Speaker 1: Now in this series, we're sitting down with people who
Speaker 1: are leveraging powerful technologies developed by IBM, and they're doing
Speaker 1: so in ways that are making a real difference out
Speaker 1: in the world. So these are people who are implementing
Speaker 1: technological solutions to real world problems. Today's episode is about
Speaker 1: Project OWL, an idea that won the very first Call
Speaker 1: for Code competition in two thousand eighteen. Project OWL aims
Speaker 1: to restore communications and logistics capabilities to areas affected by
Speaker 1: natural disasters, specifically hurricanes. It's a combination of hardware and
Speaker 1: software that leverages MESH network technologies and IBM platforms such
Speaker 1: as cloud computing, the Watson platform, and more. We'll hear
Speaker 1: from Brian Now, one of the co founders of Project OWL,
Speaker 1: as well as a Lisa Macklin of IBM to get
Speaker 1: a deeper understanding about the project, its origins and the
Speaker 1: long term goals, both for the Call for Code initiative
Speaker 1: in general and Project OWL particularly. Now. I wanted to
Speaker 1: start the sentence that I'm speaking right now with the
Speaker 1: phrase the remarkable thing about this story is But it
Speaker 1: turns out I can't because there are too many remarkable
Speaker 1: things to pick just one. Here's a quick rundown. First,
Speaker 1: IBM has built a suite of technologies that are incredibly powerful.
Speaker 1: They range from cloud computing services, which give developers the
Speaker 1: opportunity to take advantage of enormous processing power. You know,
Speaker 1: cloud computing is where you've got servers that are able
Speaker 1: to do processing on the back end, and through an
Speaker 1: Internet connection you can access that, so you don't have
Speaker 1: to have a supercomputer at your own disposal. You've got
Speaker 1: a virtual supercomputer in the form of these cloud computing networks.
Speaker 1: But they also have the famous Watson platform, which allows
Speaker 1: for an incredible range of AI applications that can tap
Speaker 1: into all sorts of different processes. So you can think
Speaker 1: of this as a suite of refined extreme computing power.
Speaker 1: It kind of makes me tingle just to think about
Speaker 1: it now. Second, this story is about taking those tools
Speaker 1: and actually applying them to solve real world, hard problems.
Speaker 1: It's not just that the tech enables cool applications. It's
Speaker 1: that like minded people who want to make a positive
Speaker 1: impact are finding one another and they're coming up with
Speaker 1: novel approaches to tackle these issues that affect millions of
Speaker 1: lives every day. Focuses on really big challenges. The theme
Speaker 1: for the first Call for Code in two thousand eighteen
Speaker 1: was natural disasters. The theme for this year is climate change,
Speaker 1: so yeah, they go big. The third thing I find
Speaker 1: really remarkable about this story is that collaboration keeps popping
Speaker 1: up as an important component in the projects. Not only
Speaker 1: are individuals collaborating with their teammates, but also with subject
Speaker 1: matter experts and IBM professionals with deep knowledge and experience
Speaker 1: in the technologies and the company's products. So so while
Speaker 1: we're looking at a competition framework, I mean it is
Speaker 1: a competition, the spirit of working together permeates the entire process.
Speaker 1: I sat down with Brian from Project Al and I
Speaker 1: asked him to walk me through his own background and
Speaker 1: how he found himself participating in the two thousand eighteen
Speaker 1: Call for Code. A lot of times I think about
Speaker 1: how lucky I was to grow up at this particular time, UM,
Speaker 1: in this particular place, to have the resources I have
Speaker 1: and and the tools at my disposal. And what I
Speaker 1: mean by that is growing up like a few things
Speaker 1: really inspired me to play around with digital technology. One was,
Speaker 1: you know, the accessibility of personal computers and UM the
Speaker 1: growing accessibility of the Internet, UM one of my proudest
Speaker 1: moments is I think the first real sophisticated thing I
Speaker 1: did with a computer when I was about eight years
Speaker 1: old is illegally downloaded music with Napster. And despite the
Speaker 1: concerns um my mother had about that, I think it
Speaker 1: kind of opens your mind to this understanding that there's
Speaker 1: so many things you can do with digital technology, um
Speaker 1: that previously just weren't possible, uh in other industries or professions, careers,
Speaker 1: particularly things that are limited by the physical manifestations of
Speaker 1: the world around you. Of course, software is kind of
Speaker 1: you know, in a way I'd like to say, it's
Speaker 1: like not real, right, it's just code. Um, and some
Speaker 1: other experiences too. I'll never forget. UM. What pushed me
Speaker 1: need to learn how to code originally was the first
Speaker 1: time I played, Uh, my favorite video game of all
Speaker 1: time was the first Halo. I mean, did you ever
Speaker 1: play that? Oh? I? Oh yeah, no, I'm I'm a
Speaker 1: big Halo Marathon fan. So yeah, um, first of all,
Speaker 1: amazing game, right, but I'll never forget when I played that,
Speaker 1: I thought to myself, this is the coolest thing I've
Speaker 1: ever seen. I need to learn how to make things
Speaker 1: like that. Um. So I bought this book called three
Speaker 1: D Game Programming All in One and it, uh, it
Speaker 1: was like a thousand pages long and it's all about
Speaker 1: C plus plus video game development. So I thought to myself, Yeah,
Speaker 1: how hard could that be? Little did I know? Um,
Speaker 1: but that was really an introduction and those kind of
Speaker 1: experiences that I mentioned from Napster, you know, playing video
Speaker 1: games thinking about how to build them, that was just
Speaker 1: kind of what I was doing through my teenage years
Speaker 1: and then even through college and well, I studied mechanical engineering. UM,
Speaker 1: I struggled to find an outlet for the work I
Speaker 1: wanted to do. UM. You know, I distinctly remember applying
Speaker 1: in six months prior to my graduation and the six
Speaker 1: months after applying to almost a hundred jobs. And these weren't,
Speaker 1: you know, just random things that were within my area
Speaker 1: that I studied. I graduated with degreen mechanical engineering in
Speaker 1: four years, UM from the University of Rochester. And of
Speaker 1: all those applications, you know how many jobs I got?
Speaker 1: How many? Zero? Yikes. So it was kind of at
Speaker 1: that moment that I was like, well, you know what,
Speaker 1: if this isn't gonna work doing a traditional route, I
Speaker 1: might as well just do something I'm really passionate about.
Speaker 1: And that's when I kind of dug back into coding
Speaker 1: a little bit and really peeled back the curtain on
Speaker 1: the hackathon environment. And now, I'm sure you're familiar with
Speaker 1: a hackathon or the mechanics of it, and probably most
Speaker 1: of your listeners, but for those who are in a
Speaker 1: hackathons kind of just like a coding competition, right and
Speaker 1: and companies from all over the world will will put
Speaker 1: on these competitions, from IBM certainly too Poor sher Mercedes
Speaker 1: Benz to UH, the US government, UM, the Red Cross,
Speaker 1: all sorts of organizations. And typically what they'll do is
Speaker 1: they'll say something like, Hey, if we're a car company,
Speaker 1: we've got this new a p i UM for you
Speaker 1: to build on our on our on our vehicles, and
Speaker 1: what we want you developers to do is come up
Speaker 1: with amazing stuff, be creative, build out something incredible, pitch
Speaker 1: it to us, and the best ones you're gonna get paid.
Speaker 1: And for me, this was like the coolest thing in
Speaker 1: the world because it put together two things that I
Speaker 1: absolutely loved that I really couldn't find anywhere else. And
Speaker 1: that's you know, I'm a huge sports fan Philadelphia Eagles
Speaker 1: for life. UM. I also played soccer my my whole
Speaker 1: life grown up, and I'm a big fan of the sport.
Speaker 1: And I love that like innate competitive spirit, you know,
Speaker 1: it's just get on a field and go and compete
Speaker 1: and try to win. But I also love going back
Speaker 1: to the Halo and Napster thing, like just that interest
Speaker 1: to just build stuff, you know, come up with ideas.
Speaker 1: And a hackathon I think is so unique because it's
Speaker 1: able to put those two uh perspectives together, the you know,
Speaker 1: the interest to just go compete in an environment at
Speaker 1: the same time do that while building incredible creative technology.
Speaker 1: And so for a few years I was hopping around
Speaker 1: um going to hackathons and and I kind of got
Speaker 1: a groove in it, started winning a few, making a
Speaker 1: career out of it, and one thing led to the next,
Speaker 1: and then of course competed in the IBM Call for Code,
Speaker 1: and here we are today. I asked a Lisa Macklin
Speaker 1: of IBM to give an elevator pitch to kind of
Speaker 1: explain what the Call for Code is all about a
Speaker 1: little bit about the background for for the Call for
Speaker 1: Code challenge. And one of the things that of course,
Speaker 1: UH it is really important is understanding what matters to developers.
Speaker 1: And an interesting insight on developers is that eight per
Speaker 1: cent of them code as a hobby. They work on
Speaker 1: coding projects at night, in the morning, in over the weekends,
Speaker 1: in their spare time, and they are inherently problem solvers.
Speaker 1: And for most software developers, coding isn't just a profession,
Speaker 1: it's really a passion. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: we really see also with developers is uh tremendous use
Speaker 1: of open source technology, and I think an interesting insight
Speaker 1: there is that developers enjoy working together collaborating on projects
Speaker 1: which open source helps them to do. So in thinking
Speaker 1: about how can we help developers with their UH, their
Speaker 1: love of side projects, of learning and developing new skills,
Speaker 1: combined with the desire which is a long held focus
Speaker 1: of of IBM S is using technology for good, creating
Speaker 1: innovation that matters, taking the technology that we have with
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence and blockchain and others and using those to
Speaker 1: really help make the world a better place. And we
Speaker 1: know that the majority of developers are interested in the
Speaker 1: same thing. Most of them, as they're working on side
Speaker 1: projects are doing work that has societal benefit. So that's
Speaker 1: really what created the UH. The spark behind ying the
Speaker 1: Call for Code Challenge. We wanted to see what twenty
Speaker 1: four million developers around the world would do if they
Speaker 1: were given access to the technology and also an understanding
Speaker 1: of some of these UH major world problems that they
Speaker 1: could help tackle. So with Call for Code, where IBM
Speaker 1: is a is the founding member of Call for Code,
Speaker 1: we launched it UH in tighten with the David Clark
Speaker 1: caused the Linux Foundation of working with the United Nations,
Speaker 1: and we wanted to focus on something that was really
Speaker 1: really important each year. The Call for Code was is
Speaker 1: a five year program and we started with a focus
Speaker 1: on natural disasters. We knew that this is an area
Speaker 1: that was an increasing problem around the world and one
Speaker 1: that technology could could help, and so in launching Call
Speaker 1: for Code in we asked developers to create solutions for
Speaker 1: these problems, and we were really blown away by the
Speaker 1: amount of engagement that we got. We had over a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand participants in that first year, creating some three
Speaker 1: thousand software applications, and over the last two years it's
Speaker 1: it's grown tremendously. We had nearly two hundred thousand participants
Speaker 1: in the Call for Code nineteen and UH. What I
Speaker 1: think is really amazing too is we had participation across
Speaker 1: a hundred and sixty five countries. So we saw a
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of of interest and engagement in creating these
Speaker 1: sustainable solutions, leveraging open source and working not just developers,
Speaker 1: but typically teams that involved other experts. We had teams
Speaker 1: that were comprised of developers and UH first responders, medical professionals, students,
Speaker 1: groups coming together to work on an amazing range array
Speaker 1: of problems. And as Brian would explain to me, Call
Speaker 1: for Code stands apart from other hackathon type events. The
Speaker 1: IBM Call for Code UH focused on originally, well still
Speaker 1: to this day, natural disasters, although they've kind of segmented
Speaker 1: and focused even a little more under that umbrella. I
Speaker 1: believe this year's competition is focusing on climate change. UH
Speaker 1: certainly has implications to natural disasters UM. And so one
Speaker 1: of the things that I think was really interesting about
Speaker 1: the IBM Call for Code UM apart from all the
Speaker 1: other hackathons I've been to, and one of the things
Speaker 1: that kind of left me frustrated with the hackathon community was,
Speaker 1: you know, you go to these events. UM. Sometimes they're smaller,
Speaker 1: sometimes they're larger than the Call for Code is certainly
Speaker 1: a huge hackathon, um, but even you know, there are
Speaker 1: other in person events Call for codes at three month long,
Speaker 1: or at least it wasn't it might be longer shorter
Speaker 1: now three month long virtual things, so you can compete
Speaker 1: from anywhere. But some of the hackathons I would go to, uh,
Speaker 1: like we would put three hundred developers in the basement
Speaker 1: of the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas for a weekend,
Speaker 1: and you'd like compete on different enterprise hackathons like PayPal
Speaker 1: would be their visa some other folks. Um. But what's
Speaker 1: so unique about Call for Code, and what I think
Speaker 1: really sets this apart is their commitment to actually see
Speaker 1: the solutions through. And I think that's really important, particularly
Speaker 1: within the context of natural disasters, because so often that
Speaker 1: these hackathons you'll see great ideas or at least that
Speaker 1: first like nugget of an idea. You know, if great
Speaker 1: ideas are one percent inspiration and perspiration, and hackathon is
Speaker 1: kind of like that one percent. The part of Call
Speaker 1: for Code that really impresses me and the reason I
Speaker 1: think it's the most important technology competition in the world
Speaker 1: today is the commitment to see the work through in
Speaker 1: the end to actually make an impact in the world,
Speaker 1: and I think that is fostered an exceptional community of developers.
Speaker 1: Like I said at the top of the episode, one
Speaker 1: of the interesting things about Call for Code is that
Speaker 1: it brings together too seemingly opposing philosophies cooperation and competition. Well,
Speaker 1: Call for Code is structured as a competition. There's a
Speaker 1: deep culture of collaboration throughout the program. A Lissa of
Speaker 1: IBM explains, one of the things that really struck me
Speaker 1: early on is that, you know, the the open source
Speaker 1: movement is about collaboration and about achieving more faster by
Speaker 1: working together, and that also means that projects live on
Speaker 1: in open source. So one of the things that really
Speaker 1: inspired me hearing from I participated in a number of
Speaker 1: of hackathons around the world. We do about six hundred
Speaker 1: of these every year, bringing developers and uh different parts
Speaker 1: of the world working with them together on their solutions.
Speaker 1: And what I found incredibly motivating hearing from the developers
Speaker 1: is that they were excited that this wasn't a one
Speaker 1: and done, It wasn't you know, a twenty four hour
Speaker 1: hack where they come in, they create things, are great ideas,
Speaker 1: and then they move on. These are projects that can
Speaker 1: live on and be built out by developers around the world.
Speaker 1: And that was also the thing in working with the
Speaker 1: United Nations that they really keyed in on, because there
Speaker 1: are so many software driven solutions that don't require lot
Speaker 1: of infrastructure, even things like you know, early warning systems
Speaker 1: for tsunamis as an example, if you have access to
Speaker 1: the weather data, if you have a smartphone, you can
Speaker 1: get those alerts which save lives. And this is the
Speaker 1: type of thing that someone could create working on open
Speaker 1: source in one part of the world, and then it
Speaker 1: could be adapted for conditions in different parts of the world.
Speaker 1: Buy software developers virtually any place anywhere somebody has a
Speaker 1: you know, a laptop and a smartphone. And the U
Speaker 1: n was particularly interested in this because they saw the
Speaker 1: long term sustainability and in terms of how the developers
Speaker 1: are working together. I think this is one of the
Speaker 1: things that really inspired me as well over the last
Speaker 1: two years, is seeing how these groups come together. And
Speaker 1: I think that Brian may have told you that the
Speaker 1: five members of the team that he's on with jacked
Speaker 1: oal from different parts of the United States and different
Speaker 1: parts of the world, and they met on a Slack
Speaker 1: channel uh, and we saw a lot of that. UH.
Speaker 1: The The winner of of Call for Code nineteen is
Speaker 1: a team that at Barcelona based and there's a firefighter,
Speaker 1: a nurse and three developers. So it's different different groups
Speaker 1: collaborating together, meeting each other either in person or in
Speaker 1: hackathons or meeting virtually working on these open source projects,
Speaker 1: and they continue to collaborate over time. Brian confirmed what
Speaker 1: Alisa was saying describing how his team came together during
Speaker 1: the first Call for Code. I had known a few
Speaker 1: of the co founders previously, we competed against each other
Speaker 1: at hackathons UM, but one of the founders of Project Owl,
Speaker 1: Magus Pereira, him and I had just met in the slack.
Speaker 1: I think digital technology and like meeting someone on a
Speaker 1: message board and Slack might seem like a little weird
Speaker 1: and different, right, you didn't run into this person in
Speaker 1: a room, you didn't meet at like a conference, UM,
Speaker 1: but it's really effective at putting people together who have
Speaker 1: like minds, like skill sets, and like ambitions. And I
Speaker 1: remember Maggis had just posted some message about what he
Speaker 1: was interested in. We connected and had a call and
Speaker 1: I just still to this day distinctly remember his creativity,
Speaker 1: passion and interest in building unique solutions, and so even
Speaker 1: after one call, we we just kind of agreed, like, man,
Speaker 1: we gotta work together, Like how can we facilitate this
Speaker 1: because I think there's a lot you have to offer
Speaker 1: that you're interested in. And I feel the same way
Speaker 1: about myself and the team we've already put together. So
Speaker 1: we I don't know if they still use Slack or
Speaker 1: how they do the collaborative piece, but the environment of
Speaker 1: all these developers showing up to just want to build
Speaker 1: something great while still inspiring people to have that competitive
Speaker 1: nature um I think is a really fascinating experience. And
Speaker 1: IBM puts on call for code satellite events, so like
Speaker 1: many hackathons all over the world during the main overarching event,
Speaker 1: and this is another way to like plug in, try
Speaker 1: something quickly, see if you've got an idea for the
Speaker 1: bigger competition, and meet other technologists in the environment to
Speaker 1: to really make this happen. This brings us up with
Speaker 1: what Project al would specifically focus on, which all revolved
Speaker 1: around hurricanes specifically with regards to what we did as
Speaker 1: we were going into call for code. Uh, we uniquely are.
Speaker 1: Our original team of five was spread out across the
Speaker 1: United States still is today, but we were at the time, Um,
Speaker 1: Charlie was in Houston, Magus in North Carolina, myself, Terra,
Speaker 1: Core and Nick in New York City, and very recently
Speaker 1: at the time, Charlie and Houston had gone through Hurricane Harvey,
Speaker 1: a massive hurricane caused a lot of economic damage in Houston,
Speaker 1: and Magus during the competition went through Hurricane Florence, so,
Speaker 1: you know, and kind of the outset, we felt, well,
Speaker 1: it seems like hurricanes are probably a pretty good thing
Speaker 1: to try to approach here. These have been quite a problem, um,
Speaker 1: And not only are they a problem that hits close
Speaker 1: to home for us, because we've all been through them,
Speaker 1: you know, even still to this day. I'm here in
Speaker 1: New York City. I live on the L Train. Hurricane
Speaker 1: Sandy ripped through New York City in two thousand twelve,
Speaker 1: and uh, they're still shutting down the L Train to
Speaker 1: repair it for like eight years later. So the team
Speaker 1: knew what type of natural disaster they wanted to focus
Speaker 1: on next. They thought about how technology could help people
Speaker 1: affected by a hurricane. So in the absence of being
Speaker 1: able to stop these natural disasters, we really couldn't do
Speaker 1: that yet um, and we can't do that now, and
Speaker 1: maybe in the long run there might be something there,
Speaker 1: but in the absence of being able to stop them,
Speaker 1: we felt okay, Well, what we can do is enable
Speaker 1: people to prepare for and deal with them as effectively
Speaker 1: as possible. And the first obvious problem is that when
Speaker 1: a hurricane rips through it destroys everything, most notably the
Speaker 1: infrastructure to provide organization, whereabouts and logistics in a community,
Speaker 1: and that, of course is partly where the name Owl
Speaker 1: came from. UM. So our focus was really that if
Speaker 1: we could find a way to quickly, easily and cheaply
Speaker 1: bring back communications in a place that either didn't have
Speaker 1: it or lost it, that could be a really advantageous
Speaker 1: solution to these communities. And while the immediate devastation left
Speaker 1: behind after a hurricane is playing to see, Brian's team
Speaker 1: knew that they challenge lasts longer than a day or
Speaker 1: a week following a hurricane, and that communications plays a
Speaker 1: vital role in that timeframe. I think it's important to
Speaker 1: note that particularly for hurricanes, though I suspect this is
Speaker 1: true for most other types of disasters. To UM, the
Speaker 1: the majority of the death toll and the economic devastation
Speaker 1: occurs not during the immediacy of you know, the wind
Speaker 1: and the rain and the thunder. It's it's the long
Speaker 1: tail after. When you don't have roads and physical infrastructure,
Speaker 1: you can't get to places. You can't get to love
Speaker 1: the ones, You can't get to medical facilities. When you
Speaker 1: don't have communications, you can't effectively coordinate to put the
Speaker 1: right resources in the places they need to be UM,
Speaker 1: nor can you contact loved ones to see if they
Speaker 1: need help. UM. Elderly can't get medications they need food.
Speaker 1: Food is not adequately distributed to the places that need
Speaker 1: it most based on who needs what UM. So when
Speaker 1: these infrastructures go down, particularly the communications piece, you lose
Speaker 1: the ability for society to function on the plane that
Speaker 1: we are currently accustomed to. So their solution was twofold,
Speaker 1: create small, durable and inexpensive network hardware that responders could
Speaker 1: rapidly deploy in a region, and a software platform that
Speaker 1: enabled communications and other operations across that network. The idea
Speaker 1: seems simple and elegant, but as Brian and his team discovered,
Speaker 1: achieving that goal in the real world is a bit
Speaker 1: more complicated. To be clear, there were a whole host
Speaker 1: of challenges at the outset, and there are many many
Speaker 1: more today that we still need to solve. Um. A
Speaker 1: phrase I like to use that never seems to connect
Speaker 1: with people, but I feel as appropriate is something maybe
Speaker 1: you've ever heard, the saying, uh, it's turtles all the
Speaker 1: way down. I think it came from like a joke
Speaker 1: in physics that, uh, some person said to a physics professor,
Speaker 1: you know, the Earth isn't in space, it's just sitting
Speaker 1: on the back of a turtle. And the professor says, oh, okay, okay, sure,
Speaker 1: So what's that turtle sitting on? And the person responds
Speaker 1: like another turtle And there the professor goes, okay, and
Speaker 1: what's that turtle sitting on And the person goes, oh,
Speaker 1: it's turtles all the way down. My my point and
Speaker 1: the reason I think this is appropriate. Maybe I'm crazy,
Speaker 1: maybe this has no relationship, but the point is, as
Speaker 1: we are kind of peeling back the covers. I'm, by
Speaker 1: the way, I'm not an IoT guy. Sure, I'm a technologist,
Speaker 1: like I can code. I know how to use Google right, um,
Speaker 1: which interestingly is like one of the core skill sets
Speaker 1: of programmer needs to be able to have how to
Speaker 1: learn new technologies and figure things out. Um. Nobody on
Speaker 1: our team was like a professional IoT developer. I mean
Speaker 1: even when we started developing, I would be writing code
Speaker 1: for the firmware, but I didn't actually know what language
Speaker 1: I was writing in. I just knew that it worked. Yeah,
Speaker 1: none of us had like a professional background to do
Speaker 1: any of this. So if anybody's thinking like you need
Speaker 1: some you know, college degree or a career, No, none
Speaker 1: of that. And how this relates to my point of
Speaker 1: its turtles all the way down. As we were starting,
Speaker 1: we started like peeling back the covers on. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: what if we could get this little IoT device to
Speaker 1: connect to another device? That would be pretty cool. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we peel back the cover, play around with
Speaker 1: the radio technologies we used Laura nine fifteen mega hurts
Speaker 1: here in the United States. Um, And when we solve
Speaker 1: one problem, we make little progress. We'd say, oh that's
Speaker 1: really cool. All right, what if we could do the
Speaker 1: next thing? And that's when we realize, wait, we need
Speaker 1: to like write a codec for this radio. Geez okay, Um,
Speaker 1: all right, well once we figured that out, all right,
Speaker 1: these Laura radios say they can communicate over like two kilometers. Great,
Speaker 1: Well wait a minute. When we went down to Puerto Rico,
Speaker 1: they're only working at two ds. What the hell is
Speaker 1: going on? Oh? Heat and humidity are a big problem,
Speaker 1: and foliage and metals just like another huge problem for radio.
Speaker 1: So every problem we would find and then address, there
Speaker 1: would just be like five others underneath it that we
Speaker 1: had to to solve. And I feel another way to
Speaker 1: think about this technology challenges like it's a game of
Speaker 1: whack a mole of like infinite size. Right, So you
Speaker 1: keep knocking down a couple of moles and a few
Speaker 1: more keep popping up and and what's impressive and I
Speaker 1: think shows your ability to execute, is how quickly you
Speaker 1: can move through the field. Um. And on the IoT side,
Speaker 1: you know it's hard. People say hardware is hard. It's true. Um.
Speaker 1: And also you have to consider in the long run, uh,
Speaker 1: the business case for hardware you're making and for project out.
Speaker 1: This was a discussion and a conversation we thought about
Speaker 1: for a long time. UM, because we understood and still
Speaker 1: do to this day that ultimately, if we were ever
Speaker 1: to make a dent in a market. You know, I
Speaker 1: think we've got a great brand. I think we have
Speaker 1: incredible nomenclature and design. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: if Intel looked at any of our stuff, they could say,
Speaker 1: all right, let's put ten engineers on this and give
Speaker 1: them five million dollars and they'll have a better, faster,
Speaker 1: cheaper product than you, and we will put you out
Speaker 1: of business tomorrow. Oh and we also have economies of
Speaker 1: scale for manufacturing. So you need to consider how can
Speaker 1: this integrate into a business model, because that's what it
Speaker 1: enables you to work on this for a very long
Speaker 1: period of time. Project OWL faces many challenges, both from
Speaker 1: technical and market standpoints. Not only must the team build
Speaker 1: a working system in which custom built hardware and software
Speaker 1: work together, they must also find a way to make
Speaker 1: that a sustainable business. The hardware side of the project
Speaker 1: presented many challenges as the team worked to create a
Speaker 1: working mesh network infrastructure that was durable, deployable, and cost effective.
Speaker 1: But I wanted to know more about the software side
Speaker 1: and how Brian's team tapped into IBM, S Watson platform
Speaker 1: and cloud computing capabilities. Yeah, so that there were kind
Speaker 1: of like two halves to our solution, uh and and
Speaker 1: they nicely fit under the hardware and the software, and
Speaker 1: both of them enabled unique capability that I think together
Speaker 1: made one complete solution. UM. So the way we kind
Speaker 1: of looked at it was the software provided an incident
Speaker 1: management of sorts away to UM leverage data form analytics,
Speaker 1: do some intelligent things, and then the ducks, of course
Speaker 1: provided the way to acquire that data on the ground,
Speaker 1: particularly in locations that don't have any infrastructure. Electricity has gone,
Speaker 1: communications are gone. The software is UM. It's it's changed
Speaker 1: a bit from the competition. You know, we pitched a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff that we found people just didn't care about.
Speaker 1: Our customers, clients, partners didn't care about but we thought
Speaker 1: it was really cool. UM. But when we originally pitched
Speaker 1: the solution, I think at the time they were like
Speaker 1: twelve IBM, Watson, a p I, s UM, and we
Speaker 1: had incorporated every single one of them in the solution.
Speaker 1: So these things, these things were like text to speech,
Speaker 1: speech to text UM. There are some others like knowledge catalog,
Speaker 1: pattern recognitions, and I don't remember all of them by
Speaker 1: name at this point in time, but they could enable
Speaker 1: you to do certain things, whether it was speech to
Speaker 1: text being kind of giving it an intelligent feel um,
Speaker 1: and then some other things like Watson Discovery giving it
Speaker 1: more of an intelligent brain. Uh. And this these API
Speaker 1: s enabled you to act on data to do certain
Speaker 1: things that would be very hard to write code for yourself. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, natural language understanding. So we had a conversational
Speaker 1: assistant you could just talk to for the OWL. UH.
Speaker 1: At the time, it was the I M S it's
Speaker 1: now the Data Management System the d M s UM.
Speaker 1: And when someone would write in a message like hey,
Speaker 1: can I create an incident Hurricane Florence and it's in uh,
Speaker 1: North Carolina, we could run Natural Language Understanding and that
Speaker 1: would pull out things like the name, locations and tell
Speaker 1: us other interesting things this person said, versus of course,
Speaker 1: if you're just writing raw code to do that, you're
Speaker 1: never gonna be able to match the sophistication of a
Speaker 1: cloud software tool like this. So IBM Watson was great
Speaker 1: in that it UM it provided all these cool A
Speaker 1: p I s you could play with. And I think
Speaker 1: one element that IBM did exceptionally well was they have
Speaker 1: these code patterns that you can just go online, pull down,
Speaker 1: play with um. You know, with if anyone listening has
Speaker 1: ever written code before, you know that one of the
Speaker 1: best ways to learn is to just find someone else's
Speaker 1: code and screw around with it or adapted to another
Speaker 1: use case. And that's what IBM is. A great ecosystem
Speaker 1: of not only the services to build with, but kind
Speaker 1: of the tutorials and the information to like say, okay,
Speaker 1: this sounds cool, like can you just show me how
Speaker 1: to make something with it. As Brian mentioned, Project Al
Speaker 1: tapped into ibms Watson platform in several significant ways. Watson
Speaker 1: is a suite of services from IBM, and it leverages
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence to an incredible extent. It's designed in such
Speaker 1: a way that developers can tap into these powerful processes
Speaker 1: without having to build everything themselves. So if a developer
Speaker 1: has an idea for a cool application that would lean
Speaker 1: heavily on something that's traditionally really hard to do, like
Speaker 1: natural language processing, you know, having a computer understand what
Speaker 1: we mean when we communicate the way we typically communicate,
Speaker 1: not as a machine would, but as a human would.
Speaker 1: Machines are not naturally good at that. You have to
Speaker 1: really work hard to make them understand well. Most developers
Speaker 1: can't do that on their own, but they could lean
Speaker 1: on a Watson a p I that's the application programming
Speaker 1: interface to handle that part of their service, so they
Speaker 1: can focus on whatever it is the app is supposed
Speaker 1: to do, and the natural language part can be handled
Speaker 1: by the Watson platform. Now, I think most people who
Speaker 1: have heard about IBM Watson think back to the system's
Speaker 1: famous appearance on the television game show Jeopardy, and Watson
Speaker 1: acquitted itself pretty well on that show it won the competition.
Speaker 1: But it turns out it's much more than a trivia
Speaker 1: answering machine. In a way. You can think of Watson
Speaker 1: as access to an array of AI capabilities, and the
Speaker 1: Project Al team attempted to take advantage of every single
Speaker 1: one of those. Interestingly, as Brian mentioned, they found out
Speaker 1: that in the real world people didn't necessarily use all
Speaker 1: the features Project Owl had included in their service, and
Speaker 1: this helps illustrate another big challenge facing any developer or engineer.
Speaker 1: What seems like a brilliant idea in the conference room
Speaker 1: or as was the case with Project Owl on the
Speaker 1: Slack channel, may not translate in the real world. It's
Speaker 1: not that the idea itself is bad necessarily, but rather
Speaker 1: that it's less applicable than the designer's first thought, so
Speaker 1: some ideas might turn out to be best suited for
Speaker 1: other applications in the future. The development process at Project
Speaker 1: Owl continues. The original design led heavily on individual Mesh
Speaker 1: network devices the team called ducks because like a rubber duck,
Speaker 1: they were meant to be small and capable of floating.
Speaker 1: The individual ducks linked together through a hub unit called
Speaker 1: a Mama duck, which can then send information over to
Speaker 1: a infrastructure component called a Papa duck that links the
Speaker 1: Mesh network to the Internet at large. But even without PAPA,
Speaker 1: the Mesh network itself can provide on site communications and
Speaker 1: logistics support within the region. The team's pitch one the
Speaker 1: two thousand eight teen Call for Code, and I asked
Speaker 1: Brian what that actually meant on a practical level. Of course,
Speaker 1: there was a monetary prize and that kind of enabled
Speaker 1: us to, you know, not focus on other things. And
Speaker 1: there was also a lot of support from IBM, so
Speaker 1: a commitment from IBM r S to help us see
Speaker 1: the work through, and one of the biggest manifestations of
Speaker 1: that was the Corporate Service Corps deployment. So in March
Speaker 1: last year, five handpicked ibm r s from around the world. UM,
Speaker 1: if I'm recalling correctly, they were from the United States, Canada, Israel,
Speaker 1: the United Kingdom. Yeah, that that's total. Two of them
Speaker 1: were from the United States. UM. And this group was
Speaker 1: exceptional with a diverse skill set of talents and being
Speaker 1: able to like go to Puerto Rico with our very
Speaker 1: you know rough hackathon project and have five expert ibm
Speaker 1: r s there with skills in you know, from branding
Speaker 1: and communications to design, to engineering to back end to
Speaker 1: front end software development. UM. This really kicked our solution
Speaker 1: into high gear, not just with the work they produced,
Speaker 1: but also I have vivid memories leading up to our
Speaker 1: our Puerto Rico one as we called it to pointment
Speaker 1: last March, our first official deployment to Puerto Rico. UM,
Speaker 1: I have memories of you know, hopping on our screen
Speaker 1: shares in the mornings and uh hearing the Corporate Serve
Speaker 1: Corporate Service Corps members saying to us like, hey, project OWL,
Speaker 1: none of your stuff works right now. We were like, uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right. Um, you know, because again like a hackathon
Speaker 1: is is about pitching an idea, and anyone who's been
Speaker 1: through hackathon understands that you don't have a fleshed out
Speaker 1: enterprise product. It's just not possible to do that given
Speaker 1: your time constraints and resource constraints. So if you can
Speaker 1: cobble together the idea, you can kind of work out
Speaker 1: the kinks if people take an interest in it. And
Speaker 1: I think the commitment of IBM to provide that support,
Speaker 1: to provide experts, to provide UH the help in the
Speaker 1: field as you're deploying it is a huge benefit. Two,
Speaker 1: you're fledgling organization's ability to scale and grow, and so
Speaker 1: that for me was the in a way, was the
Speaker 1: most valuable part that we didn't really even consider at
Speaker 1: the time when we had won, but in hindsight it
Speaker 1: was really exceptional. Project Owl continues to refine their technology
Speaker 1: and approach, taking the experiences they've encountered in the real
Speaker 1: world and using them to create a more focused approach
Speaker 1: to achieving their goal creating a nimble, robust, and effective
Speaker 1: communications platform using custom built hardware and software. Winning the
Speaker 1: competition wasn't the end of the line, but just the beginning.
Speaker 1: Brian told me about the next steps for the project
Speaker 1: as it strives to achieve the goals of the co founders.
Speaker 1: So what's the next for Project Owl? We really after
Speaker 1: the competition where we had spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: focusing on engineering and design, you know, product development, coming
Speaker 1: up with the idea, executing on that. UM. To enable
Speaker 1: your organization to work on a challenge over a long
Speaker 1: period of time, you have to build a sustainable business model.
Speaker 1: So we've spent a lot of time and energy. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, if I was engineering software in the beginning,
Speaker 1: I'm spending a lot of time engineering the company now.
Speaker 1: So that's who how does project outfit in the market,
Speaker 1: and who do we service? You know, I had mentioned
Speaker 1: earlier our incident management system. We had all these capabilities
Speaker 1: in it, a whole bunch of different things that could do.
Speaker 1: And we realized that the people we wanted to go
Speaker 1: and support, we're only really asking for one or two
Speaker 1: of those things. So like them, we can just get
Speaker 1: rid of them, um. And And that's a realization that
Speaker 1: took a long time to come to, through a lot
Speaker 1: of conversations and a lot of trial and error. And
Speaker 1: so I spend a lot of time thinking about working
Speaker 1: with the team is certainly still on technology. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're all nerds here and this is what we love
Speaker 1: to do, but a lot of times thinking about how
Speaker 1: we can put Project Out in a position to succeed
Speaker 1: over the long term, because if we do that, then
Speaker 1: that enables us to think about some of this other
Speaker 1: crazy technology. When Brian and I first talked way back
Speaker 1: at IBM think two thousand nineteen, the Project OUT team
Speaker 1: was mainly working with the basic duck units and they
Speaker 1: were meant to be spread over a region on the
Speaker 1: ground mostly. But things have evolved a bit since then
Speaker 1: and the team has come up with some more variations
Speaker 1: on this basic technology design that they hope to develop further.
Speaker 1: We have a whole variety of ducks, um, many more
Speaker 1: so that when I last met you. We have detector ducks,
Speaker 1: we have disco ducks, we have cluster flocks, we have
Speaker 1: duck ducks, we have space ducks, and there are many
Speaker 1: others um. You can actually go to our open source
Speaker 1: firmware uh cluster Duck Protocol dot org and there at
Speaker 1: lists a bunch of the different duck variants. You can
Speaker 1: check out some of the other ones we made. But
Speaker 1: space ducks was a project I did in collaboration with
Speaker 1: UM some engineers at cal Poly to put a duck
Speaker 1: on a very large helium balloon and send it up
Speaker 1: to a hundred thousand feet to acquire sensor readings and
Speaker 1: try to transmit and see if it would break. And
Speaker 1: so these are kind of, you know, that early seedlings
Speaker 1: of ideas. Not only sure, we got great photos from that,
Speaker 1: but I've been thinking to myself too, and the rest
Speaker 1: of it's here, I should say, project out been thinking, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, putting this community cations stuff on the ground
Speaker 1: is great, but what if a hurricane comes through. I mean,
Speaker 1: it kind of just destroys everything, So we're gonna lose
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff. Well, okay, where could you put
Speaker 1: communications things where they would stay there and even if
Speaker 1: a hurricane rips through, they would still stay there. Well,
Speaker 1: interesting space might work. Oh and by the way, you
Speaker 1: know what environment radio frequencies work really well in a vacuum.
Speaker 1: So the more we were thinking about, the more we
Speaker 1: were considering, hey, it might be worth our time to
Speaker 1: just start throwing some space ducks out into space and
Speaker 1: see what catches UM, because there might be a real
Speaker 1: long term opportunity here. Brian and his team continue to
Speaker 1: develop Project Out to move beyond a testing phase and
Speaker 1: into fully fledged deployments and implementations. Meanwhile, the Call for
Speaker 1: Code is underway. I asked Brian if you had any
Speaker 1: words of advice for competitors in this year's Call for Code,
Speaker 1: I would encourage any developer working on solutions in the
Speaker 1: upcoming competition to think about how you can distill a
Speaker 1: concept down to like it's fundamental atomic parts. Because if
Speaker 1: you can do that and you find the right atomic components,
Speaker 1: you know, like a proton, neutron, an electron, what you
Speaker 1: find is, oh wow, actually people can make a whole
Speaker 1: pyra periodic table of elements with these things. Right. So
Speaker 1: I think from Project That's perspective, we're very fortunate we
Speaker 1: we certainly didn't know this at the time, but the
Speaker 1: original duck Link we've now developed into a whole host
Speaker 1: of variants for different use cases, but still leveraging that
Speaker 1: same fundamental core. And I think this similarly goes for
Speaker 1: the software side in the cloud, that our data management
Speaker 1: system is really slim down and simplified to the core components,
Speaker 1: you know, getting data in, seeing what it is, having
Speaker 1: dots appear on a map and then a p ing
Speaker 1: that data out if you need to put it in
Speaker 1: external systems. So those core components are are like that
Speaker 1: fundamental atomic nucleus that you know. We're still just in
Speaker 1: the early days of this, but we think UM can
Speaker 1: inspire a lot of folks to solve problems around the
Speaker 1: world in unique ways. I want to thank Brian and
Speaker 1: Alisa for joining me on this episode of Smart Talks.
Speaker 1: And this is just the first in this series. You'll
Speaker 1: hear more conversations with people using technology to make a
Speaker 1: positive impact in the world very soon. Episodes will publish
Speaker 1: here on tech stuff and also over on Stuff to
Speaker 1: blow your mind. You'll learn about how some really smart
Speaker 1: people are changing things for the better in incredible ways.
Speaker 1: So make sure you catch every episode. You know, I
Speaker 1: talk a lot about tech on this show, and sometimes
Speaker 1: it's easy to get lost in how tech works and
Speaker 1: you lose sight of why it's important. Compa Editions like
Speaker 1: Call for Code and companies like Project Al remind us
Speaker 1: that these powerful tools can bring about incredible change and
Speaker 1: help those who need it most. Now I have no
Speaker 1: doubt I'll be talking more about Project Al in the future,
Speaker 1: describing how it helped communities see two vital functions despite
Speaker 1: natural disasters, and I can't wait to see what the
Speaker 1: participants in Call for Code come up with as a
Speaker 1: tackle climate change. Make sure you check out the other
Speaker 1: episodes in the Smart Talk series as they publish over
Speaker 1: the next few weeks, and if you have any suggestions
Speaker 1: for future episodes of tech Stuff, feel free to reach
Speaker 1: out to me on Twitter or Facebook. The handle for
Speaker 1: both of those is tech Stuff H s W and
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is
Speaker 1: an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Eight