Friday, July 31, 2015

Making New Connections

One of the things we do well at NetHope is making connections. Whether it's connecting first responders in Nepal, or connecting technology people with each other, "wiring" people together is in our founding DNA.

As I walked the showcase at this year's Imagine Cup I was looking for opportunities to match-up ideas and people. Two teams had alert apps to report threats of violence: UAE and Germany. Each had some good designs that the other team lacked. I encouraged each to spend time with the other team and share ideas. When the goal is  helping people, projects need to be an "and" rather than an "or."

The Japanese innovation team had a virtual air interface that reminded me of Tim Prentice, an award winning sculptor in Connecticut who builds mobiles that change appearance with wind. I showed the students the video. They were hooked. So I connected them. Artists and technology designers may be strange bedfellows. But creativity knows no such boundaries. Can-do students are open to learn from anywhere.

The UK innovation team had a cool Microsoft Band app to exchange contact info by shaking hands at events rather than handing out business cards.  Their app reminded me of a Social Network Analysis study for mapping the hidden gurus in an organization, an app near to my interest in Expertise Management. The students' eyes widened as he began to think about this other possibility for their technology. So I recommended looking up the research paper.

Making connections is something I enjoy. I've written about it before, here. It's cool to find some new examples. But that's what happens when you bring people together. The connections flourish among ideas, projects and people. One of our mottos is to "share and do". Make something happen together. 

The Tech at Hand

I've had the honor of being a Microsoft Imagine Cup Judge since 2008 --I'm officailly an old-timer trading stories with the elders of this august event.  Sitting together in the judges lounge yesterday, I remarked to a fellow judge how each Imagine Cup seems to feature projects with at least one new technology.  In Cairo it was the Windows phone, in New York it was the Kinect box, and here in Redmond this year it was the Microsoft Wristband.  Why was that?

Some investigation yielded the answer: the software development kit (SDK) that the students received at the start of competition last fall included the new Wristband.  Of course the students wanted to write apps for it!  Smart.

Everyone is talking about wearables.  Even those of us in the humanitarian sector are talking about wearable technologies.  In the World Citizenship category, 4 of the 12 teams incorporated the Band.  All were health applications.  Motion and heart-rate sensing were the basic inputs for Parkinsons, Cardio-arithmia, asthma and seizure detection apps.

The interesting aspect of this is how the expectation has grown that the students will create new apps around the new tech.  I've written about the five things students don't have. The most important is they have no sense of limitation. There is no "that won't work here"; there is only "let's do it!"

What if we had similar expectations for the emerging country communities in which we work as humanitarians?  That putting the technology and some basic training and support into the hands of local entrepreneurs just may yield some new ideas that we hadn't thought of.  Imagine that.

Thursday, July 30, 2015

Obstacles, Failures and Winning

We saw a dozen teams at the 13th Microsoft Imagine Cup on the Microsoft campus in Redmond.  Our judging category was World Citizenship. 

During the hands-on session, I asked some of the teams what was their most difficult moment, the set-backs and obstacles they had to overcome.

One team said it was their first software versions crashing on the phone. Another said it was getting the sensors to stick and re-stick. One team said it was getting the basic parts into their country to build the prototype. 

In the world of innovation, failure is a milestone. Each of these teams overcame the setback and were among the teams invited to the world championships.  They learned, they adjusted, they found a way. The drive to succeed just may be the straight line on a crooked path.