WEBVTT - Being Open at Think 2019 0:00:04.120 --> 0:00:07.160 Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how 0:00:07.200 --> 0:00:13.560 stuff works dot com. Hey there, everyone, and welcome to 0:00:13.720 --> 0:00:16.880 tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive 0:00:16.880 --> 0:00:19.119 producer with How Stuff Works, and I heart radio and 0:00:19.120 --> 0:00:22.279 I love all things tech. And I'm still in San 0:00:22.320 --> 0:00:26.479 Francisco at the two thousand nineteen IBM THINK Conference. IBM 0:00:26.520 --> 0:00:28.920 was kind enough to invite me out here to dive 0:00:28.960 --> 0:00:32.159 into their world and see what sort of technologies, products 0:00:32.159 --> 0:00:35.080 and services the company has on offer to help push 0:00:35.159 --> 0:00:38.320 the stuff that makes your stuff work into the future. 0:00:38.840 --> 0:00:42.159 And so this is my perspective on the things that 0:00:42.240 --> 0:00:45.239 I encountered here at the conference, and there were a 0:00:45.280 --> 0:00:49.519 lot of really interesting elements here. And in a previous episode, 0:00:49.760 --> 0:00:52.880 I talked about the struggle between taking an open source 0:00:52.960 --> 0:00:57.400 approach and a proprietary approach in developing technology. So in 0:00:57.400 --> 0:00:59.720 this episode, I'm really going to focus more on some 0:01:00.040 --> 0:01:04.040 of these sessions and stories about open source and the 0:01:04.080 --> 0:01:06.720 benefits of going with that approach that I saw here 0:01:06.760 --> 0:01:09.240 at IBM THINK two thousand nineteen, and some of these 0:01:09.240 --> 0:01:13.000 stories are really impactful, I think. Now a quick refresher, 0:01:13.200 --> 0:01:15.840 the open source approach is one in which the development 0:01:15.880 --> 0:01:19.760 process for a technology is open for a community to 0:01:19.840 --> 0:01:22.880 work on. Often, it also allows for people in the 0:01:22.880 --> 0:01:26.400 general public, or at least the developers and engineers out there, 0:01:26.600 --> 0:01:31.440 to actively tweak, adapt, modify, or upgrade that technology in 0:01:31.480 --> 0:01:34.240 their own way. One of the results of this approach 0:01:34.520 --> 0:01:37.840 is that you have this enormous community that can help 0:01:37.880 --> 0:01:41.560 make the technology better. In software and means that developers 0:01:41.600 --> 0:01:46.440 can identify and patch vulnerabilities, they can extend features, they 0:01:46.440 --> 0:01:49.120 can improve the way software works by applying their own 0:01:49.160 --> 0:01:52.560 ideas and expertise to the overall project. It's kind of 0:01:52.600 --> 0:01:56.680 like having a development team made up of millions of people. Now, 0:01:56.680 --> 0:01:59.880 in theory, the good ideas stick around, the okay I 0:02:00.000 --> 0:02:03.360 ideas can be massaged and tweaked to become good ideas, 0:02:03.600 --> 0:02:06.600 and the bad ideas end up being abandoned. It all 0:02:06.680 --> 0:02:11.520 happens really quickly, with potential iterations arriving much faster than 0:02:11.560 --> 0:02:15.600 you would see with a proprietary closed approach. With the 0:02:15.680 --> 0:02:19.959 proprietary approach, any changes to code rely upon a dedicated 0:02:20.320 --> 0:02:25.160 and thus, by its very nature, a limited team of developers. Now, 0:02:25.160 --> 0:02:28.040 on the positive side, with proprietary you can work to 0:02:28.080 --> 0:02:31.160 create the experience you want people to have when they 0:02:31.280 --> 0:02:34.959 use your software. You can have a very defined vision, 0:02:35.040 --> 0:02:37.960 but on the flip side, the path of development is 0:02:38.000 --> 0:02:42.799 completely dependent upon one group or one company's vision, and 0:02:42.880 --> 0:02:46.200 there may not be room to incorporate valid ideas that 0:02:46.360 --> 0:02:51.400 originate from outside that entity. One of the other big 0:02:51.440 --> 0:02:56.040 differentiators between open source and proprietary approaches has to do 0:02:56.120 --> 0:03:02.359 with adaptability. Sometimes markets change in ways that companies didn't anticipate, 0:03:02.880 --> 0:03:05.519 and if you're running a really big company that has 0:03:05.560 --> 0:03:09.720 tech processes that depend upon proprietary software and then the 0:03:09.760 --> 0:03:13.720 market changes, you're stuck waiting on your provider to recognize 0:03:13.760 --> 0:03:17.000 that change to the market and then to respond to it, 0:03:17.280 --> 0:03:20.200 and you can't really do much in the meantime, and 0:03:20.240 --> 0:03:23.800 if things are getting worse, you're kind of stuck. The 0:03:23.880 --> 0:03:28.680 open source community can continuously work on software, changing it 0:03:28.800 --> 0:03:32.200 as the market itself changes, in fact, anticipating changes and 0:03:32.240 --> 0:03:36.880 building in new features to help mitigate any negative effects 0:03:36.880 --> 0:03:40.000 of that change. So in an ideal case, you get 0:03:40.080 --> 0:03:42.640 changes in the market and changes in software going hand 0:03:42.680 --> 0:03:45.520 in hand with all everything else, and that leads to 0:03:45.560 --> 0:03:48.120 a minimum of a gap between what the market is 0:03:48.160 --> 0:03:51.840 doing and how businesses can respond to it. And then 0:03:52.280 --> 0:03:56.360 There's a related problem with going with proprietary approaches. That's 0:03:56.360 --> 0:03:59.600 the companies that do so limit the talent they can 0:03:59.640 --> 0:04:03.280 rely upon to run that part of the business. Open 0:04:03.320 --> 0:04:06.480 source software creates a lot of opportunities to find and 0:04:06.520 --> 0:04:10.160 bring on new talent. This is particularly important for companies 0:04:10.200 --> 0:04:13.880 located in places that don't have a really deep tech 0:04:14.040 --> 0:04:17.279 talent population. So if you run a tech company in 0:04:17.360 --> 0:04:21.080 San Francisco or maybe New York, you probably don't have 0:04:21.200 --> 0:04:24.160 a shortage of talent to draw upon. There's probably plenty 0:04:24.160 --> 0:04:27.240 of people who are qualified and you would want them 0:04:27.279 --> 0:04:31.080 on your team. But maybe you're someplace else like Omaha, Nebraska, 0:04:31.200 --> 0:04:33.760 and no shakes on Omaha. It's a great city, but 0:04:33.920 --> 0:04:36.320 you may not have quite as large a talent pool 0:04:36.480 --> 0:04:40.159 to pull from. You might have to try and give 0:04:40.200 --> 0:04:45.159 incentives for people to move there instead. So open source 0:04:45.560 --> 0:04:48.479 opens up a lot more opportunities. Otherwise, you have to 0:04:48.520 --> 0:04:52.080 look for people who specialize in that proprietary software. It 0:04:52.160 --> 0:04:55.040 might at first be surprising to hear that an organization 0:04:55.240 --> 0:04:59.560 like IBM, which is an enormous multibillion dollar company it 0:04:59.560 --> 0:05:02.560 does busy us all around the world, that such an 0:05:02.640 --> 0:05:06.640 entity embraces open source but in truth, it's a strategy 0:05:06.680 --> 0:05:11.279 that best serves the company's interests. Open source isn't just 0:05:11.520 --> 0:05:16.120 about rapid evolution. It's also about establishing what the standards 0:05:16.200 --> 0:05:19.840 are for a given process or approach. A developer might 0:05:19.880 --> 0:05:22.480 have one idea for those standards, and then the community 0:05:22.560 --> 0:05:25.760 might have a slightly different idea, but over time it 0:05:25.800 --> 0:05:29.120 tends to shake out, and because of the open nature 0:05:29.160 --> 0:05:31.480 of the code, it can find its way into many 0:05:31.560 --> 0:05:35.919 different products, services and companies and other implementations, and it 0:05:35.960 --> 0:05:39.960 helps cut down on the proprietary approach that by necessity 0:05:40.160 --> 0:05:43.360 limits what the end user can do with the technology. 0:05:43.880 --> 0:05:46.880 IBM really showed how interested it was in the open 0:05:46.920 --> 0:05:51.000 source philosophy in when it announced plans to acquire the 0:05:51.000 --> 0:05:54.600 company red Hat. So let's have a quick rundown on 0:05:54.640 --> 0:05:58.560 what red Hat is. It's a company that began in 0:05:58.560 --> 0:06:02.159 its earliest phases you could argue around, and it was 0:06:02.200 --> 0:06:05.320 around the concept of a version of the Linux operating 0:06:05.320 --> 0:06:09.360 system tweaked by a hacker named Mark Ewing. Now, there 0:06:09.360 --> 0:06:12.680 are a lot of different versions of Linux, or maybe 0:06:12.760 --> 0:06:15.799 I should say that there are a lot of distributions 0:06:16.000 --> 0:06:19.760 or distros of Linux. That's the proper way to refer 0:06:19.839 --> 0:06:23.640 to it. At the heart of any Linux distro is 0:06:23.680 --> 0:06:27.279 the Linux kernel itself, and it's an example of free 0:06:27.320 --> 0:06:31.560 and open software. And while Lena's Torvald's created and released 0:06:31.680 --> 0:06:34.359 the first version of the Linux kernel way back in 0:06:36.120 --> 0:06:40.919 thousands of programmers have made additions, improvements, and tweaks to 0:06:40.960 --> 0:06:45.360 that kernel in the nearly three decades that followed. Linux 0:06:45.440 --> 0:06:49.600 distro typically includes several other elements in addition to the 0:06:49.680 --> 0:06:53.560 kernel in order to create a fully fleshed out operating system. 0:06:53.600 --> 0:06:56.479 That operating system might be for a personal computer, it 0:06:56.480 --> 0:06:58.800 could be for a mobile device, it might be for 0:06:58.880 --> 0:07:01.720 a web server or even a supercomputer. And you can 0:07:01.760 --> 0:07:04.720 also find it on stuff like set top boxes and routers. 0:07:05.040 --> 0:07:10.520 It is an incredibly versatile operating system all right back 0:07:10.520 --> 0:07:13.520 to the founding of Red Hat, Ewing used to wear 0:07:13.600 --> 0:07:16.840 a red Cornell lacrosse hat that his grandfather had owned, 0:07:16.880 --> 0:07:18.600 and he had become known as the guy in the 0:07:18.640 --> 0:07:21.000 red hat while he was working in a computer lab 0:07:21.040 --> 0:07:23.720 at Carnegie Melon, So he decided to use Red Hat 0:07:23.800 --> 0:07:26.760 as the name of his Linux distro, and later on 0:07:26.920 --> 0:07:30.000 Ewing with joint forces with a businessman named Bob Young. 0:07:30.360 --> 0:07:33.120 Bob Young had been buying copies of red Hat from 0:07:33.160 --> 0:07:35.880 Ewing and then selling them, and he had been selling 0:07:35.960 --> 0:07:38.040 them about as fast as he could get them. So 0:07:38.160 --> 0:07:40.920 they decided this was a very valuable product and they 0:07:40.920 --> 0:07:45.120 formed red Hat Software in n Now, this is not 0:07:45.160 --> 0:07:47.640 an episode about red Hat, so we're gonna skip ahead 0:07:47.680 --> 0:07:52.520 to the company was successful at turning a profit despite 0:07:52.520 --> 0:07:57.480 being centered on an open source and effectively free software package. 0:07:57.840 --> 0:08:01.200 So if you're making something and offering it up for free, 0:08:01.560 --> 0:08:04.080 how do you make money from that? How did red 0:08:04.120 --> 0:08:08.720 Hat generate revenue? Well, the company sells professional services and 0:08:08.760 --> 0:08:11.880 has maintenance and support plans that customers can use to 0:08:11.920 --> 0:08:15.720 get tech support for their products. Red Hat developers still 0:08:15.720 --> 0:08:19.160 make major contributions to the software, which is largely shaped 0:08:19.200 --> 0:08:21.880 by the red Hat community of users and developers, but 0:08:21.960 --> 0:08:26.080 the revenue comes from providing the supporting services around the product, 0:08:26.280 --> 0:08:31.960 rather than from the product directly. In October, IBM announced 0:08:32.000 --> 0:08:34.440 that it was making a move to acquire red Hat. 0:08:34.840 --> 0:08:37.760 The deal would involve IBM buying all red Hat shares 0:08:37.840 --> 0:08:41.560 for one dollars per share, which means this is a 0:08:41.679 --> 0:08:45.960 thirty four billion dollar deal. Red Hat investors approved the 0:08:45.960 --> 0:08:49.160 deal in January nineteen. Now, at the time of think 0:08:49.200 --> 0:08:52.280 twenty nineteen when I'm recording this episode, that deal is 0:08:52.280 --> 0:08:56.319 still going through the regulatory entities of the government for approval. 0:08:56.559 --> 0:08:59.480 But the Red Hat acquisition plays a crucial role in 0:08:59.559 --> 0:09:04.640 ibm strategy to lead in the cloud computing space in particular. Now, 0:09:04.679 --> 0:09:07.080 as I mentioned in my earlier episode, one of the 0:09:07.120 --> 0:09:10.080 big barriers of entry to cloud computing is a fear 0:09:10.200 --> 0:09:13.360 of lock in going with a proprietary approach with a 0:09:13.400 --> 0:09:16.520 specific vendor, and that means you've hitched your wagon to 0:09:16.600 --> 0:09:21.480 that provider's proverbial horse. And if that horse would I 0:09:21.520 --> 0:09:23.480 don't know. I gotta stick with this metaphor, I would 0:09:23.520 --> 0:09:26.600 say it throws a shoe or something. You're stuck. The 0:09:26.679 --> 0:09:30.400 open source approach allows for more options, and options sound 0:09:30.440 --> 0:09:33.600 a whole lot better than only having a single choice. 0:09:34.120 --> 0:09:38.080 But while all these are the business arguments for open source, 0:09:38.280 --> 0:09:41.240 IBM has also pulled another lever. This one has to 0:09:41.280 --> 0:09:43.920 do with the power of the open source approach to 0:09:44.000 --> 0:09:47.559 do good in the world by engaging programmers and hackers 0:09:47.600 --> 0:09:51.679 to build code to meet specific challenges and help people 0:09:51.720 --> 0:09:54.800 who are most in need. I'll explain more in just 0:09:54.920 --> 0:10:06.199 a moment, but first let's take a quick break. In eighteen, 0:10:06.360 --> 0:10:10.920 the David Clark Cause proposed an initiative called Call for Code, 0:10:11.280 --> 0:10:14.600 which would establish a particular challenge each year for coders 0:10:14.600 --> 0:10:16.840 to tackle, and it would be a challenge that would 0:10:16.880 --> 0:10:19.880 have a real world impact and could help people who 0:10:20.000 --> 0:10:23.480 need it most. IBM joined on as a founding partner, 0:10:23.559 --> 0:10:27.680 committing millions of dollars and making available much of the 0:10:27.720 --> 0:10:32.319 company's technology and resources that it had developed for its clients, 0:10:32.360 --> 0:10:36.600 so participants got access to these incredibly powerful tools for 0:10:36.679 --> 0:10:39.679 their projects. The theme for the first Call for Code 0:10:39.720 --> 0:10:43.520 was natural disasters, so they decided to go big really 0:10:43.679 --> 0:10:47.679 early on. And natural disasters are an enormous threat to 0:10:47.920 --> 0:10:53.960 millions of people around the world. Flooding, fires, hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, 0:10:54.000 --> 0:10:58.160 blizzards and more are all potential threats. They can wreak 0:10:58.320 --> 0:11:02.000 havoc on massive scale seals and mounting an effective response 0:11:02.200 --> 0:11:06.640 or mitigating the effects of the disasters that are hitting 0:11:06.720 --> 0:11:11.000 different areas, those are those are types of businesses. We 0:11:11.080 --> 0:11:13.840 just haven't seen much innovation around. We haven't seen a 0:11:13.880 --> 0:11:17.520 lot of movement there. We've definitely had advancements in tech 0:11:17.679 --> 0:11:20.800 and technique for dealing with disasters, but it's not the 0:11:20.840 --> 0:11:25.520 sort of traditional problem that attracts programmers or companies. The 0:11:25.559 --> 0:11:28.160 Call for Code was designed to be an incentive to 0:11:28.240 --> 0:11:31.800 help change this, and to use the open source approach 0:11:31.920 --> 0:11:35.320 to speed up the process. In the United States, the 0:11:35.400 --> 0:11:38.840 need for solutions to create more effective disaster response efforts 0:11:39.160 --> 0:11:44.120 was evident and keenly felt by eighteen. Puerto Rico, as 0:11:44.160 --> 0:11:46.559 well as many islands in the Caribbean, had been hit 0:11:46.640 --> 0:11:53.200 by a Hurricane Maria in September. The effects were absolutely devastating, 0:11:53.280 --> 0:11:55.440 and the recovery has been slow, to say the least. 0:11:55.480 --> 0:11:59.160 In fact, it's still going on in twenty nineteen. By 0:11:59.240 --> 0:12:02.280 January of twenty eighteen, months after the hurricane had hit, 0:12:02.559 --> 0:12:05.440 nearly half a million people on Puerto Rico were still 0:12:05.480 --> 0:12:09.080 without electricity, and power outages due to failures in the 0:12:09.120 --> 0:12:13.520 infrastructure exacerbated the problem. Hundreds of thousands more would find 0:12:13.559 --> 0:12:16.440 themselves without power, at least on a temporary basis, and 0:12:16.440 --> 0:12:19.360 by temporary I mean it would last days. The lack 0:12:19.400 --> 0:12:22.959 of electricity obviously creates additional dangers. People can't use modern 0:12:23.000 --> 0:12:27.280 communications to alert others to their needs, and first responders 0:12:27.280 --> 0:12:29.760 have trouble knowing where they are needed. The Call for 0:12:29.880 --> 0:12:33.520 Code initiative ended up getting a lot of momentum really quickly. 0:12:33.880 --> 0:12:37.640 The announcement came out in May eighteen, and within six months, 0:12:38.120 --> 0:12:42.760 thousands of coders from a hundred fifty six countries had 0:12:42.760 --> 0:12:46.120 been hard at work and a community had formed around 0:12:46.200 --> 0:12:50.120 this challenge. There were online discussions using tools like Slack 0:12:50.200 --> 0:12:54.840 to facilitate communication. Some teams even found their fellow team 0:12:54.840 --> 0:12:58.360 members through these channels, which connected people who were otherwise 0:12:58.400 --> 0:13:00.960 living so far apart from one another that they probably 0:13:01.040 --> 0:13:04.920 never would have had any connection otherwise. There were more 0:13:05.000 --> 0:13:08.200 than three hundred Call for Code City challenges that took 0:13:08.200 --> 0:13:11.200 place in cities all over the world to prepare the 0:13:11.240 --> 0:13:14.400 coders for the grand challenge itself, and the prize was 0:13:14.440 --> 0:13:17.640 a prestigious one. The winning team would take home two 0:13:18.040 --> 0:13:21.200 thousand dollars, but more importantly, they would also get the 0:13:21.240 --> 0:13:25.200 opportunity to actually deploy their solution with IBM S support. 0:13:25.679 --> 0:13:29.200 Now that meant the submission wasn't just an interesting idea 0:13:29.280 --> 0:13:32.000 that would win a prize. It would be put into 0:13:32.000 --> 0:13:35.440 practice in the real world and real people could stand 0:13:35.480 --> 0:13:38.240 to benefit from it. The winning team would also get 0:13:38.320 --> 0:13:41.839 long term support from the Linux Foundation and an opportunity 0:13:41.880 --> 0:13:45.000 to pitch their project to a venture capital firm. Now 0:13:45.040 --> 0:13:48.640 teams really did embrace the open source philosophy. They also 0:13:48.679 --> 0:13:50.720 were able to make use of many of the IBM 0:13:50.760 --> 0:13:55.000 technologies that likewise depend on open source, such as the 0:13:55.040 --> 0:13:59.840 company's cloud services. They got to work designing software and hardware, 0:14:00.160 --> 0:14:04.040 and collectively the competitors built more than two thousand five 0:14:04.440 --> 0:14:09.000 applications and there were more than one hundred thousand developers participating. 0:14:09.400 --> 0:14:13.320 The finalists all had intriguing ideas, and I'm gonna run 0:14:13.360 --> 0:14:15.640 down some of the finalists. I'll talk about the winner 0:14:15.640 --> 0:14:17.960 in just a moment, but here are just some of 0:14:18.000 --> 0:14:20.640 the ideas that made it to the final rounds. One 0:14:20.760 --> 0:14:24.880 team proposed a system called the Post Disaster Rapid Response 0:14:25.000 --> 0:14:28.880 retro Fit or p D three R. Their approach realized 0:14:28.880 --> 0:14:32.960 on using artificial intelligence to assess damage done to houses 0:14:33.240 --> 0:14:36.360 in the wake of a disaster like an earthquake, to 0:14:36.440 --> 0:14:39.720 determine if and how the structures can be repaired effectively, 0:14:40.040 --> 0:14:43.600 with designs meant to better withstand future earthquakes. So the 0:14:43.640 --> 0:14:46.720 team used IBM s Watson platform in its design, both 0:14:46.760 --> 0:14:49.400 to train computer models and to help recognize the extent 0:14:49.520 --> 0:14:53.040 of damage in homes. So you're using computer vision, you're 0:14:53.080 --> 0:14:56.520 using artificial intelligence to make design decisions. It was a 0:14:56.600 --> 0:15:02.200 really inventive approach to this and to try and improve 0:15:02.240 --> 0:15:05.000 communities in the future so that they could better withstand 0:15:05.040 --> 0:15:09.520 these disasters that might hit at perhaps not regular intervals, 0:15:09.560 --> 0:15:12.120 but often enough for it to be a concern. Another 0:15:12.200 --> 0:15:16.800 team created what was called the Lolly Wildfire Detection System. 0:15:16.840 --> 0:15:20.520 Their methodology was to deploy heat sensors over a wide 0:15:20.640 --> 0:15:23.960 area that would be able to update the overall system 0:15:23.960 --> 0:15:27.160 on the back end with real time analytics. So the 0:15:27.160 --> 0:15:29.760 back end of the system used Watson to look at 0:15:29.840 --> 0:15:32.560 changes and identify any markers that would indicate that a 0:15:32.640 --> 0:15:35.880 fire might be moving into the area. Further, they used 0:15:35.920 --> 0:15:39.960 artificial intelligence that would help figure out the features of 0:15:40.000 --> 0:15:43.080 the fire. It could determine what the intensity of the 0:15:43.120 --> 0:15:46.160 fire was, what the shape of it was, and it 0:15:46.200 --> 0:15:50.440 could pair this with other information such as weather information 0:15:50.520 --> 0:15:53.080 find out what the likely direction the fire might move 0:15:53.160 --> 0:15:56.120 in would be. And this system could help responders plan 0:15:56.240 --> 0:15:59.920 where they should dedicate firefighting resources. It could give residents 0:16:00.040 --> 0:16:02.760 and early warning to evacuate before it becomes a life 0:16:02.800 --> 0:16:06.200 threatening endeavor in the United States. The wildfires that happened 0:16:06.200 --> 0:16:08.440 in the western part of the country in ten were 0:16:08.480 --> 0:16:10.800 still very fresh in the minds of people, which I'm 0:16:10.840 --> 0:16:15.880 sure made this particular pitch really compelling. United Aid Net, 0:16:16.000 --> 0:16:18.760 which was another finalist, wanting to create a way for 0:16:18.960 --> 0:16:23.720 those affected by natural disasters to get funds quickly. The 0:16:23.720 --> 0:16:26.240 premise behind you a N is that you might have 0:16:26.320 --> 0:16:28.720 family members who live in areas that are vulnerable to 0:16:28.800 --> 0:16:32.680 natural disasters, and they might need access to money immediately 0:16:32.720 --> 0:16:34.880 following a natural disaster, and it can be hard to 0:16:34.920 --> 0:16:37.240 get money to people who need it. So you a 0:16:37.480 --> 0:16:41.920 N has two interconnected networks. One is with various financial 0:16:41.960 --> 0:16:45.600 institutions and the other is a network for family members. 0:16:45.960 --> 0:16:48.480 So you can sign up those family members to be 0:16:48.560 --> 0:16:51.960 part of this system and they can become beneficiaries so 0:16:52.040 --> 0:16:54.400 that they can, in the wake of a disaster, draw 0:16:54.520 --> 0:16:57.640 funds from an account you've set up and shared with them. 0:16:57.680 --> 0:17:00.200 In some parts of the world, money transfers can take 0:17:00.000 --> 0:17:02.920 as long as a few days, and according to U 0:17:03.000 --> 0:17:06.080 a N, their approach decreases this to a couple of hours. 0:17:06.560 --> 0:17:10.199 They proposed using blockchain to track the transactions, and they 0:17:10.240 --> 0:17:14.680 relied upon facial recognition technology and again machine vision to 0:17:15.040 --> 0:17:18.639 authorize withdrawals, leaning heavily on Watson for the horsepower to 0:17:18.680 --> 0:17:22.280 do so. IBM had some internal teams that competed in 0:17:22.280 --> 0:17:25.439 this as well. One of them freed to created a 0:17:25.520 --> 0:17:28.600 sort of Internet connected earthquake sensor and a back end 0:17:28.600 --> 0:17:31.119 to send alerts to mobile phones. So their focus was 0:17:31.160 --> 0:17:35.080 primarily on schools, using some low cost hardware which they 0:17:35.119 --> 0:17:38.199 actually housed in cardboard cases, so that really kept the 0:17:38.240 --> 0:17:43.240 cost slow. They could put those sensors into schools and 0:17:43.359 --> 0:17:46.879 monitor the schools for signs of earthquakes, you know, looking 0:17:46.920 --> 0:17:50.760 for any sort of vibrations that would indicate an earthquake. 0:17:50.800 --> 0:17:53.239 Is they're sort of like a seismograph, and it can 0:17:53.280 --> 0:17:57.000 also estimate the magnitude of an earthquake once as detected. 0:17:57.000 --> 0:17:59.520 It so not just that there is an earthquake, but 0:17:59.560 --> 0:18:02.879 how wrong is it? You know, how how serious is 0:18:02.920 --> 0:18:05.399 this problem? And it can send out alerts to mobile 0:18:05.440 --> 0:18:08.600 phones that belong to students, parents, and teachers, as well 0:18:08.600 --> 0:18:11.879 as first responders and other members of the community, bringing 0:18:11.920 --> 0:18:15.120 the sensors to potentially vulnerable sites, as opposed to relying 0:18:15.160 --> 0:18:18.160 on a sensing station that could potentially be a thousand 0:18:18.200 --> 0:18:22.639 miles away means that you can get hyperlocal results and 0:18:22.680 --> 0:18:26.320 that you can mobilize a response very quickly. And I'm 0:18:26.320 --> 0:18:28.520 not just talking about a physical response about you know, 0:18:28.920 --> 0:18:31.760 rescue workers going to the site, but kick starting the 0:18:31.800 --> 0:18:36.320 bureaucratic response, the government response needed to h to supply 0:18:36.440 --> 0:18:39.520 aid and other services to the area after the disaster. 0:18:39.640 --> 0:18:42.760 It can get that started earlier so that you don't 0:18:42.800 --> 0:18:46.280 have this long gap of time between when people need 0:18:46.359 --> 0:18:49.720 services and when they can actually get them. Another IBM 0:18:49.760 --> 0:18:52.800 project was help Chain, which took aim to address one 0:18:52.800 --> 0:18:56.359 of the most challenging aspects of disaster relief, which is 0:18:56.400 --> 0:19:00.320 making a case for donations. It can be a key 0:19:00.359 --> 0:19:03.439 to ask people to donate money. The team cited a 0:19:03.480 --> 0:19:07.280 figure about Puerto Rico and Hurricane Maria that is heartbreaking 0:19:07.920 --> 0:19:12.119 and infuriating. Around ten thousand shipping containers full of food 0:19:12.119 --> 0:19:15.480 and water never reached the point of distribution to the 0:19:15.480 --> 0:19:20.320 people of Puerto Rico. That was reported by NPR. Now, 0:19:20.320 --> 0:19:22.760 when you hear stories like that, you start to believe 0:19:22.880 --> 0:19:25.520 that any donation you make would just be a waste 0:19:25.520 --> 0:19:28.240 of money. Maybe you feel that the charities are taking 0:19:28.280 --> 0:19:31.600 too much money for administrative costs and very little if 0:19:31.640 --> 0:19:33.520 any of that money makes its way to the people 0:19:33.520 --> 0:19:36.359 who actually need it. Or maybe you hear stories of 0:19:36.480 --> 0:19:39.359 mismanagement and figure that any donation you make would be 0:19:39.400 --> 0:19:42.639 like throwing money out the window. The help Chain team 0:19:43.000 --> 0:19:47.360 used blockchain technology to help donators track a donation throughout 0:19:47.400 --> 0:19:50.600 its life cycle so that they could see exactly how 0:19:50.680 --> 0:19:53.240 much of their donation actually made it to the people 0:19:53.400 --> 0:19:57.480 who needed it. They could see each stage of that 0:19:57.480 --> 0:20:02.159 that transaction, and the transparency puts pressure on organizations to 0:20:02.240 --> 0:20:04.680 deliver upon the promise they made to help those in need. 0:20:05.000 --> 0:20:08.000 When everyone can see clearly how much money is going 0:20:08.040 --> 0:20:14.320 toward administrative overhead, you can't expect to be extravagant with 0:20:14.359 --> 0:20:18.440 those costs and still have people donate to your your cause. Now, 0:20:18.440 --> 0:20:20.959 when we come back, I'll tell you about the winning 0:20:21.000 --> 0:20:23.879 team of the team Call for Code and the follow 0:20:23.960 --> 0:20:27.359 up effort called Code and Response. But first let's take 0:20:27.440 --> 0:20:37.480 another quick break. The winning team for the two thousand 0:20:37.560 --> 0:20:41.320 eight teen Call for Code was Project OWL O w L, 0:20:41.400 --> 0:20:45.600 and that stands for Organization, Whereabouts and Logistics. I had 0:20:45.600 --> 0:20:48.280 a chance to sit down with Brian Canals, one of 0:20:48.320 --> 0:20:51.680 the members of the Project Owl team to talk about 0:20:51.720 --> 0:20:54.800 this at the IBM think table, and here's what he 0:20:54.880 --> 0:20:59.119 had to say. I'm here with Brian Canals of Project Owl, 0:20:59.600 --> 0:21:03.439 which is a phenomenal project that marries hardware and software 0:21:03.880 --> 0:21:07.240 for disaster relief in an application that I think is 0:21:07.280 --> 0:21:09.760 absolutely fascinating. Please, Brian, can you give us kind of 0:21:09.800 --> 0:21:13.320 the the big picture look at what Project Owl is 0:21:13.359 --> 0:21:17.560 all about? Thank you. So. Project Owl, as you mentioned, 0:21:17.640 --> 0:21:21.280 is a combination of two key ideas um and during 0:21:21.320 --> 0:21:24.199 the Call for Code competition, we i a dated this 0:21:24.320 --> 0:21:28.679 technology to help prepare for and recover from natural disasters 0:21:28.720 --> 0:21:30.879 through an application of a lot of the technology that 0:21:30.960 --> 0:21:35.679 IBM supports our our solution with. So we built two things. 0:21:36.080 --> 0:21:39.560 The first is a software incident management system that's a 0:21:39.560 --> 0:21:42.240 lot of buzzwords. It's really just dots on a map, 0:21:42.600 --> 0:21:46.480 a way to see, uh, what things and resources and 0:21:46.560 --> 0:21:50.160 people are where at what time to get a really 0:21:50.200 --> 0:21:54.160 clear operating picture of an incident, which in some scenarios 0:21:54.200 --> 0:21:58.200 if we're talking about a hurricane, chaos and misinformation is pervasive. 0:21:59.400 --> 0:22:02.879 But there's still a problem in the worst disasters where 0:22:03.240 --> 0:22:06.320 this type of data analytics capability would be really useful 0:22:06.359 --> 0:22:09.880 to really large chaotic disasters, these are the ones where 0:22:09.920 --> 0:22:15.399 infrastructure connectivity electricity is most likely to be offline. So 0:22:15.440 --> 0:22:19.600 we built a a network of IoT devices we call 0:22:19.800 --> 0:22:23.280 duck links, and these duck links generate a WiFi network 0:22:23.320 --> 0:22:25.320 that anyone can connect to with their cell phone or 0:22:25.320 --> 0:22:28.280 their laptop, and we can drop these duck links really 0:22:28.320 --> 0:22:31.880 quickly through commercial drones and a cluster that we call 0:22:32.000 --> 0:22:36.120 a cluster duck. And by dropping these cluster duck networks 0:22:36.119 --> 0:22:39.919 were able to distribute OWL incident management software two locations 0:22:39.960 --> 0:22:43.119 that may have no electricity or communications in a cost effective, 0:22:43.359 --> 0:22:46.480 fast manner. So from what I understand, you only need 0:22:46.600 --> 0:22:50.360 five of these ducks to cover a square mile, so 0:22:51.200 --> 0:22:56.200 just a broad deployment can restore connectivity to a pretty 0:22:56.240 --> 0:22:59.159 massive area in a short amount of time. And on 0:22:59.240 --> 0:23:02.960 the software, I would imagine that having all that information 0:23:02.960 --> 0:23:06.120 at your fingertips, you know important details such as what's 0:23:06.160 --> 0:23:08.240 the weather going to do next, which obviously is going 0:23:08.280 --> 0:23:11.520 to affect any kind of recovery efforts, and also who 0:23:11.720 --> 0:23:14.880 is where so that you're not duplicating efforts, that you're 0:23:14.880 --> 0:23:17.480 making the best use of your resources. Is that an 0:23:17.560 --> 0:23:20.920 accurate assessment? Yeah, and you touched on one other aspect 0:23:20.920 --> 0:23:24.600 that I didn't mention, we leveraged multiple APIs from the 0:23:24.640 --> 0:23:28.520 Weather Company, so we're able to get real time local 0:23:28.600 --> 0:23:31.080 climates in an area, which is really useful for first 0:23:31.080 --> 0:23:35.760 responders operating during a disaster. UM but in conjunction with 0:23:35.800 --> 0:23:37.920 that and using all the Watson APIs, we can get 0:23:37.920 --> 0:23:40.160 a really crisp clear look on the ground. And as 0:23:40.160 --> 0:23:43.800 you said, deploying these ducks UM is a unique way 0:23:43.840 --> 0:23:46.399 to bring coms in an area that traditionally this is 0:23:46.440 --> 0:23:50.320 a really complicated, expensive thing to do. And on top 0:23:50.400 --> 0:23:54.080 of that, not everyone can carry a VSAT in their backpack. 0:23:54.760 --> 0:23:57.840 These are hard that they require training, they're complicated and 0:23:57.920 --> 0:24:00.320 time consuming to set up, not to mention expense, and 0:24:00.359 --> 0:24:04.200 you have to align them to a particular geostationary satellite 0:24:04.440 --> 0:24:07.679