Gabriella Levine

ongoing and past work

Unreasonable at Sea day 8

Last night we took some water samples of the Pacific, by dropping a towel down off the side of the boat, attached to a nylon cord. We pulled up the cord and squeezed out the towel into a white container and from there into a glass vial. We also saturated a green Opflex sample. We were on deck five and it fel like about 30 m of line was needed to reach water level. It was a bit funny dropping down the towel along the side of the boat which did get caught a bit in some of the lower level windows. I imagine looking out my window and being weirded out by a floating towel.

We collected the sample from :
Lat 23° 22.82 N
Long 147° 14.93W
15.6 knots
248° course
00:21:19 hours, monday Jan 14


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FINALLY SUn!! And heat!

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And Sun bathers

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Morning meeting with Tom:
Some takeaway ideas : Project Kaisei – “Capturing Gold” : making plastic debris seem valuable, figure out the mechanism
->How do we sell Protei: Positive or negative reinforcement of environmental cleanup? Best solution is to know your audience and meet people where they are, rather than try to convince them. Think of ourselves as parents and show them that there is exciting opportunity. There is a problem and there is opportunity.
->Question for myself: WHAT IS PROOF OF CONCEPT?
->how do we make something: Easy, profitable and classy and what is first? Answer: MAKE A BOAT; partner with a university to get the research and testing done; Then we decide;

BUILD PROTOTYPE–>TESTING (field, lab, CFD) –> SCENARIOS… tell a story, and sit with it for a while

Our Ultimate Customer: Development Scenario
4 sectors: Military / Industry (Darpa), Consumer Robotics (roomba), Greenpeace (non profit / activism); Large corporation (WWL, Exxon)
-but for now: low level consumer creation : academic, scientist, hobbyist

Transparency with the community with these questions is important
Questions to answer: (FAQ)

What is the goal ?
Who is the community?
Who has the funding?
What are our objectives?
What our our conditions?
What are our needs?

Ideas of applications of Protei from Kevin, from Oracle:

For example:
1.on the water during America’s cup, the Buoys at the America’s cup acting as Race Markers are actually boats – that stay in the same place. but in the sea they must be mobile; Acting like a geosynchronous satellite system to replace iridium
2. Search and Rescue – have a fleet of boats operating in a spiral
Here is one experiment with Sailing SAR, and various algorithms for SAR on the water.
3. Tow a raft on the water for polar bears to use as land masses (polar bears are dying in the arctic because of melting ice so they have no land masses to perch atop)
4. Tow and install transoceanic cables, ie to replace metallic ones with fiberoptics
5. Help find new species by collecting microbial samples in the ocean


WORKSHOP 3

Tom & Tamsin’s video from the Nike Foundation– the girl effect (girleffect.org)
-they are providing innovation grants along with advocacy, investing in smaller and larger experiments
Another video to launch in Ethiopia:
-the beautiful girl that makes smart decisions – provide inspiration to teenage girls to be role models, providing advice & info to girls that are doing things in unexpected ways.
i.e.: in Rwanda a girl who builds houses – but most people think that girls can’t build houses because that’s what men do.
The latest issue is the science issue… super cool

-Distribution: is lean and done by small group in Rwanda : mixture of people from Nike foundation and local people – they have created trained girl journalists and photographers and provide coaching, training, and help distribution; It is a small country so it allows them to do a magazine
-such as in the back of taxis, 90 thousand copies per country; rwanda – 5K copies are publicized in the countries – ambassadors in the region are distributing
-Challenge that in Ethiopia there are 80 different regional languages; english is encouraged by gov’t but not yet proliferating
-Nike foundation totally subsidizes these local brands (no branding out there in the magazines)
-just investing to get them produced and get them out, but need to get it to be self sustaining

Interesting that the Nike Foundation, they actually don’t have a 1 minute pitch because they usually just give 60 minute talks – how do they sharpen and articulate what we do?

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–MICROSOFT story (xbox)
Who are we ? what defines a company?
We are 90K people across 190 countries around the world; Long way to go for gender and racial / ethnic diversities
–What drives us? Bill Gates and Paul Allen believe that Technology can change the world: a PC on every desk
-Driven by big bold goals – but how do we really make that happen and stay true to that? (especially working at a large company)
-Devices, Software, Services are how they think about the business
-consumer focus products, entertainment, etc
-XBOX is about gaming and entertainment – Kudo is the boss who thinks to fundraise in interesting ways: during employee giving campaign – whack a kudos for 25USD for 3 sacks
-desire to be profitable, but also to answer what the marketplace wants; partnerships with nike on fitness; nat’l geo and sesame street… but still supported by blood guts and guns
->Microsoft: key drivers for the future of the business: transformation, natural UI, inventing the future, developer opportunity
QUESTIONS:
how can you inspire everyone? (sounds chaotic);
how do you use sustainable efforts? (not much)
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SAP: Carly:

If you always do what you always did you will always get what you always got – albert einstein
-“We were an enterprise, and we were a startup” – headquartered in waldorf, germany because that was the only bank that would give them money and they had to work upstairs above the bank
->A new way of thinking – this is how the d school and SAP have been working together – “we need to change even though we are big and successful”
-small team – startup within the enterprise
-cultural change – corporation but still a start up
–>Apphaus Coop Program – fall 2012 Waterloo Canada
-Coop challenge, making an impression… UX research but some of the interns did not know what it was: it is more about experience – to do and practice – but how do you give that same experience to an individual who is not connected to the rest of the group
-“we want to create a pull where we see how people want to see the info and how we provide the info”
-User research up front and point of view statements – get them out the door fast, see if they work, change it reiterate and GO
-Apps for social enterprises ? -get workers to connect with their work by providing empathy and definition
-Enterprises need to think: how do we do this for the bottom line, how to invest for good will
:George: if we allow more people on the team with real contacts – they have found those values in the team that they’re doing something meaningful in the world (you don’t have to turn it into a non profit project), just add empathy
-How do you deal with iterating and getting something bad out – try to do a smaller than 1.0 release
–>Write our goals for on the ship AFTER the trip, not before :)

What to expect when in Hawaii:
Univ. of hawaii: small workshop, lunch, 2-3 hour workshop, bus back to port;
-startup community with people from start up week and tedx
-everyone speaks english – after that, the events will be more challenging
–>The Tokyo event will be completely different: It will be a pitch event, we will stand in front of the audience of ~200 people and deliver a pitch of your company to the entire audience
-Daniel and George will be prepping you as we sail from Hawaii to Tokyo
-format in the US is similar – Puca Puca format of Japan: 7 minutes; 20 sec / slide: we will use a slightly different format to avoid the licensing restriction
->In India we have an opportunity to participate in local startup festival in bangalor – march 7-10: we would have to get all of you to bangalor and house you for the 1st night : lots of people and other start ups including local ones
–>Tomorrow everyone will get on the bus together as we exit the boat in Hawaii
-In the union go to the meeting at 8 before entering the port each night to learn of the local issues
-lots of announcements in the morning when arriving to port: be clear about when to gather, where to meet, and allow time to get off the ship because it takes time (green sheet with schedule and emergency contact)
->Government will welcome us as we exit the ship in Hawaii. WOOOO

8 pm after the hawaii visit the day after – 6 minute pitch about our idea
-20 slides, 20 secs on each slide, will rotate: that is how we will do it in japan
-start working on that immediately

—-
Some digestions:
From chatting with Hunter Lovins:
We are trying to do three endeavors simultaneously and they might be mutually exclusive. How do we be myopic about the goal?
1. Establish Community
2. Proliferate an Open Source Ideal
3. Bring a boat to market

–>I will have to hone in on how all of these together will create a sustainable business model for Open source hardware companies; That type of formula would be exciting for me to take away – what is a successful business model for an open source hardware company, surviving through revenue? What are models out there? Is Arduino and Seeed Studio and other companies generating revenue? Did they all take on investment?

And: a non profit will need $ to maintain IRS tax exemption, $ from varied sources of funding to show that they are also putting the funds into efforts that help others; As that is what a non profit is for.

CLASS 2
relate to design thinking in a real way: 2:15 in the union

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>>see what’s going on in the world out there (last time)

>>expose you to innovative methodology (design thinking: today)–on huge scale problems; This will be scalable to solve problems across the board

There was a team challenge: We need a cheaper incubator – 20K usd machines as a hand-me-down; let’s brainstorms various solutions for doing so… many ideas

Bad solution is to:
->Accept the problem, then solve it immediately, with another incubator
->is that innovation? maybe not,
HALF THE PROBLEM IS SOLVING THE WRONG PROBLEM

->maybe that’s not the right problem to just make a cheaper incubator

Start with empathy – how can we gain empathy with people dealing with these callings?
-We sent someone out to the hospitals in nepal, maternity wards and saw that there were tons of incubators BUT they’re empty because no babies end up at the hospital: they are all born “in country”
->So lets make an incubator that can be used “at home” in a place where babies can be in these sleeping bags and warm up
-start with empathy, get out into the world, from that comes with insights that you can solve the problems
-design and empathy

–>Now we are trying this way of working on a real project – using EMPATHY

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redesign the GIFT GIVING experience

-empathy->define->ideate->iterate
1. empathy:
Interview 1: get a sense of the person
interview 2: Why is it that…? dig deeper; make them cry; but make it safe
2. Define: Needs and Insights
->What they NEED :what are they trying to do?
->INSIGHT: surprising and unexpected results?
->Reframe the problem: USER NEED and INSIGHT
mad lib:(user) —– needs —— because——–.
3. IDEATE: sketch 5-7 radical new ideas to solve the problem
Then get feedback: I LIKE and I WISH are good for feedback

4. ITERATE: reflect and sketch a new concept

Diverse and Unexpected ideas are good

am i generating empathy, testing over and over, vocal for collaboration? good.

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