenMRS.
[45:51.930 --> 45:53.930]  Which is an open medical platform.
[45:54.750 --> 45:57.730]  That doctors can document what's been going on.
[45:57.810 --> 45:59.490]  And how often to follow up with their patients.
[45:59.630 --> 46:00.650]  It automates some of that.
[46:00.750 --> 46:05.950]  And so you don't have a group of people using only half of the antibiotics and then dropping it.
[46:06.030 --> 46:07.910]  Which makes it so much worse.
[46:09.910 --> 46:13.130]  They're actually in the area that they're working with.
[46:13.150 --> 46:14.690]  I believe in Uganda.
[46:14.970 --> 46:16.330]  They're working with the local government.
[46:16.750 --> 46:20.550]  There's also a group that's doing sort of 311 for slums.
[46:20.590 --> 46:22.370]  That's in a similar area.
[46:23.930 --> 46:26.330]  That is called Taarifa.
[46:26.570 --> 46:29.090]  T-A-A-R-F-I-A.
[46:29.350 --> 46:29.850]  I think.
[46:30.270 --> 46:31.350]  Follow up with me.
[46:31.670 --> 46:33.270]  And I'll answer that.
[46:33.890 --> 46:34.990]  WillowatGuab.org.
[46:36.510 --> 46:39.170]  But that we're trying to figure it out basically.
[46:46.220 --> 46:48.080]  Post-Current Helicopter pilot in Katrina.
[46:48.680 --> 46:50.080]  And it was actually pretty cool.
[46:50.320 --> 46:53.220]  Because, you know, the live bloggers had Internet and information.
[46:53.460 --> 46:54.920]  And we had Internet and helicopter.
[46:55.500 --> 46:57.100]  So we were able to go in there.
[46:57.280 --> 46:59.060]  And actually, that was the first try to help.
[47:01.060 --> 47:02.380]  So, great talk.
[47:05.540 --> 47:06.840]  Thank you for your work also.
[47:07.140 --> 47:07.660]  That's awesome.
[47:11.770 --> 47:12.210]  Good?
[47:13.390 --> 47:15.030]  Let's go talk out of there if we want to.
[47:15.030 --> 47:17.070]  And then drink and or sleep.
[47:17.390 --> 47:17.870]  Thank you.