Podcasts about tech museum

For many vulnerable communities, particularly women and children, in Sub-Saharan Africa and beyond, access to school and the news can be difficult. Hear how Lifeline Energy is bringing news and educational curriculum to rural communities with solar and wind-up radios and MP3 players, often providing the only reliable source of outside information to their clients. Kristine shares her story of winning the 2005 Tech Award (co-sponsored by the Tech Museum of Innovation and Miller Center). The $50,000 prize was pivotal in helping her raise additional capital because donors like to be first to go second.

Master and pupil discuss Seltzer Summah, She is Pepsico, Benz Update, iPad 2, Tech Museum, Webroot Douche, Tye Dye Iron Maiden, Live Craigslisting, Deli Core Score, Herbarium VS Smartweed, Outfitters Rewards and Diagonal Class.

Life's Tough Media is pleased to announce the latest episode of our “Life's Tough: Explorers are TOUGHER!” podcast series. Hosted by Richard Wiese—explorer extraordinaire and President of The Explorers Club—this episode features Laurie Marker, a research scientist and boots-on-the-ground conservationist, Oxford-trained zoologist, author, cheetah veterinary health expert, goat farmer, dog breeder, cattle rancher, educator, inspirational thought leader, public speaker and policy maker who travels nonstop on her mission to help save the world's fastest mammal. Cheetahs are the fastest land animals in the world, going from 0 - 70 mph in 3 seconds. However, they are also the most endangered African cat. A century ago, there were 100,000 cheetahs in the wild, and today, there are fewer than 7,500. Laurie grew up in Northern California, where she first realized she had a love for animals. She eventually ended up working at the Wildlife Safari in Oregon for 16 years, taking her love for animals into a career path. Today Laurie is as comfortable trekking through the bush in search of cheetahs as she is briefing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Washington, DC. Laurie graduated from Oxford University with a doctorate in Zoology and became an A.D. White Professor-at-Large with Cornell University. She was Executive Director of the Center for New Opportunities in Animal Health Sciences at the Smithsonian Institution and after a trip to Namibia, Africa in 1977, Laurie realized thousands of cheetahs were getting killed by farmers. Compelled to do something to put an end to that, she started collaborating with other scientists to create a safe space for captive cheetahs. Cheetah Conservation Fund Laurie sold all her possessions and started the Cheetah Conservation Fund, the longest running and most successful cheetah conservation program in Africa. Laurie has pioneered research, established conservation models, and created cooperative alliances on behalf of the cheetah that never existed. Under her leadership, CCF has grown into a world-class cheetah research, education, and conservation institution. The town of Otjiwarongo, where the Cheetah Conservation Fund is based, is now known as “The Cheetah Capital of the World.” Laurie's crowning achievement was changing Namibia's attitude towards its native wildlife. She convinced the local livestock farmers to stop trapping and killing cheetahs as their primary means of predation control, and in 1994, Laurie decided to import a rare breed of dogs—the Anatolian shepherd—to be placed with herds of livestock to help protect them from predators. This shepherd is known for its giant size and extremely loud bark. The Cheetah Conservation Fund Livestock Guarding Dog has proven to be one of the most popular and successful conflict-mitigation measures ever developed. Laurie was declared a Hero for the Planet by TIME Magazine in 2001 and awarded the Tech Museum of Innovation's Intel Environmental Prize as well as the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement. Join Richard and Laurie for a lively chat about her work in Namibia with the exotic cheetahs that have become like family to her.

  "Ethical problems are like birds. We're surrounded by birds all the time [...] but you don't necessarily notice them. If you want to notice that they're around, you have to choose to notice them." Our newest episode features Brian Green, the director of technology ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. In their conversation, ATN host Paul Taylor and Brian explore a complex yet significant topic of technology ethics: what it is, how it's related to the Christian perspective, and why it's important. They also talk about ways that the tech industry can apply ethics when building technology (including for AI and space exploration!). Listen in for these great points of discussion and more.   BRIAN GREEN Brian Patrick Green is the director of technology ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. His work is focused on the ethics of technology, including such topics as AI and ethics, the ethics of space exploration and use, and the relationship of technology and religion (particularly the Catholic Church). He teaches AI ethics in the Graduate School of Engineering and formerly taught several other engineering ethics courses. He is co-author of the Ethics in Technology Practice corporate technology ethics resources.  Green is a member of the Safety-Critical AI working group at Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society. He also coordinates the Center’s partnership with The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, the Hackworth grant program, the Technology and Ethics Faculty Group, the Environmental Ethics Fellows, and several other initiatives. Additionally, he has been published, interviewed, or mentioned in media including America, The Atlantic, The China Global Television Network, CNN.com, The Daily Beast, IEET, Nature, and NBC Bay Area. His background includes doctoral and master's degrees in ethics and social theory from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, and his undergraduate degree is in genetics from the University of California, Davis. Between college and graduate school, he served for two years in the Jesuit Volunteers International teaching high school in the Marshall Islands.

On today’s podcast, we talk all about STEAM with The Tech Interactive (formally The Tech Museum).  They are supporting distance learning with design challenges you can do at home, teacher resources, and much more!   Here are some of their awesome resources:  https://www.thetech.org/athome https://www.thetech.org/en-casa

It’s going to get so nerdy! More than usual- this is going to be a 12 off the nerd scale so get ready! We've got The legendary Cymatic Bruce a VR Evangelist, DDR World Champion, Co Founder of Alt Space VR, and just a fabulous blerd! We are going to revisit some of our favorite Sci-Fi and Fantasy movie epics like Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit, The Matrix Trilogy, leading into a discussion about the Witcher and how best to enjoy this diverse fantasy epic (you can tell what I did over the break). And in the main event Bruce leads us in a conversation about video games and tech by first talking about the god father of video game consoles... Jerry Lewis, who was an early Black Silicon Valley engineer and creator of the Fairchild Channel F. He’s kind of like Bruce’s Obi Wan because through him we get Bruce’s origin story, and being Black and navigating the tech and video game world. This of course launches us into so many conversations about the Black Silicon Valley Exodus, toxic masculinity in the competitive video game world, the history of marketing video games to boys how that came to be, and the inclusivity of some pockets of the video game world over others and the direction it’s all heading in. Get your Star Wars Mandalorian Nerd goggles on and your Witcher’s Sorcerer's tarp on because you well get wet... with all this sweet sweet nerdtastic talk.   Cymatic Bruce: https://cymaticbruce.com/, Twitter: @CymaticBruce, YouTube, co-founded Silicon Valley Virtual Reality (SVVR), an international organization for VR professionals and pioneers; AltspaceVR, a socialVR platform that has since been acquired by Microsoft; created and delivered hundreds of hours of science curriculum via The Tech Museum in San Jose; accrued over a million views of his gaming/VR video content; and has presented, performed, and competed worldwide. Twitter: @minoritykorner Email: minoritykorner@gmail.com Korner Kids Playground 

Hi everyone! Thanks for joining me on this very special interview with author Caroline Cocciardi. She is a writer and filmmaker who undertook independent study on Leonardo da Vinci, while living in Rome. Her 20-year research led to a da Vinci discovery. Overlooked for centuries yet visual to the naked eye Cocciardi detected that the minute interlocking embroidered knot pattern on Mona Lisa’s dress deviated from the decorative embroidery of the day. The Mona Lisa Knot was a mathematical pattern based on its angular crossing patterns. If you enjoyed this interview, check her out online and if you're in the Bay Area, visit her at an upcoming talk!Save the date:Jan 19, 2020IMAX at Tech Museum, San Jose, California"Leonardo's Knots"

Learn how to completely transform how women are described! As so often happens, I found Sarah Soule as I wandered around the internet looking for women doing amazing work trying to dismantle the stereotypes that shackle women and keep them from rising. Dr. Soule co-authored an outstanding article in the June 2019 Harvard Business Review, “The Stereotypes in MBA Case Studies,” in which she describes her research on case studies and gender stereotyping within Stanford University’s MBA program. In the study, Sarah and her co-authors examined 249 case studies used in Stanford’s MBA core curriculum from 2015-2017 and found similar trends as Symons and Ibarrain in their 2014 research, “What the Scarcity of Women in Business Case Studies Really Looks Like.” The common thread? Continual reinforcement of outdated (false) gender stereotypes. So much to learn here. Don't miss this! Just 16% of the protagonists of Stanford's MBA case studies were women When Sarah and her research colleagues, Davina Drabkin and Lori Mackenzie, examined the gender stereotypes in the case studies used by Stanford University in its MBA program, they realized that certain words, and the associated images of stereotypes projected by those words, portrayed women in highly judgmental and negative ways instead of seeing them as business leaders, innovators and creative movers and shakers. What was most troubling, though, to these female researchers was that the gender stereotyping was endemic in the materials used in teaching the next generation of business leaders. The researchers had fundamental problems with the portrayals of what women do, what men do, and how each go about doing it. Moreover, not only were the women in the case studies typically in "pink" industries, they were usually the only women in the stories and rarely described as positively as their male counterparts. Obviously, something has to change. How can we change the next generation of leaders if we continue to portray women in stereotypical ways? We were thrilled when Dr. Soule agreed to an On The Brink podcast interview because we wanted her to share with our listeners what she is doing, learning and teaching others about how the words we use and the images we create deeply influence our ideas about men and women, and not always to the benefit of women. We were not disappointed. The three major themes we discuss: Sarah and her colleagues' research on gender stereotyping in the Stanford MBA case studies, and how Stanford is now addressing the issue and changing (or not changing) those studies. Sarah's current research on the depth of the stereotyping problem that women face. She shared one such study within the craft beer industry. When beer tasters were told the beer was brewed by women, they didn’t like it. When they were given the same beer but told it was brewed by men, they loved it. Similar results have been gathered in study after study. Sarah's work on how changing cultures is a social movement rather than a mandate. As culture change experts ourselves, we were thrilled when our discussion delved deeply into the challenges of changing how people think and why that is crucial for changing organizations. The stereotyping that Sarah and her colleagues found in the MBA case studies fell (unsurprisingly) into four major areas: Sweeping statements about cultures. Some of the case studies included erroneous generalizations about a country’s culture, often without context, data or specific examples. Reinforcing stereotypes about consumer behavior while lacking context. There were also misleading stereotypes in descriptions of consumer motivations and behaviors. Promoting gender stereotypes and reinforcing gender roles. In case studies which had a women protagonist, the studies' authors typically included details that reinforced stereotypes of women as subservient and men as assertive. In addition, they used pejorative descriptors for women that they did not use for male protagonists, and that were not relevant to the teaching points.  Fusing stereotypes and marketing segmentation. Identifying and describing male and female personas from inaccurate stereotypes.  Background on Sarah Sarah Soule, PhD is the Morgridge Professor of Organizational Behavior and Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. She studies organizational theory, social movements and political sociology, including topics such as gender bias in the craft beer industry and the impact of women’s protest on congressional attention. Author of two recent books, "Contention and Corporate Social Responsibility," and "A Primer on Social Movements," Sarah also edits the Cambridge University Press Contentious Politics series. She is a member of the founding team of the journal Sociological Science which is disrupting academic publishing. She has served on a number of non-profit boards, is a member of the Board of Advisors to the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford Fellowship Program, and serves on the faculty advisory board to the Stanford Center for the Advancement of Women’s Leadership. Currently the Faculty Director for the Executive Program in Social Entrepreneurship at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Sarah has also served as a judge for the Center for Social Innovation Fellowship program and the Tech Museum of Innovation Tech Awards. Sarah received her PhD and MA in Sociology from Cornell University, and her BA in Sociology from the University of Vermont. You can read more about Dr. Soule here.  Here is another HBR article you might enjoy by Sarah and her colleague Bryan Walker: "Changing Company Culture Requires a Movement, Not a Mandate." To learn more on this subject, we suggest these blogs and podcasts: Blog: What Time Is It? Time To Change Blog: How's Your Culture? Doing Fine Or In Drastic Need Of An Overhaul? Podcast: Gustavo Grodnitzky—Culture Trumps Everything! Podcast: Ask Andi—How Do You Change Your Culture? Podcast: Andi Simon—Women Entrepreneurs Changing Corporate Cultures Additional resources Sarah's books: "Contention and Corporate Social Responsibility" and "A Primer on Social Movements"  Sarah's Harvard Business Review articles:“The Stereotypes in MBA Case Studies and "Changing Company Culture Requires a Movement, Not a Mandate" My book: "On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights" Our website: Simon Associates Management Consultants

"Entrepreneurship isn't about starting companies. Entrepreneurship is an approach to life." — Ed ZschauEd Zschau is the Interim President of Sierra Nevada College, and he brings to the college 17 years of leading technology companies. He founded System Industries in Palo Alto, California in 1969, and as its CEO led it to a successful IPO in 1980. In the 1990s, he was the General Manager of the IBM Storage Systems Division headquartered in San Jose, California. Ed has a total of 10 years of teaching experience as a professor in the graduate business schools at Stanford University and Harvard University, and he has taught high tech entrepreneurship courses for a total of 22 years in the engineering schools at Princeton University, Caltech, and University of Nevada, Reno. In addition to serving on the boards of major public companies such as Reader's Digest and StarTek, Ed has helped to start and build several technology companies during the past 20 years, some of which were founded and led by his former students.In the 1980s, Ed represented the Silicon Valley area of California for two terms in the US House of Representatives, serving on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Also, during the 1980s, he was a General Partner of Brentwood Associates, a venture capital firm, and he was the Founding Chairman of The Tech Interactive, (formerly The Tech Museum of Innovation), a non-profit educational institution in San Jose, California.Ed holds an A.B. degree (cum laude) in Philosophy (bridging with Physics) from Princeton University, as well as M.B.A., M.S. (Statistics), and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University and a Doctor of Laws degree (Honoris Causa) from the University of San Francisco. Currently, he is a Senior Fellow of the California Council on Science and Technology.Please enjoy!This podcast is brought to you by 99designs, the global creative platform that makes it easy for designers and clients to work together to create designs they love. Its creative process has become the go-to solution for businesses, agencies, and individuals, and I have used it for years to help with display advertising and illustrations and to rapid prototype the cover for The Tao of Seneca. Whether your business needs a logo, website design, business card, or anything you can imagine, check out 99designs.You can work with multiple designers at once to get a bunch of different ideas, or hire the perfect designer for your project based based on their style and industry specialization. It's simple to review concepts and leave feedback so you'll end up with a design that you're happy with. Listeners of The Tim Ferriss Show get 20 dollars off plus a free 99 dollar upgrade on their first design contest. Head to 99designs.com/tim to learn more or get started today.This podcast is brought to you by Peloton, which has become a staple of my daily routine. I picked up this bike after seeing the success of my friend Kevin Rose, and I've been enjoying it more than I ever imagined. Peloton is an indoor cycling bike that brings live studio classes right to your home. No worrying about fitting classes into your busy schedule or making it to a studio with a crazy commute.New classes are added every day, and this includes options led by elite NYC instructors in your own living room. You can even live stream studio classes taught by the world's best instructors, or find your favorite class on demand.Peloton is offering listeners to this show a special offer. Visit onepeloton.com and enter the code you heard during the Peloton ad of this episode at checkout to receive $100 off accessories with your Peloton bike purchase. This is a great way to get in your workouts, or an incredible gift. Again, that's onepeloton.com and enter the code you heard during the Peloton ad of this episode to receive $100 off accessories with your Peloton bike purchase.***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferriss

Listen In To Learn: How to choose durable, reliable technology for years of use How to build more efficient data centers How creativity and technology combined to create a $330 million science center Creativity and Technology Combine to Power a $330 Million Science Museum Brooks Weisblat started his career with a degree in biology and an interest in a promising new technology: The world wide web. He started work as a web developer at a small science museum in Miami… and two decades later, he was planning the technological backbone for a $330 million new building. The Philip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science is a 250,000 square foot state-of-the-art marvel. Every part of it, from the exhibits to the wildlife tanks to the gift shop, uses the latest technology to keep it running smoothly and efficiently. Building these interconnected systems was a massive undertaking for Brooks and a small team of developers. In this episode, Brooks talks about the challenges he and his team faced in planning these systems. Brooks and his team had to get creative to build robust, redundant, but also space and resource-efficient systems for everything from shark tank life support to mobile point of sale devices.

EP165 - Amazon Alexa's David Isbitski David Isbitski (@thedavedev)is the Chief Evangelist for Alexa at Amazon. In this interview, we cover a wide range of topics including the growth of the Alexa platform, the evolution of the developer community, the future of voice, and voice commerce specifically. Don’t forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 165 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Friday, February 22, 2019 from the eTail West tradeshow in Palm Desert, CA. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason “Retailgeek” Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Founder and Executive Chairman of Channel Advisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this episode is being recorded on Friday February 22nd 2019 live from the etail West Trade Show here in not completely Sunny Palm Desert I’m your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and unfortunately Scott is trapped on an airplane so we are going to make a lot of fun of him and hopefully assign him some action items for after the show, long-time listen to the show will know that if we were to make a word cloud of everything that we’ve said in the hundred and seventy something episodes. Amazon would be the biggest word on that word cloud and Alexa would probably be third I think Star Wars might so I can let you be. David: [1:02] Well that’s good to hear. Jason: [1:03] Be ahead of Alexa, but obviously we talked about a lot on the show so I guess we’re super happy to have on this week’s show is Dave a bitsky who’s the chief of Vangelis for Alexa at Amazon welcome to the show. David: [1:17] Thanks for having me super happy to be here. Jason: [1:19] Yeah so I record a lot of these for my home studio and the first thing I have to do is mute all of my Alexa devices. David: [1:28] Oh yeah I’m the same way yeah in fact even when I’m on stage if I’m Kino to hear something when I say her name there’s still that thread that goes through my head waiting for a response. Jason: [1:42] Oh no it’s something going wrong. David: [1:43] Yeah yeah. Jason: [1:45] So David for a long time with some of the show we always like to start by getting just a little background about the the guests can you tell us a little bit about your backup. David: [1:52] Yeah sure I guess it depends on how far you want to go back. Jason: [1:57] I have your high school records of. David: [1:59] Yeah yeah exactly so I grew up in the 80s in Commodore and this this vision of how, science fiction and Technology was a future rights what do you mention Star Wars growing up on Star Wars and things like, the black hole right and Star Trek and all of that and I just, man I want to be a part of it and I remember speech technology TTS text-to-speech back then be able to do stuff like that I had to do that and. [2:29] I just I was like man when is this going to happen right and I started out any e-commerce 96-97 building. Commerce pipelines actually competing against Amazon was just getting started the time at this company called microwarehouse macwarehouse and then I did web whole rise of the web did want you to. Com Consulting did I, Enterprise gig in a large pharmaceutical company, and that was my me trying management and realized it wasn’t my cup of tea I just I love that I love being, I love traveling talking to people and using new technology which is right and around 2007, October to a Microsoft December roll to I have now there a lot of stuff around games and mobile and worked on Windows phone and Xbox Kinect, and then I joined Amazon, oh gosh 2013 help out with the we are kicking off the Android App Store that we have with the new Kindle Fire tablets did that watch Fire TV is Saint with fire phone and then. I am super fortunate I was Employee one for Alexa skill marketing team around 2014, and now it’s crazy where everything is now in 2019. Jason: [3:45] That’s awesome so I don’t listen to the show will know that Scott and I are two of the four Alexa fire owners so you. David: [3:51] But thank you I still have mine. Jason: [3:52] We sometimes we have our suit we sometimes predict it shall rise again I’m not asking you to. David: [3:59] The dynamic perspective stuff still awesome. Jason: [4:01] Yeah there’s that there’s some cool features so that’s going to be interesting to see if you have a rear job and Amazon you mentioned liking to talk to people I would argue the majority of Amazon employees are not encouraged to talk to her. David: [4:13] Yeah I’m just I’m one of those rare birds where I approved, Alexa’s spokesperson Amazon spokesperson, I’ve been doing it for a long time though I’ve been in very much these Community Building public-facing you know kind of marketing PR working with marketing and PR roles, and there’s always a need for that because you know. I have this belief like large companies we all have processes and there’s so many things that if it falls out of that process gets lost, and I’ve always looked at my job to be the person that’s finding all those anecdotes cuz they’re so important cuz a lot of times there’s signs for things that need to change or that we missed and that we need to do better, and I’ve always I left startup mentality and unfortunate Amazon is just as Perpetual startup mentality it’s not for everyone but it’s it’s Scrappy man it is like and that’s, I love that I love where things aren’t to find you got to figure him out there tough problems you’re constantly inventing things you have to think about the customer problem and dive deep in the stuffing, I’ve just been able to make a job out of that you know it’s it’s funny because funny you ask that I’ve gone on a couple podcast, the past few months cuz that seems to be the big thing is like. Jason: [5:30] I guess to warm up with a couple of those farm system podcast before they come here so that’s all. David: [5:34] Yeah it’s like you got to start thinking about cuz you cuz it’s so all over the place there’s no defined like I went through this. Where I was like, I’m old enough that all of my friends now are turning into CIO CTO xorbee peas and I’m like I’m doing this thing, what is this thing exact but I love it and I would talk to him if you like crazy but we do sucks I would love to do what you do. So it’s like just Embrace what you’re passionate about and get down there and if I like to look at it like if I saw 12 year old me, and he was asking me when all this Tech was going to happen I make it happen for him and keep him happy. Jason: [6:13] I like it I like it I also like your Amiga Roots I actually work for, nor in the. David: [6:17] Oh man we got to talk. Jason: [6:18] Yeah that that text-to-speech engine was called Sam so Sam was the person. David: [6:22] Yeah yeah well I still have it I have I have been working Amiga fully 1000 or 2000 I’ve 600 1200 I still Google Talk. Jason: [6:30] That’s why I sent my nigga 1000 predates, door and it’s actually in the The Tech Museum in San Francisco. David: [6:34] I have never been but I’ve always wanted to go. Jason: [6:39] They’re a couple of those key Engineers one of them is a Google Now RJ Michael. And one of them Jim Mayer Who did all the hardware chips is actually the the Chief Architect behind the Roku. David: [6:53] Yeah yeah. Jason: [6:54] Fancy Nails guys continued. David: [6:56] And Dave Haney is I’ve seen him out in so where I am cuz I’m near Philly there still it’s like in, in like Wall jersey there’s this Tech thing and he comes out there and people talk about forgetting his name but he helped build Amiga 3000 and 4000 and a couple of things like that he’s out there, but a lot of people stayed in the area after Valley Forge after a little. Jason: [7:22] The the USA quarters for, nor was in West Chester Pennsylvania I was based in San Diego and so my boss never trusted that I was working cuz if you’re in Westchester in winter. That you don’t think the young kids in San Diego doing anything years later I visited a client in Westchester and I’m getting at the address to their thing it’s the old commodore. Marker 01 David: [7:42] Yeah well that’s on its QVC or Home Shopping Network is one of those owns that whole campus map. Marker 02 Jason: [7:50] Jumping back to today stopping at appreciate the reminiscing. David: [7:55] We can look forward without looking back. Jason: [7:57] Absolutely you talk a little bit about your role love to hear just a little bit more about your turn trolling as it is it mainly like developer poking focusing is it mainly like consumer adoption. David: [8:06] No we hire teams that are on that now I would say you can think of me as helping incubate new Alexa businesses, so I worked a lot with Alexa for business helping them get started a lot of what I do is helping Brands nowadays to what does it mean in this boy’s first world how do you connect with your customers. How do you build better quality conversations things like that so it’s it’s new areas yeah it’s, the nice thing about having such large teams is once I’ve done something and I can operationalize it it’s not something that I never need to do again and I burnout least called isbitski burn out when I was growing up where, I’m always it’s funny if you look at personality test like if you know anything about the five core traits I have super high in enthusiasm and. Open to new experiences and assertiveness which basically means that even when I was a kid, I would get super excited about something I make all my friends go and follow me and do that thing and then six months later I’d be excited about something else and I feel like we all need to try this now right now Amazon with all the different things that we’re doing now, to be able to do that. Jason: [9:20] That’s awesome couple quick things we want to get out of the way like what’s your personal wake word at home for your Alexa devices. David: [9:26] So it’s always been Alexa I mess around with computer when it was out but by then we already had a relationship with Alexa and it’s interesting here’s a little anecdote Cell 2014 when I would talk about it, and I would talk to press and think everybody would say the Amazon Echo, and then I noticed about six months in people would say Alexa and that wasn’t like anything from that people just started saying Alexa cuz you hadn’t you could say Amazon you can do it was a smart speaker. Now when I talk to people they say our Alexa I don’t know if you picked up on that which is super interesting because it’s become part of the family it’s our Alexa right it’s not Alexa that’s hard Alexa she has her own way of knowing what we like. Jason: [10:05] Indeed she does and I know we we love all our children but do you have a personal favorite Alexa device. David: [10:13] Oh boy well I love the new show at home I would say there’s three I had love the new show Thomas cuz super big screen, and that’s the main one on my desk if anyone is curious I really loved the spots and that’s my kids have enough and I also have one in the den cuz it looks like a clock, you know it’s just a perfect little little size and my third favorite is I have a head for years are Garmin speak which looks like a little tiny Echo dot in my car, and that’s why I listen to podcasts because I have a Honda and so I have Android auto and I have carplay Nike all that but what I find is just saying with voice to go ahead and without having to hold down a button or doing anything and just pause, play the latest episode of and then I mentioned this in the keynote today but you know if you do a lot of trouble and you listen to podcast news in the audio books are sometimes where you’re like, especially stuff I was sometimes it gets deep and you’re like my brain shutting off I just want to play a game, so I play games I played like Westworld and it played Skyrim and I put Jeopardy and a car I think this, I’m a I’m a huge gamer so right by my own gaming rig at home and I have consoles I have Xbox One X and PS4 Pro. [11:31] When I’m in a car and there’s an Alexa skill available I’m surprised how much I’m engaging with that stuff so I think there’s you know it’s it’s, it’s about the situation you’re in right and in continued conversation as fun my kids doing and yeah. Jason: [11:46] I like it I like all those devices I have to say my new favorite though is the Billy Bass. David: [11:51] Yes but I if you look if you go to my Twitter there’s a link to a dead reinvent so that team they weren’t they were going to watch that, and so a Tremont I did a talk and I did the actual unveiling, of the twerking Santa and Bear, I think about like a even a little man with a flag if you need to take your medication use and that’s just a visual for somebody in the home like my parents are old to be able to see that they walk in and they see it you can’t have light but there’s all sorts of things you could do it right, somebody can make that maybe you’re delivering a package again little guy carrying a package or something like that right it’s just it’s integration with his of objects I think it’s pretty neat for notifications that way. Jason: [12:36] The old digital physical things going to continue to be an amazing at Lowe’s, you alerted your talk today so your topic was how to talk to your customers in a voice person world can you give us a little bit of a recap about like what the what the topic was there and what you got. David: [12:52] Yeah you know it’s a sew-in audience like this and with the 25-minute keynote it’s like what do you talk about right and so for me a lot of it ctas and so I always break this down into three things, is there going to be people never heard this they’re going to be people that have a relationship with Alexa already and so. And then maybe people getting gas how do they do this until I always start it off with what does the future look like cuz I’m constantly thinking about that what does it look like 5 years, you know head and why we we look back right so we start off with that kind of paint with a futures. [13:27] Make sure people know that this is Amazon is just part of that, but this whole voice first is huge you need to think of it like the internet even even bigger right it’s it it’s the interface for everything it’s the human technology relationship moving forward, and it makes everything accessible and simple and so I make sure people understand that and then explain some of the Core Concepts because I think even for me when I start my shift same for me cuz I’m stupid everybody should just assume for me the first time I use this is I use voice control before the stuff doesn’t really work right and that’s not what this is this is understanding intention, something called natural language understanding is not TTS it’s not looking at phonemes and actually translating them into the letters right it’s different so getting people to understand that and ways that doesn’t get to computer science he and, try to make myself look smart or anything like that right side motor stand in terms like that and then, third party that is okay well what can I do today and what have you learned. [14:30] Because I get to you lot I have this unique view of the field when I talk to somebody customers I have access to so many teams at Amazon I’m always thinking in this space A lot of times when I meet with people they just, used to freak me out was like what what can I have to offer and they’re like Dave your view the field this you meant just share with us something so you know and so that’s what I try and do as I learn new things and I talked to customers and we’ve released new features based on that feedback I includes those in the Kia Soul a lot of it is this is what customers are saying this is how people are using it today they could be using it differently a year from now and this is what you need to be thinking about and, starting to focus on. Jason: [15:08] Fair enough and so most of the listeners of this show are our brands are retailers like. 4 Brands like how should they be thinking about like is it a no-brainer that they should be building a branded skill is there a different more nuanced way they should be thinking about it. David: [15:23] That’s funny. I always feel like I’m in a Morpheus in The Matrix and they might my Syfy should write my what if I told you what if I told you and you could talk to your customer, everyday in the moment where they are on their own terms. That’s an Alexa skill or Flash briefing or in any pain but that’s what this is doesn’t exist is always been a barrier and so if that interests you it’s about what I like to call meeting your customer in the moment, and it’s your tongue got really like I was growing up in Jersey I had it you know I work two jobs since I was, gosh like 10 with a paper out but I remember one of my favorite jobs work in a movie theater. I can still tell you I would have to say to people would you like to upgrade that to a large popcorn and a large soda for only $0.25 more the big combo special right but it was that up sale in brick and mortar right there and it’s in the moment and that is, completely different than it did not purchase react hit the side button or use your fingerprint or any of that kind of stuff right you’ve already enabled it knows your voice you can set up a pin but it’s seamless and nothing beats time, right and that’s what that’s for Brands is something they just think about is customer in the moment having a conversation with them every day and. [16:48] What would they say if they could talk to you today what brands don’t know other than the help desk tickets right and I’ve seen companies now. Where they are now looking at the Amazon skill reviews as part of their entire ux cycle to know what new features they need to be releasing because it’s the easiest thing that people can just talk you know and so you need to be thinking about those things and then, lastly what I tell them is what is your brand sound like Miami for us you know podcasters and listen to felt like for me I just, I loved one for me audio I love conversation I’m always thinking in those terms but I find most brands it’s still very visual social is visual so it was a bunch of images and video and so what does it mean. [17:34] Do I use Alexis voice do I use my own voice do I have create a new voice of the company, write like Jeopardy skills Alex Trebek that you here right and then we you know based on feedback we provide more and more voices so you can generate through what we have a service and Amazon web services closed poly so I can generate all sorts of voices if I need to do that but that’s another thing that they need to start thinking about in the moment, what do I sound like one of my customers asking for where they want to have an early day so it’s, Newcastle new customer acquisition is not going to be like what you think in Mobile and wet right it’s early like early mobile web days but man if you have an existing customer and they have a device, and I’ve ordered something from you and I can just say reorder, or when is that coming right or check on a status or even games like Destiny made us feel other games and made a scale where you can just say hey what’s my friend score right like you’re just like that it’s interacting again without what I was talking about is it is human, technology that relationship together and that’s really what’s enabling and that’s to me is a couple spaces where it’s just a huge and exciting business brands, Auto Vitaly. Jason: [18:56] It is interesting the likes of the there certain brands that. Needed we have this permission to have a daily conversation with a client because of the nature of the brand in the product or whatever and it seems like it’s a no-brainer for them that they need to have a scale and be there a way to have a. David: [19:14] There’s certainly some of that like the early web days where it was like I have a skill and then you talk to the scales just about the company I mean I was building those websites for Brands back in the early 90s. Jason: [19:23] But if you’re the Weather Channel or something like it would be foolish not to. David: [19:28] Yeah yeah. Jason: [19:29] Have a skill there because again there’s people are going to get up every day and want to know what the weather is and how to get dressed. The children have a little bit with some Scott like it’s just needed to voice we talked a lot about app fatigue on the phone right and if you’re not one of the apps on the front page of the phone you get forgotten pretty quickly. David: [19:46] Yeah. Jason: [19:47] On voice we don’t even get the visual cue so the problem is there to be 300 great skills that I’ve enabled on my Alexa echo system, if I don’t have a daily reason to use them I’m likely to forget a bunch of them exist and so that like so some of these by I probably don’t want a daily relationship with Charmin toilet paper. Sherman still thinking about how are Branch it evolved in a world in which voices are super important in her face like any advice for those cut like I feel like you’re mostly going to interact with Charmander, through the native utterances on the on the Alexa platform is going to be at. David: [20:25] But what’s interesting is like. Why have a mobile app to write like you these are all of it doesn’t change any of those questions what it does changes what’s the relationship of my customer right the demographic of the customer ships, voice, you mean somebody has to understand they have to have a smartphone they have to know how to patch it after I have downloader app get the latest version of your dad if they’re using a web browser they still have to be able to patch the OS on a computer do all those things, in some of these devices you’re talkin like 5 $10 right and it’s always the latest version. There’s never been a technology as a brand where your customer has the latest version of your experience at all times right, cuz even the web I mean man, I spent so many years with all the different web browser differences there is not I’m sorry there is not one version of your and anybody that’s how to program client-side knows that and you know jQuery and other things made things easier but gosh, that is in a nightmare so it’s that except my dad and he said my mom still print out emails. But he’s never did with his money right really gave you really turn on computer my dad, you know he’s a butcher he’s retired now never touch computers life and when we’re hanging out he tells me about songs he pulled out and thinks he’s talked to you with Alexa. [21:44] And that’s when the light bulb went off for me is I’m like this is empowering man like this is like anybody can do this stuff and so maybe toilet paper isn’t important for me and my age but maybe, it is for somebody else that needs to think about stuff that right so it’s that’s what you really need to think about what’s the demographic, your customers if any demographic had access to it cuz there’s kids that are talking to everything now, because they’re used to Alexa right I hear from customers are expected to so when that happens right that opens to meet new possibilities, and so you need to focus on those things and look at existing customers when I like to tell people is. To get to the utility of speed right nothing being speed go look at your mobile app and look at the top 10 things people are doing what are they doing everyday they’re probably doing that one thing everyday cuz it’s fastest on mobile. So if you can make that faster, even if it’s just checking on the status even if it’s just a reorder or maybe it’s getting information we try to do things to make it easier to have conversations and so we have the ability for you to say something like that. [22:57] Alexa how do I remove a grass stain now I may not know what brand but a brand can respond, right cuz that’s a human being to think we may not remember the full invocation or anything like that until we try to do more and more of those things or Alexa play a game and I get some suggestions but it’s about, what you think about this is Alexis going to learn about you what do you what do you like your right and what are what’s, getting reviewed well and things like that so if that’s kind of I think. To me and this is going to sound crazy from a guy that’s spent so many years building app stores across so many platforms, but to me I don’t see that 10-15 years down the road, right cuz I put all the onus on the human being would I see 10-15 years down the road is an AI that knows me intimately that’s already out there, and remembers things so can be like hey Dave and we had a conversation a month ago about XYZ topic I just found some information about that if that’s what we want we never had that and that’s what voice is going to enable imagine trying to do that in a mobile app. Jason: [24:02] Yeah I totally agree I feel like a lot of these things that we have to explicitly enable is apps or skills or whatever like become implicit like apis or capabilities that we just. David: [24:12] I could always do it because for some reason computers, I just nerd it out on them I love them just even in like we talked about it maybe I just spent two hours like making my icons perfect. It was fun, and I used to get upset that I couldn’t share that with people cuz it’s such a joy to me and people like right like they just didn’t like it and so I knew did that was just inherently broken if there’s such that technical divide that something else has to be there right and this is it man this is the. The big enabler. Jason: [24:44] Why don’t you mention the kids screaming at the Alexa ideas funny like two things that come up in my newsfeed a lot lately you are, advice for parents that we need to teach our kids to use politeness with our our Alexa stop Alexa devices because there’s some risk of. That’s raising a less polite culture because kids are used to sharing commands at the other devices and they respond. David: [25:07] My anus is there and this isn’t a belief isn’t that starts with the family what starts with the individual first in the family and then the family. [25:18] These up to the Community Practice Community is a bunch of families and so regardless of what technology was introduced we’ve always had a set family Rules so when. Screen when we first started getting iPads and and the Kindle Fire and things like that we had to set rules around screen time. And some of those rules where you do homework first you do not know when we wake up on the weekend first thing I’m doing is not logging you into these things when we eat dinner as a family for us everybody put phones away. Included, right and so that is in something that comes with the manual for that technology has something you decide as a family and then as a culture so voice for me absolutely was that because when we first got it early days I be playing music and my, so this is 2014 so gosh she was six, and she would run into the room and say Alexa tell me a joke and I be like that’s listening to music so then we had to do a family joke that said you know like this is what’s rude this is not with rude, and you can do stuff like we did hear from families, so we enabled stuff like a follow-up mode so if Alexa does something and you say thank you she’ll say you’re welcome back she recognizes all of those things or whisper so if you a little one at home and you can be like Alexa, quiet and she’ll Whisper back which is a very interesting the first time you hear it cuz it’s so human to do that you know and so you can enable whisper mode. Jason: [26:46] Yeah I know it’s totally totally cool like the other parental thing that’s happened is Amazon has completely wiped out the the female child’s name Alexa. Parents don’t want to name their kid for you no fear of triggering all those devices Olive. David: [27:02] Yeah well I do I talk to families that have names that are similar in that they are all Amazon or Echo. Jason: [27:11] So it might be my family I have a sister-in-law named Alexis which is close enough inside where we’re at Echo family cuz we also for work say Amazon to off. David: [27:21] What’s going to be the new left handed right. Jason: [27:23] Exactly is that at that is exactly what it is so I mentioned the other listeners are retailers, the default position for a retailer is Alexa is the evil, front door of my competitor and I’m desperately rooting for any other artificial intelligence technology to win because when Alexa wins that comes attached to my competitors store, are they. If that’s true that’s fair enough like I mean there’s a lot of competitors in the world is that true or is there a way in which we like Israel and which Walmart should be thinking about how to leverage Alexa or are they right. David: [27:58] They could completely make an Alexa skill it’s open to everybody it’s interesting because even and this is going to be in iOS use Amazon services, was because they weren’t locking into an ecosystem I could use my Amazon video, my Windows device on my Android device on my iPad and I could get my Kindle book on the Kindle I had 10 years ago where I can download it onto my phone audible working across everything so it was always I always viewed Amazon. It always depends on the space that you’re in right so I always do that was on as this Innovative tech company and that that was not locking it is all about giving in the customer choice right and so for me. [28:50] I never looked at it as what you’re you’re saying that’s just a personal on an Amazon note, from day one this is been open everybody don’t charge the idea has been that voice, review is the next big disruption it’s the human. Technology interface so it has to be everywhere so we’re not going to be the one to do that we’ve got to open it up to everybody, and so that’s why you see it in the IQ and I we can make our own Echo, there’s hardware specs to lake house and then you and I can go sell it on Amazon for five bucks and we can make it the retail geek Echo, write and let me know that that Tech and so it’s, that but that benefits everybody because it’s helping customers its helping push it for its I view that the people that aren’t that would say something like that are the people that would say cuz I dealt with this years ago to that would say, that I’m not going to use HTML in the internet because Google Microsoft phones. [29:50] And no they don’t own it it’s the way that human beings are going to talk that’s what this is there’s no single company infected. Jeff has said I completely agree with him is that there’s going to be hundreds of a eyes in real life not just okay I mean Alexa maybe the one, I want you spray but there’s going to be all sorts of him and eventually we’re going to want them although to talk to each other, and that’s what this is this isn’t some smartprix speaker that you can order stuff on although you can this is a new way of human beings interacting with technology and it’s going to be in everything everywhere. Jason: [30:25] It involves the normal Trend like usually these Technologies come about and they start out as like wall Gardens where everyone wants like everything in their own echo system so I got I go to CES every year for 30 years. David: [30:37] My apologies. Jason: [30:38] It’s like I did not say it is a matter of pride, the first year there’s a voice interface for televisions everyone has invented their own voice interface and it only works in their echosystem than they imagined you can buy all the devices in your home from just from LG or Samsung and you know you walk that show three years later and. Frankly like this year there’s an Alexa and a Google logo on every one of those devices and it just. David: [31:00] Customer choice. Jason: [31:03] How to make is a better experience with a customer. David: [31:05] Nothing’s nothing’s in a vacuum all of our lives have multiple endpoints and we just want to simplify that. Jason: [31:11] You talked a little earlier you’re like hey if we looked at that uses on the phone there’s like certain things that would have weight higher usage because they’re just the the low-friction best best things to do in the phone and like there certainly is an analogous twist, her voice and relax all right until we’ve seen some of the surveys and it’s, people overwhelming we are going to use it to play music to get information you know there’s and you probably know the exact list on making it up. David: [31:36] Because we’re at bombers show. Jason: [31:37] Commerce show like we always notice like at the moment Converse is pretty low on those lists like it does not appear. The primary thing very many people are using their device for is to place orders for for stuff and I’m just curious if you have a POV is. David: [31:55] Is Jason: [31:58] You are truly an adoption or is it never likely to be the dominant thing we do the invoice or what your. David: [32:04] It will be the dominant for everything is my opinion but I mean I’m old enough to have heard people say that about the web and mobile as well, and that’s what you want man you want you want it to just you want in those early days where you’re going to see it up Tick and get in cuz that’s when you can build a really strong brand and really strong relationships. It’s early days but there’s nothing like in the moment so I’ll give you an example. If you follow like the thinking of like app store, where you can buy like Jeopardy you can buy extended and you can do more questions and things like the offer that you can do premium subscription answer today. Jason: [32:52] Forgot to take stuff the bus. David: [32:54] Nice nice and you can do the innocent and I think people are familiar with that but people were familiar with that in the beginning I mean I grew up I’d buy go to Electronics Boutique and buy a game and that was it man I wasn’t like I was spending five bucks a week on a skin I just paid one price right and so it’s funny we can get used to it and so there’s that model, but there’s also did integrates with Amazon pay so physical Goods in things like I’ve started seat like you guys have a podcast maybe you have somebody on the podcast that has a product if you had an Alexa skill where people can listen to your podcast right in the middle of it you could say you know for 50% off would you like to purchase this and then you’re getting, physical Goods in you’re getting part of that Amazon affiliate program and things like that right then you have other types of skills that look at it as an endpoint. [33:43] So I do this is It’s At Its if I don’t do it all the time but it’s my it’s my guilty pleasure I love the Domino’s thin-crust Pizza I’ve always have the grown up in Jersey and, so if I’m when I’m not traveling and we calling my house Friday night party table I’ll be like all right Friday night and so as I do is say Alexa, ask Domino’s for my easy order boom it’s already got credit cards not going through Amazon that’s an existing customer relationship, we have something that we call account linking so you don’t even have to go through Amazon use Amazon pay you don’t have to use login with Amazon you can have your own existing customer relationship they see screen it’s like a mobile, analog in a waffle those kind of things so you could use any of those providers or your own so it’s an existing customer through a different endpoint, and I’m surprised even in my own life the use in that and so I think this is my thought. [34:46] Is that nothing as human beings when it comes to technology and this is especially with purchasing beats speed. That’s why I think I shipped it and most people shipped it to mobile. Because I don’t want to go log on to my what the title is a desktop and a laptop and patch and get to the browser and figure it out is in the website and then using them over I mean it’s Common Sense instead of even using the mobile, I just say Alexa ask your brand to order my stuff. [35:17] So what does that look like when people started using that year after year after year was that look like 5 years what does that look like. People who may be caught the people that would call up a number to order stuff right I have I won’t name my in-laws that she is huge QVC Home Shopping Network all of those things. Call the number doesn’t use the app you know and so and she picked up in a wax on her own and I and was telling me about all these skills it was funny, I just want to run away maybe 1,000 scales and I were over 80,000 and. She’s like I brought it to play the Eagles she’s huge Eagles fan and I was like, you know I already I already pulled up every album I know how to search might like I I’ve never had, a relative a family member ever just run with a new piece of technology have you it’s like you literally you go there over the holidays in your patch and stuff and your training and maybe you’re trying to reorder some what are something new cuz what they have is so outdated, the song it’s like it’s an appliance the hardware is the appliance, this day is getting smart and smarter over time said that I think if you just naturally think about human behavior. Write an end how we act and if you make something easier and you give me incentives that’s just naturally the way things are going to go. Jason: [36:45] That’s right I mean I feel like there’s two points and then I would totally agree with theirs. The experience and product are going to get an exponentially better because I just wanted some everything at the magically improves and it’s just better than next day versus like these, product we have to make one go back to the drawing board design version 2 and you know it’s a much longer duration and for sure I have also in my life via in-laws seen the leapfrogging Where do I, there’s a bunch of the user interfaces that are so complicated my relatives are never going to learn them. David: [37:16] But then just let prognose in her faces yeah. Jason: [37:16] I just left brought those interfaces the laptop in the phone and now you know the voice they are they’re totally capable of embracing, the I do and I I’ll be honest I’m nervous about this opinion because I’ve shared it a bunch of times and I have the whole deck of Ono was ever going to buy clothes on the internet no one’s ever going to buy a TV on the internet and like almost any time you hear that. Precondition to no guarantee that’s going to be wrong. David: [37:43] Info. Jason: [37:46] So voice Commerce I have a slightly nuanced guess, I feel like there’s a category of stuff that people probably aren’t going to buy any internet that are high consideration, they require a bunch of complicated brand specific attributes right like so I’m not likely to go hey Alexa order I will leave Urbana leopard skin size medium. Address for 2-day delivery here’s my promo code right like out I probably will never wear in the vernacular to order a dress for the first time with all those custom words in it. But that’s how you know just one chunk of Commerce incident okay I see that Jason but I think all of this like consumables and replenishment and order the peanut butter everyone’s going to do via voice I get that response a lot and I would even say. The easiest stuff I actually think Amazon’s going to figure that out without voice like I feel like you’re just going to send me the Charmin toilet paper, and no I need it before I need it right and so. David: [38:44] Yeah but that’s just making customers lives easier. Jason: [38:47] Which is a good thing so it to me voice is going to fit in this middle Zone which could be a huge chunk but I called the Goldilocks zone. Too complicated to learn how to say and stuff that’s not perfectly predictable what my consumption pattern is right and so are your point like the pizza is. David: [39:06] Make a perfect example in this. Jason: [39:07] Check example in the Starbucks and hey I have family coming over double my peanut butter order all those kinds of things like manicuring aren’t my reoccurring. David: [39:14] Super Bowl commercial with Harrison Ford and so it’s it’s super interesting because it’s, individual based like maybe this was two or three holiday seasons ago we released like what people ordered through Alexa and people were ordering like huge stuff. Like like stuff that was like thousands of dollars I think maybe something was an engine or canoe just like. [39:43] Everybody’s different In-N-Out. And it’s also I talked a little about this on my weasenforth With Friends Podcast is as somebody who’s been gaming for 30 years it’s I buy favorite genre and I still play is massive multiplayer online game. [40:01] But I see with my kids the battery out the fortnite’s right and now they want Apex and there is a genuine General shift. In those patterns with gaming just like there is and how information is shared through social media just like information the and any parents who have teens know this they FaceTime all the time, there’s there’s did the visual seeing each other I’m more comfortable with text the chatting all right so, where’s that how easy is it for me to be in the middle of an Xbox game and or PS4 or whatever and say something like, buy me another skin pi to half up right now, just walking down the street you see you know the pizza boxes people holding it up horizontally they’re talking into it now they’re talking to text you know all of those things occurring is, there’s a study of science with epigenetics we’re with our Behavior actually turns off and on genes, and so over time is people get more and more used to that the Comfort level increases that to me is the most important thing that has happened in voice. In five years is there are people now. [41:21] And I include myself as part of this when I want to use a piece of technology to try to talk to it that’s the first thing that goes through my mind I try to ask Alexa or whatever. I didn’t exist five years ago so that to me is what. [41:37] Stuff gets ordered online because I can see you talk about I remember cuz I where I started out, in e-commerce like I was talking about and this Mac Warehouse might get some of those you know there were $5,000 $6,000 and then it was servers and stuff and so are people going to order that, cuz or they want to talk to somebody and have them walk if it’s a comfort level you know and so I never I think it’s going to be different I think it’s going to fall down into, and I think you’re going to be surprised I think people be surprised where the engagement is like this is one of things I talked about in the keynote is. I had a picture up of both a younger gentleman and an older gentleman and I said I pointed the older gentleman I said that maybe your biggest future customer. That somebody or targeting today. Gagement stare right and so I think you know those people have never had a chance because I think about if I had an opportunity to just order stuff. Cuz they’re come from. Jason: [42:40] The thing that lowered that friction enough that they can finally do it or not. David: [42:43] Wait cuz we’re basing all the data we’re basing all the data on a certain generation of people who were familiar with technology or who ramped up right and you can and so I think all that’s going to change over time. Jason: [42:56] No I told you buy that there’s tons of funny videos on YouTube of the toddler’s to get handed a magazine and they’re like trying to swipe the magazine. David: [43:03] Oh yeah my kids are like that when they are young yet. Jason: [43:05] Magazines just an iPad that’s broken to a toddler right and there’s this clip by using a lot of Dex but you may you may need to steal this but one of the original Star Trek movies they like go back in time. David: [43:15] Scotty computer. Jason: [43:17] And it’s Scotty talking to. David: [43:18] I talked about that yet that was my favorite year. Jason: [43:20] Yeah yeah he just assumed it like a horse weigh. David: [43:23] Computer. Jason: [43:25] And then when he finds out he has to use them at the. I do I’m serious though Fallout like you you mentioned the. Speech interface to the phones and you know that you are and you start to see that here and I definitely see more of that here than I used to in the in the pizza configuration. David: [43:41] What’s our primary Computing device as of right now. Jason: [43:45] Go to Asia and it’s noticeable to me how more frequent it is and so that’s like one of the my curiosity’s is like, man I see people in Shanghai like constantly talking in their phones in here it’s a little bit like I would argue it’s more natural to talk to, an Alexa. Then it is to talk to a Google Android. David: [44:06] It depends man like if I got to go pick my teen up and I see them all waiting they’re all. Jason: [44:15] Talking on there okay. David: [44:16] They’re all on the devices right purses like if I’m hanging out at work or something like that so it’s, I think a lot of that. Related it could be cultural by here you were talking about there too but it all goes down to learn to behavior and so you can’t get to any of that voice, stuff without foil learned behavior, Comfort levels things like that. Jason: [44:39] Part of me in it does just hypothesis I’m wondering if China is just a little earlier adopter a voice because, keyboard input of the simple Chinese is a little more painful than than English and so they’ve gone to voice sooner but in the long run. David: [44:58] It’s painful for everybody it’s so low bandwidth I have this problem where my brain, I think it’s way faster than I can type and I used to like be down on myself I was like I’m just a really horrible writer but I’m good at having conversation right, and I don’t mean that in an egocentric way to I do I mean that, as I don’t need to make fun of myself I have a comfort level it’s natural and so then I started doing I have Office 365 and they one of the new releases they have, dictation and I’ve been using that in my work. And I just. Tons of it’s it looks like I’m writing 15 pages but all’s I did was talk for an hour because it’s finally there and that I met an author he used to, he was one of those the co-creators of the onion it was at the digital Summit I gave in gosh now it sounds like I’m done driving I’ll just go but I was impressed by who he was, and that he had the same problem and he wrote this whole book and he said to me he was like Dave just he should he basically did it on Siri on his phone he had this app on his phone and he wrote the whole book by talking to it and so, voice, your keyboard and typing and mouse and all that it’s so low down with voice is higher bandwidth when we get to spot we’re going to be a little better. Jason: [46:24] So that that’s actually good pivot to our last question cuz we’re coming out on time. The folks jump in the time machine and go to the show 5 years from now and catch you know what we’re all talking about like we do things in a surprise than the most like what’s going to be, the most surprising thing is is it is there going to be an Alexa that plugs in or brain or what you know. David: [46:46] I know gosh I have to I always go way out for me. Jason: [46:51] Okay even go further yeah I’m good with that. David: [46:53] Well I think the way that you can predict the future is to go way out and then you’ve got to pull it back because everything’s done in Milestone so if I was going to say 5 years. I think what we’ll start to see is that. The human isn’t the major driver like technology today is very what I would call a veteran, I have to initiate something as a human being I’m looking for something as a human being I’ve turned something I push a button I’ve done all of those things. I think within five years there going to be a eyes that know us well enough. That it becomes a way to amplify ourselves and what I mean by that is. [47:37] When is has been proven right is that you have to have a conversation about a topic in order to learn how you feel about that topic know to defend your position into this is why you know in groups that you can come up with better ideas because of that process but if I have an AI that I can have a conversation with rise me up like the Star Trek Holodeck, right you can go back and talk with Einstein and Newton and things like that that’s real when we get to that point, that wooden locks in human potential is huge because my biggest problem is like, my OneNote man is like 10,000 different entries right and I’m searching and it’s all these thoughts I’ve had and I Journal a lot and I think about things a lot but I’m like, I just wish my brain could access that better and I think that’s where we’re going to head is there’s going to be a digital self of me it’s going to understand that. And is going to be able to interject on things like I’m working on an idea and it’s like actually Dave five years ago you had a similar idea and by the way you were feeling this way around the time cuz I’ve also found in journaling that I go through, very cyclical emotions based on other things which I wasn’t attending self-awareness is very very key right and. [48:51] Not to get existential or anything like that but I think that’s what AI is going to allow everybody to get more self-aware who they are and the type of questions they answer and everything else is just barfing opinions of everybody else and not listening right and it also allows I think it’s. If we go out more than 5 years it allows Legacy imagine if a hundred years from now you know my, great great great in a kids could talk to me and that’s the reason why I podcast so much as I know there’s going to be the ability for an AI to go through, how I respond in conversation in my thoughts and my experiences there already is some of those kind of experimental Services you can say and just be able to have a conversation with me you know and that’s going to tie us together, you’re feeling the same way that my great-great-great done the same stuff I do you know and so I think that is with all of this is going to be able to, invoice I think voices the beginning of it it’s I like that’s why I like this a conversation in folks on human beings cuz I think voice is, start I think we can we can understand a little bit and we can speak a little bit but we still can’t see we still don’t know feelings, and if there’s so many other things touch there’s so many other things we as human beings just inherently are great at ability to detect emotion in face, I think when we go out 20-30 years that that stuff will also come into play more does that mean right. Jason: [50:21] Visual Commerce you. David: [50:22] You got it dude and yeah and then you got to be careful The Uncanny Valley and things like that with people game freak which to human. Jason: [50:33] I told you I hope that none should I come to pass and that’s going to be a great place to leave it cuz I have burn through are a lot of time as always, questions we can get you on the show feel free to drop us a note on Facebook and we’ll continue the conversation there if you enjoy the show we sure would love it if you jump on iTunes and give us that five star review, David and listeners want to connect with you or or learn more about what you’re up to what’s the like are you. David: [50:54] About what you’re up to what my vanity and my vanity URL is just the Dave Dev so the Dave dtv.com and that’s my Twitter LinkedIn email podcast everything. Jason: [51:07] Awesome if you’re driving don’t write that down I will put it in the show notes and you can you can click on it when you get to your destination David really appreciated talking you thanks very much for taking the time. David: [51:17] Thank you for having me on. Jason: [51:18] Until next time happy commercing.

Robin Stuart started off as a paralegal until she was challenged one day to get her boss's password. (Hint: Do not challenge Robin). Fast forward she switched careers to Technology but kept a lookout for a career in security. Speaker Bio Veteran cyber crime investigator and contributing author to the Handbook for Information Security by Wiley. She is also debut author in cyber crime fiction with a short story in the Sisters in Crime NorCal anthology Fault Lines, which is due out in early 2019. She consults on all things cyber security for Fortune 100 companies, television shows, and media outlets, including BBC and NowThis News. She was a significant contributor to the Tech Museum of Innovation's acclaimed Cyber Detectives interactive installation, one of the museum's most popular permanent exhibits, which earned praise from the Obama Administration. Quotes: "Years of being a paralegal, I think like a lawyer and that's helped me very well" "My Google works a little better than other people's Google" Someone said to Robin once: "I've got an hour... can you teach me everything you know?" "Taught myself Assembly by writing a program all in assembly, just to prove to myself that I understood it." Notes: Combination of Enthusiasm and Perseverance Creativity matters a lot! Setting up a home lab to train Robin's First "Hack"! EPIC! There isn't a linear path into information security, no need for a degree necessarily Links: Robin Stuart on Twitter Robin's Upcoming CyberCrime Short Story Robin's Twitter Year Up Program Lexis Nexus DB Shellcoder's Handbook Information Security Handbook by Wiley Reversing Practical Malware Analysis Outro Music

What's it like to found your first startup in your late 30's after a successful Silicon Valley career where you've worked at someone of the biggest names in tech, then watch that company get acquired for $50M and next - instead of just kicking back and enjoying the fruits of your labor - going on to launch yet another startup in what is arguably a pretty crowded space? You'll get that story, plus a lot more in this conversation with the founder of Allume, an on-demand personal shopping service that matches women with experienced stylists who help them find clothing and accessories that fit their body, budget and style. Previously, the founder and CEO of Citrus Lane, a subscription box service for parents that was acquired by Care.com in 2014, this week's guest has held leadership roles at eBay, got her start at Netscape, holds two CS degrees from Stanford and currently serves on the boards of Fossil Group, The Tech Museum of Innovation and theBoardlist. Meet this week's guest, Mauria Finley, Founder and CEO of Allume. What you'll learn The market is changing, and Allume is taking advantage of the shift. With declining foot traffic in malls and the consumer demand for new brands and unique finds, find out why Mauria decided to fill in the gap and grow a successful business connecting women with real stylists who hunt down ideal fashion finds online and serve them up in curated, shoppable lookbooks that improve over time. How you'll be inspired Is stress getting a bad rap? What about the joy that comes when you're really in a flow state with the hard work you're doing day-in, day-out? In this episode, Mauria breaks the mold and posits a new idea: that stress while building a new business isn't necessarily a bad thing, especially if it's part of what's making you happy and excited every single day. What you'll tell your friends By the way, you don't have to be in your 20s to launch a successful startup. As Mauria shares in this episode of the Spirit of 608 podcast, she launched her first startup at 38, and it was acquired for $50M. Now, she's onto her next venture and says you can feel just as confident and have success (cough, maybe more) when you're "Silicon Valley old" as you can when you're young. Resource of the week From Mauria, we get an IRL resource recommendation: a close circle of female entrepreneur friends. Listen to the show for how a trusted group of fellow entrepreneurs is the one thing Mauria says anyone building a business today needs to have on lock. Connect with Mauria Finley Website: allume.co Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/allumestyle Instagram: @allumestyle Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/allumestyle/ Mentioned in this episode: Netscape AOL eBay PayPal Fossil Group Vogue Citrus Lane Atari Jujube Stitch Fix Rent the Runway Bloomingdale's Soul Society Peloton T-shirt motto: I used to run with doubt, but then I left her behind. Find more episodes featuring women at the forefront of FEST online at www.Spiritof608.com.

This week, Chelsea, Natalie, and Emily team up with Nerd Nite Silicon Valley for a live show at the Tech Museum in San Jose. For this extreme-themed show, Natalie talks about engineering an entire organism from scratch and Chelsea covers building electronics IN SPACE… Plus, we bring back our mini-game show segment "WHY IS THIS A THING?"

Our guest this week is Danny Haeg. Danny is currently the Director of Creative Collisions at the Tech Museum in San Jose, California. He moved here from Minnesota to jump into the simmering maker-melting-pot that is Silicon Valley.

By Alison van Diggelen, host of Fresh Dialogues I recently attended Silicon Valley’s Tech Awards, and despite the inspiring innovators from around the world, there was an underlying mood of disquiet (even alarm) as Silicon Valley adjusts to the imminent reality of a Donald Trump presidency. I asked Tim Ritchie, President of the Tech Museum, what his predictions are for […]

We start the show with a discussion of 2 Factor Authentication on Apple IDs. We discuss the Best Burritos in the US. We answer Allan Edmonds #askMTJC question about our first computers and our predictions for the next 5 years. We follow up on Mark's iPhone swollen battery. We discuss whether to buy AppleCare, the discuss the delay in Apple Mac hardware, SoftBank's purchase of Arm, the rumored iPhone 7 Pro and iOS Beta Periods. We also discuss iOS 9.3.3 security update. Picks: Scrivener for iOS Effective Objective-C 2.0 Episode 101 Show Notes: Apple Two Factor Authentication 1Password America's Best Burrito Ferry Farmer’s Market at the Embarcadero Allan Edmonds Mac Classic Commodore PET Atari 800 Power Macintosh Macintosh IIcx SE/30 Macintosh II PDP 11 QWERKYWRITER Computer History Museum Tech Museum of Innovation AppleCare Plus So where are all the new Macs for 2016 MacRumors Buyer's Guide - Mac Hackintosh ARM: the weightless corporation that outweighs Intel P.A. Semi Apple might announce 3 different iPhone 7 models this year iOS version release date history About the security content of iOS 9.3.3 Beware! Your iPhone Can Be Hacked Remotely With Just A Message Reversing the wall Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard Erin Thomas (Mrs. Aaron) Episode 101 Picks: Scrivener for iOS Effective Objective-C 2.0 Flixel wins Best Startup

This week's episode of Travel Today with Peter Greenberg  from the third largest city in California and a destination worth putting on your radar: San Jose, California. Joining Peter Greenberg will be Tim Ritchie, President of the Tech Museum, one of the great innovation centers in the city and a great environment for education and scientific exploration for both children and adults. Mayor Sam Liccardo talks about San Jose being the tenth largest city in the United States and how it is preparing for Super Bowl 50. Mark Purdy, sports columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, gives insider tips on how to get tickets to the big game, as well as cut-rate deals on Super Bowl merchandise (no matter who is playing in the game). Ken Middlebrook, Collections Manager at History San Jose, talks about the state’s former capital and how San Jose both prospered from—and barely survived—the gold rush.  Last but not least, local hero and former NFL quarterback Jim Plunkett dissects the changes in professional football over the last 30 years. He also talks about the necessity for the new Levi’s Stadium and how this may be a game changer for the city. There’s all of that and more as Travel Today with Peter Greenberg comes from the Fairmont San Jose in San Jose, California.  

This week's episode of Travel Today with Peter Greenberg  from the third largest city in California and a destination worth putting on your radar: San Jose, California. Joining Peter Greenberg will be Tim Ritchie, President of the Tech Museum, one of the great innovation centers in the city and a great environment for education and scientific exploration for both children and adults. Mayor Sam Liccardo talks about San Jose being the tenth largest city in the United States and how it is preparing for Super Bowl 50. Mark Purdy, sports columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, gives insider tips on how to get tickets to the big game, as well as cut-rate deals on Super Bowl merchandise (no matter who is playing in the game). Ken Middlebrook, Collections Manager at History San Jose, talks about the state’s former capital and how San Jose both prospered from—and barely survived—the gold rush.  Last but not least, local hero and former NFL quarterback Jim Plunkett dissects the changes in professional football over the last 30 years. He also talks about the necessity for the new Levi’s Stadium and how this may be a game changer for the city. There’s all of that and more as Travel Today with Peter Greenberg comes from the Fairmont San Jose in San Jose, California.  

Happy New Year, Nerds! This week, we discuss Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens at length and we warn you now, its full of huge, devastating spoilers. LISTENER DISCRETION ADVISED!!!  We also feature audio recorded at the December 17th early premiere at the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, CA. Click here to download the podcast […] The post The Nerds Awaken – Double Episode Star Wars Spectacular! appeared first on NERDONOMY.

From the Archives - Read the full Your Mark on the World article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1hWGbAK. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. The Tech Museum in Silicon Valley recognizes innovators who are making an impact in the world at its annual , now in its 14th year. For 2014, YouNoodle is helping to drive the program to get more nominations. YouNoodle is mentoring a pool of early applicants already, but it’s not too late to apply. Applications are now open through May 6, 2014. Please consider whether a friend or colleague might benefit from this piece and, if so, share it.

It's a Mousetalgia Emporium this week! Jeff reports from a presentation by Lorne Peterson who spoke at The Tech Museum of Innovation about his history as a model maker for Industrial Light and Magic, working on Star Wars, and how Super Glue changed his life. Dave and Becky report on an encounter with Walt Disney World's interactive Mickey Mouse meet and greet, and Kristen offers a review of Imagineer Jason Grandt's "The Magic Kingdom Storybook." We also premiere "Cast Member Corner," where we will talk on occasion to Disney cast members who worked on the front lines to bring guests "the magic." Today, Rhiannon joins the show to discuss the art of ear hat writing, meeting celebrities in the park, and watching Tinker Bell crash land behind Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. Plus - our Disney-related resolutions, getting stranded on the Matterhorn... and more!

Talked to Glen Trip founder of Camp Galileo, a Bay Area summer camp focused on fostering innovation and creativity in kids through active participation in summer camps across the areaTRANSCRIPTSpeaker 1:Okay. Speaker 2:This is method to the madness on KALX Berkeley 90.7 FM university and listener supported radio. My name is Ali Nasar and today we have Glenn Tripp, the founder of Galileo, learning with us. Hello Glenn. Hi, it's great to be here. Hey, thanks for joining us. So we'd like to start off the program with talking about, um, kind of the problem statement. So you started this organization, but kind of what was the problem statement you saw when you started it? Speaker 1:Well, we got the, Saul started back in the fall of 2001 and right [00:00:30] about that time is when the no child left behind legislation passed, which was going to have the effect of focusing schools more narrowly on core academic subjects. And yet at the same time, the first 30 years of my life has shown me that what seemed to really matter in organizations and in personal fulfillment was the idea of being creative and innovative in our lives. And so it seemed like there was an opportunity to try to create some sort of program [00:01:00] that would really embrace the importance of creativity and innovation. And as schools were starting to focus more narrowly on course, I'd, I thought, hey, people care about art, people care about engineering and science education and maybe I could provide that sort of thing under one roof in the summertime. Okay. Speaker 1:So, um, tell us about your path. So you say that you, you know, you, you understood the power of creativity and innovation. Where did that come from? Well, you know, I graduated [00:01:30] from Stanford back in 1992 and I went into management consulting for a couple of years and moved on after I got, um, some great experience there and worked for a different education organization that ran after school programs. And both of those organizations were sort of fast moving early stage organizations where I got to see the power of creative problem solving and the power of group collaboration and innovation. And it seemed like the people that were having the most success [00:02:00] were those who were able to find an opportunity or see something that, uh, was a way that the company could improve or move forward and really make contributions there. And so that seemed to be more powerful in some ways than some of the core academic work that I had done. Speaker 1:So I just thought, gosh, it would be great if we could have an educational program that really emphasized those things more. Did you have a, um, can you see a common thread between the people who were able to kind of innovate and the people that had to kind of follow [00:02:30] those people? Well, the, uh, the thing that stood out the most to me was that one group of people saw themselves as actors in the world, you know, not, and then there was another group of people who seem to be more recipients of what the world would provide to them. And I know that as a parent and as a citizen, I think what I want for all kids is for them to grow up and feel like they can be actors in the world and imagine a life for themselves and, um, [00:03:00] create a vision for themselves and they go out and turn that vision into reality. Speaker 1:And that seemed to be a core differentiator between different types of people. Okay. So, um, so you, you came up with the idea. Yup. Right. And it sounds like you kind of saw you were working with another camp. Is that right? Did I hear you say that? Um, I was working for an afterschool educational program company for about seven years and um, that particular organization was focused on teaching core academic subjects like math and [00:03:30] language arts. And so this was a change for me. This was a chance to really delve into more creative things and offer that up tickets. Well, it's really exciting because you wanted to create a environment for innovation and creativity, but it takes a lot of innovation and creativity to create that environment. So, and I, I've had a lot of entrepreneurs and founders of organizations and nonprofits on this show and one of the things I'm always fascinated about is to kind of get into the process of how [00:04:00] you take the leap from having a nice steady paycheck and a job and you have this idea and then you've kind of cut to take this, this leap of faith. Speaker 1:So can you tell, walk us through that process. How did you decide to do that? Because I think it's very appropriate for, you know, the people that you're trying to train to is that you have to have a leap of faith that you want to take if you're an innovator. So how did you do that? Yeah, it definitely was a big change because I was part of a rapidly growing and successful organization and you know, around [00:04:30] 2001 when I moved on from that organization, I was newly married, had been married a year. My, um, wife and I decided to have kids and, and my wife was pregnant at the time when I got Gallio started. So here we were in our, in our new home and our new life together and I wanted to go off and do this thing that was, seemed a little bit risky. Speaker 1:And so one of the things that was really great about that time is that my wife was super supportive of this idea and, and [00:05:00] we, we kind of agreed together that whatever leaps that we would take, wherever we landed, it would be fine, that we would work through it and get to whatever was next. And so, um, I just started to reach out to people who might be interested in this idea. And I found a couple of friends who were very supportive of, of the concept. And I went down and I had a meeting with an organization called Klutz, which is a book publisher based out of Palo Alto, fantastic organization [00:05:30] and got some ideas from them. And then I went and I met with the Tech Museum of innovation down in San Jose with the education team. And, uh, they were very supportive of the idea and said that they would, would be willing to contribute some, um, curriculum and some support, uh, to getting the program started. Speaker 1:And so, you know, one by one we started to just line up friends and fellow advocates for this kind of education. And that led us to finding a place to start the first camp [00:06:00] in Palo Alto. And, uh, before we knew it, we had created a brochure and started putting it out there in the community. And the one 800 line rang to my home. And, uh, before we knew the program was fall for that summer, we had 264 kids sign up. And so we felt like we'd really hit on something that was interesting to people. Well year was that, this is in the summer of 2002 that we started the first program. Okay. So, um, and what was your pitch to like when you went to the Tech Museum of innovation? I mean, what were you telling them you wanted to [00:06:30] do? Well, what I said is I that I wanted to create a program that would bring design challenge learning to a summer program that we wanted to bring kids together and create a really fun joy-filled learning community where we would pose engineering challenges to kids where we would introduce them to artists and art movements. Speaker 1:And we would also do a lot of fun up things in the outdoors. And would the tech museum be interested in spreading its mission beyond its [00:07:00] museum walls is, I think that's what we represented for them. A chance to take some of the important approaches that they had been developing there and to do them in more communities and they got really excited about it and they actually, you know, we're willing to put their brand on the program. So that was one of the things I think that helped us initially was that in our very first brochure, the Tech Museum and Klutz both had agreed to put their names on the program is as co creators of the program. And that really helped us out. [00:07:30] That's pretty helpful with it cause they have a pretty good name. And especially in Palo Alto and yeah, both of those organizations were very well respected in Palo Alto. Speaker 1:So I think that that was one of the things that gave us credibility out of the box and it's people were interested in coming to a program that, uh, offered the, you know, a museum quality experience in their neighborhood school. Now is a program, an overnight program or is this a day program? These are all day programs and they now operate in 38 different communities around the bay area. So we tend to work with the either public school [00:08:00] districts or independent schools and transform their campuses into, um, you know, very creative spaces that, uh, come to life in a, in a, in a week to week basis. So kids tend to come for a week at a time. Many of them come for three or four weeks each summer. The programs tend to run for about eight or eight or nine weeks at the different locations. Okay. Speaker 1:We are listening to method to the madness on KALX Berkeley 90.7 FM. And we're speaking with Glenn Tripp, the founder of Galileo learning. And so Glen, when you, um, [00:08:30] started that you had the 260 or so kids, the first camp, how did you come up with the curriculum? How do you, how do you create that from scratch? Right. And that was, I think part of the, the amusing part of this story is we created the name and created the brochure before we actually had the program. And that's I think what innovation and prototyping is all about, right? Is that we were sitting there and we came up with a basic proposition and we had some allies, but we didn't yet have a curriculum. And so I sat down [00:09:00] with the, we started to hire staff or that summer we put together a team of just 12 people and we consulted other resources out in the community. Speaker 1:We worked with the Tech Museum, we worked with clots. So we worked with other, other educators out there and we started to write the curriculum for that summer. And, um, you know, by the time June rolled around and we had a, a nice, nice set of, uh, um, activities and themes that we would try out with the kids. And then when we saw it in action and we knew we had gotten a lot of things right. But of course we learned a lot from those first weeks too. [00:09:30] Sure. So can you give us some examples of what are the types of things that kids do at the camp? Oh, sure. Well, you know, at the elementary we, first of all, we have programs for elementary school kids and we have programs for middle school kids at the elementary school level. We choose a weekly theme. Like, um, amusement park might be an example of something that we might do. Speaker 1:And that's something we have going on in the summer. And so, um, kids depending on their age level, will do different kinds of activities. They'll go into the science lab and they will learn how to make roller [00:10:00] coasters or you know, create electrical circuits to create a ride that is of their own design. And the art side. They might learn how to paint or draw or do sculpture related to that theme. Um, in the amusement park example, we're actually teaching them how to do graphic designs so they can actually design the, um, the, how the rides might be titled Or, um, you know, what sort of graphics might be surrounding it. And along the way they might learn about, for example, Alexander Calder who did a lot of great [00:10:30] sculpture, um, examples around circuses. So you know, that we try to tie together the art and the science themes in an integrated way so that, um, we kind of break down those walls between science and art. Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great because, you know, as a, as a math guy and a tech guy, I've always, um, thought that there is a very, um, close correlation between art and science. And I think that's not necessarily thought of in the general population of those things [00:11:00] being, you know, very directly correlated. But if you look at a computer science problem, there's usually, you know, a hundred different ways you can solve that problem. Sure. And the, the route you take is, you know, that's very artistic. To me it's, it's, it's this expression. And I think one of the misconceptions people often have is that creativity is about knowing how to draw or paint or you know, maybe be in a play or something like that. When in reality, creativity, um, is crucial for any kind [00:11:30] of endeavor that you can imagine. Whether or not you're developing a cure for cancer or, you know, being an accountant for a big company. Speaker 1:I mean, all of these things require creative leadership. Sure. And it's also one of the greatest assets of America. You know, our country has always, um, pushed forward because of our creative nature and our ability to innovate and, and see things that maybe other people don't see. And I've always attributed that I think to the cultural mix of America, the great melting pot where you have a lot of different [00:12:00] people with different perspectives coming together and that a lot of creativity is born from those kinds of frictions of different points of view looking at each other. Um, so it's great that you have something that's really trying to be a lab to incubate that and, and, and grow it, especially in the bay area because this is kind of the center of innovation, right? I would think that you've gotten a lot of support from the bay area community over now. Speaker 1:You've been in business for 10 years or something like this is our 12th or 12th summer coming up here and we've had, you know, over a hundred thousand [00:12:30] kids attend our program this summer alone, we'll have 35,000 attendees. So it's, it's definitely a message that people are hearing and responding to. I think, um, from President Obama on down, there's been a big call for developing a new generation of innovators and it's, it's super crucial at a national level that we put more energy towards this. So there's been a lot of talk, but I think that there's, um, there hasn't been a lot of, um, movement yet in [00:13:00] the direction of, uh, restructuring schools, structures or curriculum or to, to develop more innovators. And parents themselves I think are still, you know, while they're perhaps intrigued by the idea of creativity and innovation is still hard for them to let go of some of the constructs that they may have picked up from their own childhood about what education is. Speaker 1:And so, um, I do hope that we can, I do hope that we can continue to find ways to build this [00:13:30] more into our thinking about what it means to raise kids. Yeah. It does seem like there's a huge opportunity for the education system to reinvent itself with all the new technology and learning. I know, um, there's this story about, um, George Lucas soul star wars, um, to Disney, right. And he's gonna donate almost all that money to reforming education in America. Right. Um, and I think his organization called Edutopia is a great example of an organization that's really trying to encourage the [00:14:00] use of project based learning in schools, which is the approach that we use in our, in our summer programs and projects that are super compelling way for kids to learn. And when you frightened, you know, when you put things in the context of a compelling project like at our camps, building a go-cart or making a film or creating a radio, a radio program or whatever that might be, now you're creating a context and a purpose for kids to learn. Speaker 1:It's not just facts for facts six, but you're actually teaching them [00:14:30] concepts that are important to solving the project. And that then becomes a totally different story. Now kids are engaged and they're ready to start to take risks. So then on top of that, you layer on the need for a culture that supports risk-taking and a culture that encourages kids to believe that it's their place to imagine something that's not there and then go out and turn that into reality. It's, I think it's those two things together. The combination of [00:15:00] powerful project based learning and an environment or culture that supports risk taking and breaks down fear for kids that can become such a powerful combination. Have you, um, seen in the 12 years you guys have been operating, have you seen a change in the children because you know that that 12 years is in terms of uh, the pace of change for humanity has been incredible in terms of things like Google and Wikipedia and these things. Speaker 1:We're just getting started [00:15:30] in 2001, 2002, but now they're hugely powerful tools. What, how has that affected the children then their um, receptiveness to the camp and the idea that you guys are giving them there? Well, I think that that it's really a tale of two cities or maybe two stories within one bay area, city here. On one hand we see that kids are less likely to want to take risks today than they were 12 years ago. And that's backed up by um, the different types of creativity [00:16:00] research that's out there that people are becoming or the children in particular are becoming a little bit more concerned with getting the right answer to things and a little bit more nervous about engaging in open ended design. Um, what, why is that? Do they have the most common theories are that it's because we've created such an emphasis on getting the right answer and our standardized testing programs. Speaker 1:So, uh, that coupled with just general societal pressure of getting [00:16:30] better and performing it, everything that kids do, whether or not it's private baseball coaching lessons that kids get or the, you know, 20 to 30 days spent testing per year in the, in the 180 school, 180 day school year. All of those things have our kids, especially kids and kind of upper income or upper middle income neighborhoods. Being very focused on performance and getting the right answer and wanting to perform against external standards. While there might be some benefits to all that. The [00:17:00] negative side is that it, it makes kids, like kids often want to be told what to do. Um, the other dynamic that's going on as the kids are extremely scheduled and a lot of their days and weeks consists of being told what to do from point a to point B to point c each day. Speaker 1:So when kids have less autonomy to make decisions or direct their day or figure out what they're gonna, how they're going to play. And when kids are more concerned about, um, testing and the rigorous are performing well and other people's sides, it just makes them a little bit to [00:17:30] it. It reduces their proclivity to take risks. At the same time, there are all these neat new tools that kids are learning how to use. So we have kids that are making films and we have kids that are building apps and we have kids who are, um, participating in the maker fair. And there, there are many bright spots in the story I think that are showing that there, um, that, that there are a group of kids that are really responding to the new opportunities that are out there. There's a lot going on. Yeah. Speaker 2:So it sounds like it's [00:18:00] kind of, um, uh, it's really interesting because I would've thought the second part of your answer would have been more, um, what I, where I thought kids would might be going would be because of the kind of democratization of information and the ability to create on an iPad. You can mix a song or you can do so many different things and they have access to a lot of stuff. They would become, you know, more open and receptive to creativity. But what you're saying makes a lot of sense. Speaker 1:Well, I think there's attention attention there and I think one of our jobs as parents and educators [00:18:30] is to try to see how we can use all of these tools for, um, for good. I know that, um, you know, I think a lot of the ways that kids are using, um, the technology is for distraction or, or entertainment just like we as adults often do. But boy, the amazing tools that are coming out right now, um, should provide, um, a lot of great opportunities for, for creativity. And so I think, uh, um, the key is to just [00:19:00] figure out which of those ones or which of those tools are most useful for creativity. And, and to also teach the kids the skills that they need to do the thing. You know, it's not enough to, to give somebody a copy of I movie and have them, you know, make a few edits, but let's really teach them how to, um, use story to express something because it's, it's a combination of the tool but also the age old needs that we have is to tell a story. Speaker 1:And so, um, the opportunities are there and there's a lot of great [00:19:30] things percolating. I mentioned the maker fair and there's young maker groups sprouting out around, sprouting up around the bay area, which is really exciting. There's Lego robotics leaks now that didn't use to exist. Um, there's code.org that recently launched and is trying to get kids excited about coding and has all sorts of great online resources. There's a new group called hacker scouts that's recently been formed that is creating guilds of young makers all around the bay area and beyond. There's a new website called diy.org [00:20:00] which offers great, um, ways for kids to learn new skills online and create community with other kids. So, so many great new things are emerging and, um, and, and of course there's programs like Galileo that I think are also meeting that need. So I think it is an exciting time for innovation. There is a movement brewing. It's gonna take some work. Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, you're listening to method to the madness, a show dedicated to the innovative spirit of the bay area on KALX Berkeley 90.7 FM. And we're sitting here talking to the founder of Galileo learning. [00:20:30] This is Glenn trip. And, uh, my name is Eileen Huizar and I wanted to ask you, Glenn. So operationally, it's an interesting meth, um, model because, um, you have kind of a seasonal type of operation where you have to recruit and create Speaker 1:this massive thing. It's about 35,000 kids this summer. So tell us about the challenges of that. How do you, what's the staff side? How do you make that happen? Right. Well, I think that the thing [00:21:00] that's most, I mean I always like to think that Gallo has two parts of its secret sauce, the first being a series curriculum development effort that, that invest hundreds of thousands of dollars every year developing a new and fresh curriculum related to this purpose. But, um, but what parents tell us more frequently and most of all is that the staff that we hire are passionate and enthusiastic, engaged and highly, you know, highly motivated, intelligent people. And, um, so [00:21:30] I think that thing that we're probably have developed the greatest competencies around is how to attract and select and then support and incredible staff. I mean this summer we will have 1100 staff members, um, half of whom are college graduates, professional educators who are leading the instruction, the other half of whom are, um, college students who support the instruction and provide the, um, group leadership and management for the kids. Speaker 1:And, and that's [00:22:00] one of the things we wanted to do differently when we started this program was, you know, since so many day camps are run by high school students and college students, we wanted to up the ante and involved professional educators who really buy into our, our message and who can bring their skilled instruction to achieving this outcome with kids. So yeah. So every year we mount this massive effort to bring on 1100 or more people into the system. Fortunately we retain a very high percentage of the last years group. [00:22:30] But reaching out to college campuses and to schools and to museums and through all sorts of ag organizations is a big part of what we do every year. I think the thing that attracts people to working for gala and the thing that keeps them coming back is that we one our really high integrity about our mission and to from the moment they become part of our organization, we're very, very interested in how we can support their professional development. Speaker 1:So everybody who comes in [00:23:00] is viewing this as an opportunity to become a better educator and they get supported every step of the way. So, um, we really take the whole leadership and team development part really seriously and, and I think that's why we have so many applicants. Okay, great. So, um, you're getting back to the kids. Can you, um, can you give any kind of of your favorite stories or examples of, you know, projects or something that came out that you were blown away with, with the kids came up with? [00:23:30] Yeah, I just, last summer, um, we introduced what we call go-karts extreme for our middle school students. We have one week of go-karts where the kids build, um, a go-kart is a sort of start. So they start with wood and drive, train and wheels in a over the course of their week, build a build a go cart from scratch and it's pretty challenging. Speaker 1:It takes a lot of hard work. There's a lot of drilling, there's a lot of song, there's a lot of painting, there's a lot of sanding, there's a lot of design work. And um, in the end they get to ride [00:24:00] around in their cart, which is something that I really love. Now. Last year we added a program called extreme go-carts where they could bring their go-karts back and take them to the next level. And that was super fun to see because at that point the kids are more competent with their tools. They have more confidence about the whole workshop environment. And then I started to see girls and boys who were turning their go-carts into convertibles. I saw kids adding drink, you know, Cup holders. I saw kids [00:24:30] adding special trunks that could open and close. And my favorite thing is watching kids add sound systems to their go-karts. So they actually created ways that they could plug in their iPods and play them as they rode around in their, in their go-karts. And when you see a girl go from not having ever handled a, an electric drill to, you know, drilling in and designing her whole sound system on the go cart, that's a pretty incredible thing to see. Speaker 2:Yeah. That's awesome. So what music was she playing this calc? So you have to ask [00:25:00] them. I'm just joking. So, um, all right. So now that you've been around for 12 years, do you have any, um, of your, of your students who have gone on and do you have any success stories that you can share with us of what did, what did Galileo to have? Do we have any, someone started Facebook or not exactly. Speaker 1:Well, I know that there was a, one of our campers who, um, got some, uh, some press last year for developing an app, um, while she was in high school that was getting [00:25:30] some traction in science. So that's kind of a neat little success story. We've had a number of campers grow into staff members now, which has been a really exciting thing to see. And I, I, uh, often have a chance to interact with them and hear stories about how they have put their, uh, the skills that they learned at camp to work in their school environment. You know, I like here those, there's a story of a high school student who, um, had both camp come to us as a camper and then later worked with us as a high school intern [00:26:00] and she had started a, um, a filmmaking club on campus. And the thing that she told me was that she had, uh, been inspired by the idea that, hey, if there's not something in the world that you want to be there, and let me say this another way. Speaker 1:If you see a need, if you see, if you wish there was a filmmaking club, you don't have to just wish that there was a film making club. You can actually wish that into reality if you take the steps to creating that on your campus. And she had started a filmmaking club on campus. And I thought that that was a really [00:26:30] great example of somebody who was taking initiative and not being just reactive to what the world gives them, but being proactive in terms of creating an outcome that she wanted. And that's the, that's the kind of thing that we're hoping for that when kids get to high school, when they get to college, that they, um, see themselves as authors in the world. Great. And so I like to always kind of end on, um, asking a founder, like, you who seen this program start from 260 kids to 35,000 kids and you know, such, you've [00:27:00] gotten such great traction and feedback, um, five years from now, where is Galileo going to be? Speaker 1:Well, the first thing is we had, we'd like to, and we've always believed that we will, we won't really want to be deeply part of growing up in the bay area. You know, right now we have a chance to work with our kids for a few weeks each summer. And we would love to figure out ways to go deeper with them throughout the school year. Whether or not that's afterschool programs or weekend workshops or online communities or other things. We would really like to be [00:27:30] more of a day to day part of their lives and their family lives. In the past few months I've started doing parent education workshops around these themes and for example, just got to do on last night in Saratoga where we had a couple of hundred parents who were very interested in the idea of how they can nurture creativity home. I would like to see a support this kind of learning at home as well. Speaker 1:So that's, that's our first goal is to just keep getting better and better here in the bay area and fulfill our vision of, of trying to, uh, um, really have [00:28:00] the kind of deep impact that we want to have on the kids that we work with along the way. We'll decide if there are other metro areas that, um, we think that this could work in and, and we'll consider that. But my number one goal is to really create an institution that is respected here in the bay area and that, um, we'll go on and on long after I'm involved with it. So. Oh, agree. That's actually a, interestingly enough, that's a lot of the, the founders same mentality is I want to create something that is bigger than me and it goes on forever. So sounds like [00:28:30] you're well on your way, so congratulations. Thank you. Speaker 1:Um, and uh, for the people listening, how can they get involved? How can they learn more? Right. Well, probably the easiest way is to go to our website, which is www.galileo-camps.com and that has information on both jobs that might be available for the summer, um, or year round jobs. We're always hiring. And it also has information on the camps themselves for any parents out there that are interested in nurturing creativity in their kids. Okay. Well thanks Glenn. And this has been method to the madness on KLX Berkeley. [00:29:00] You can check us out a method to the madness.org and thanks for joining everybody. Have a great day. Thank you. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Voyteks created the Brain Systems, Connections, Associations, and Network Relationships engine, or brainSCANr. The tool is used to explore the relationships between different terms in peer reviewed publications. http://brainscanr.com/TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum [00:00:30] the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 3: Good afternoon. I'm Rick Karnofsky. Brad swift and I are the hosts of today's show. We're speaking with Jessica and Bradley Vojtech. Jessica is a designer and a developer who earned her master's of information management and systems here at cal and has [00:01:00] worked on several UC Berkeley websites. She's also working on the future of science education through projects like ned the neuron. Brad is in NIH, N N I g m s postdoctoral fellow at ucs f. He got his phd from cal. He's a prolific blogger and Zombie expert. The void techs are here to talk about brain systems, connections and associations and network relationships or brain scanner. This website helps people explore [00:01:30] how neuroscience terms relate to one another in the peer reviewed literature. They've documented their project in our recent journal of neuroscience methods paper. Speaker 4: Brad and Jessica, welcome to spectrum. Thank you for having us. Thanks. Can you tell us a little bit about brain scanner? Actually, I was at a conference here at cal hell by the CSA, so the cognitive science student association and Undergraduate Association here at cal that they had several neuroscientists and cognitive scientists come and give presentations and I was one of those people. I [00:02:00] was on a panel with a Stanford cognitive scientists at the end of the day. It was a Q and a. We got into a question about what can be known in the neurosciences and I had mentioned that the peer reviewed neuroscientific literature probably smarter than we are. There's something like 3 million peer reviewed neuroscientific publications and I was saying that that is just too many. There is no way for anybody to to integrate all of those facts and I said if there some automated or algorithmic way of doing that, we could probably find some neat stuff out and he disagreed with me pretty strongly on the panel [00:02:30] and I sort of stewed on that for awhile. Speaker 4: That ended up becoming the brain scanner project actually, which is using text mining to look at how different topics in the neurosciences relate to one another. We had conversation about this and I had just started about six months before my a master's program at the School of Information. So all of the stuff that he was saying really jived with what I was learning. So we got together after that. We talked about it off and on sort of over dinner and stuff occasionally, but I think it was [00:03:00] right around won't. Right, right before we found out you were pregnant. Right, right around Christmas when we first actually sat down together to work on it and that was just a random evening. We didn't have, well, we didn't have a baby at the time, so we didn't have much else to do. Brad was working on this thing and he said, you know, I've been working on this all day. Speaker 4: I'm trying to get this algorithm to work and see if we can get any results out of this. And I kind of challenged him. I said, I can do that faster than you can started taking my course. I had [00:03:30] all of these new skills that I just wanted to kind of show off. And I did. She actually beat me. You guys were both sort of where we were. We're basically coding. Yeah. We're sitting on the couch. Not really cause we weren't actually doing it together. We are using two different competitor competing. Exactly. So who do you see as the audience for brain scanner? Well I know the answer to that someone. Right. So I have colleagues who tell me a lot of Grad students actually mostly a who say that they use it as a stop for [00:04:00] searching. The peer reviewed neuroscientific literature. So pub med, which is the surface run by the National Library of medicine, which is part of the national institutes for health index is a lot of these peer reviewed biomedical journals. Speaker 4: Their search engine is quite good but it returns just textual information. You know, you just, you see the 20 most recently published papers or you know, however you want to sort it related to the search term or of interest. Yeah. So basically anybody who wants to create an app can get access to this data. You have to follow certain [00:04:30] rules, but otherwise you can get the information out of this database easily. In a, in a sort of standard format, we provide a graphic or a visualization layer on top of the search so you can put in one of these search terms and you can see here are the topics that relate to it very strongly in literature. Statistically speaking, you know, uh, by that I mean here are the words or terms that show up a lot in papers with the term memory for example. We also then list the papers that are related and you can see the full list of terms and [00:05:00] how it relates to different topics and things like that. Um, if I want to look at a brain region and say, okay, what are the other brain regions that are related to this can really quickly visually see that based upon these 3 million publications that we, we searched through Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 4: you are listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. We're talking to with user interface developer, Jessica Vojtech. And neuroscientists, Bradley Wojciech about brain scanner Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 4: [00:05:30] do you see other potentially valuable ways you can harness PubMed's data or other reference sources? Yeah, absolutely. So one of the aspects actually of the paper that we published was ways to address that, that very question. Uh, initially we tried to publish the paper just as a here's a, here's a resource or one of the editor's version on that rejected the paper, said, you know, what, what can you do with this? And a, of course, you know, this is something we've been thinking about. And [00:06:00] so I tried to build a proof of concept. So one of the, one of the things that we showed statistically speaking that you can do with this, does the data they call hypothesis generation or semiautomated hypothesis generation. And this works off of a very simple idea. Um, it's almost like recommend their algorithms and um, like linkedin or Facebook or something like that. Speaker 4: You know, it's like if you know this person, you might know this person, kind of a friend of a friend should be a friend idea. You know, Rick and I, I know you and you know Rick, maybe you have a friend named Jim. And so statistically speaking, [00:06:30] Jim and I might get along right because you and I get along and you, and he'd get along, especially if I and Jim get along. And so you can go through algorithmically and say, you know, in the literature if Migraine for example, which is the example you give in the paper, uh, is strongly related to a neurotransmitter Serotonin, which I didn't know before we made the website actually, um, that in the medical literature there's a whole serotonin hypothesis from migraines I guess because Migraines respond to, uh, antidepressants, which are usually serotonergic drugs. So anyway, Serotonin [00:07:00] and Migraines are very strongly related and neuroscientists know a lot about the basic physiology of Serotonin, where in the brain is expressed and things like that. Speaker 4: And so on the neuroscience side, we know that Serotonin is very strongly expressed in, in a brain region called the striatum, which is sort of deep frontal part of the brain. And, uh, there's thousands of papers that talk about Serotonin and Migraines and Serotonin in this brain region, the striatum respectively, but there's only 19 papers or something like that to talk about that brain region and migraines. [00:07:30] And so statistically speaking, maybe we're missing something here, right? Maybe just nobody's really looked at this connection between migraines in that brain region. Maybe there aren't papers published on it because people have looked and there's nothing there. But, uh, that's why it's somewhat automated. You can go through this list of recommended hypotheses and you as an expert, I can go through that list and say, oh, some of these are nonsense. Or Oh, that's, that could be interesting. Speaker 4: Maybe. Maybe we should look into that. So it gives you a low hanging fruit basically. Yeah. And so that would be something [00:08:00] eventually I would like to build into the site. Are you continuing to analyze new papers as they enter in pub med? We haven't rerun it for awhile. I think there's something on the order of 10,000 new papers published every month in the neurosciences. But when you're standing in the face of 3 million, it's sort of drop in the bucket. So we, we worry running it every month or two. Um, but the results really don't change very quickly. Right. It's pretty stable. So yes, we, we should actually [00:08:30] run it again. It's been about six months or so. If you guys actually like, well I mean as a or perhaps how, you know, the ideas in the literature might change. For instance, that's actually something that I did do. Speaker 4: Um, I eliminated the searches to just bring the regions, so how different brain regions relate to each other across time. So I did a search for all papers published up to like 1905, which wasn't very many. Of course not in your, you know, you have an exponential increase in the number of being published. Okay. But then again, I ran it again for all papers published to like up to 1935, [00:09:00] 55, 75, 95 and you know, 2005, right? Uh, or 2011. And you could actually see how our understanding of how different brain regions relate change over time. And that was kind of neat. Um, if I was going to be a little bit statistically, uh, stronger about this, what I should have done in the original paper, and I didn't think about it until after we republished it was I should've run the semiautomated hypothesis generation algorithm, uh, on a limited amount of data. So I test data set up to like say 1990 [00:09:30] and then found plausible hypotheses from that Dataset and then run it again on the entire thing and see, you know, if we had found new things. And you know, if that corroborated what we've learned in the last 22 years. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 5: you're listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. We're talking with Brad and Jessica Vojtech about brain scanner. They're a site to show links [00:10:00] that may exist between brain structures, cognitive functions, neurological disorders, and more as data mined from the academic literature. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 4: I mean this is a side side project for us. Yeah, Speaker 1: it was two weeks in $11 and 50 cents. And what did that go to? Um, coffee and coffee. Yeah. [00:10:30] Um, no it, it went into the Google app engine server time. So we actually were able to use Google app engine to distribute the processing, which is also what made mind my code a little bit quicker to run through all of this data. Speaker 4: I was doing single queries at a time and because we have 800 terms in the database and we have to do how every term relates to every other term, it's 800 squared,Speaker 1: try to buy two essentially. And then there's the roundtrip between between his your machine and the um, [00:11:00] pub met database. So, you know, you're making requests, you're making requests, making requests anyway. It was maybe three days, three days or four days. And I was able to do it in about two hours by um, putting it into the cloud and using app engine. So that $11 and 50 cents went to paying for the service and agree to say a hundred squared divided by two minus 800 a lot. So do you want to talk about how that dictionary of keywords was generated? Speaker 4: Initially I [00:11:30] had wanted to try and figure out how brain regions relate this. This grew out of my phd work actually at Berkeley. I worked with Professor Bob Knight who used to be the head of the neurosciences institute, Helen Wells neuroscience here. And my phd thesis was looking at how to brain regions, the prefrontal cortex and the Basal Ganglia related to working memory. And as I was standing for my qualifying exams, I was trying to figure out, okay, what are the brain regions that send inputs to [00:12:00] [inaudible], which is one of the parts of the Basal Ganglia and where he dies this ride in project two. And in order to figure that out, I spent, I don't know, two months off and on three months off and on over at the biomedical library here, digging through old, uh, anatomical papers from the 1970s and basically drawing little hand-drawn charts to try and figure out how these things connected. Speaker 4: And it really surprised me. It was frustrating because you know, here we are in, well, when [00:12:30] I was doing this, it was like 2008 right? And all I wanted to know is how different brain regions connect. And I was like, why can't I just go to a website and say, okay, striatum, what are its inputs and outputs? Like we have that information, right? Why can't I do that? Um, and so anyway, that was one of the motivating factors for me also. And there's actually a paper published in 2002 called neuro names. And then this researcher was trying to create an ontology of, of brain region names Ryan. So the terms that we use now in 2012 aren't necessarily [00:13:00] the same that people were using back in 1900 when they were first describing the basic anatomy. And so you have some Latin names for brain regions. Speaker 4: You have modern names for brain regions, you have names for different groupings of brain regions. So I referred earlier to the base like Ganglia, uh, and that is composed of, you know, maybe five different brain regions. And if I talk about three of those brain regions, uh, can I give examples? Is the putamen and the Globus Pallidus, uh, Globus Pallidus is actually contained [00:13:30] of two separate ones. And the putamen and Globus Pallidus if you combine them together or known by one name. But if you combine the putamen with the striatum, that's a different name. And so you actually have these weird venn diagram overlapping naming Schema. Speaker 1: There's a significant vocabulary problem, which is the term that we use in the information sciences. Basically the fact that you have multiple names for the same thing and you have the same name for some different things. So you know this venn diagram idea. Um, so yeah, [00:14:00] if you're going to use a very simple search algorithm, you have, you can't do it, you wouldn't, you're not going to get all of the results. So, um, I think our system tries to solve that vocabulary problem a little bit. Speaker 4: And then there's actually a researcher, um, Russ Poltrack drag, who used to be a faculty of neuroscience at UCLA and I think he's in University of Texas now. And he actually tried to create an ontology for cognitive term. So in cognitive science and psychology and cognitive neuroscience, you know, we have terms like working memory [00:14:30] and attention and in they're trying to create a whole ontology for how these different things really. So like working memory as part of memory, which you know, in memory also contains a longterm memory. And so we'll use his first attempt as a dictionary as well. And then we went to the NIH website and they've got a listing of all these different kinds of neurological disorders and we use that. So we pulled a bunch of publicly available data basically and use those dictionaries as our starting point. Speaker 1: And then we [00:15:00] also took suggestions from the people on our website almost immediately we started getting requests for more and different terms. So you had the, when you find two keywords that appear in a paper together, you assume that they're actually related. Can you comment on if people might have demonstrated that they're not actually related, how does that affect your system? Like some, like an instance in which, uh, it says this brain region is not connected to this other [00:15:30] brain region, right? Um, yes, we have assumed that there's a publication bias that if there is not a connection then someone does not publish a paper about that. Speaker 4: Okay. And negative publications or negative findings go very under reported in the scientific literature. Speaker 1: Right. So we're hopefully taking advantage of that. Hopefully the law of large numbers means that our data is mostly correct and it does seem to be that way. The example that Brad gave, uh, with the Allen Brain Atlas, [00:16:00] that there is certain corroborating evidence that seems to suggest that this is a, at least plausible connections. There's obviously no one say that better. No, that's perfectly scientifically accurate. I tend to get a little bit specific when I'm talking about this kind of stuff. Speaker 4: Is there already some sort of bias that might drive certain kinds of papers up? If the paper has a lot of buzzwords, perhaps it suddenly becomes more important. Do you 100% yes, absolutely. There are always [00:16:30] hot topics. Uh, and that shows up for sure Speaker 1: only because there's more papers published on that subject. We don't currently have a any kind of waiting per paper. Speaker 4: Yeah. Like when you go into the website and you'd do something like, um, there's a brain region called the Amygdala and you know, it'll be very strongly associated with fear. And so that's actually one of my concerns is problem getting these biases. So, you know, there's a lot of literature on this brain region, the Amygdala and how it relates to fear, but it certainly does a lot more than just processing fear, [00:17:00] right? It's this general emotional affective labeling sort of idea that anyway, that's, that's neuroscience specific stuff, you know, and brain region called the insula and disgust or love or you know, these other kinds of strong emotions. And so yeah, it definitely reflects certain biases as well. And we, we try and quantify that even to an extent a little bit. So again, using the Allen Brain Atlas data, we show from our Dataset, what are the top five brain regions that express or that are related to dopamine, for example. Speaker 4: And in the real human brain, what are the top five brain [00:17:30] regions that express dopaminergic related genes? And you can actually see that there's a very clear bias. So one of the regions that expresses dobutamine very strongly is very hard to study. Neuroscientifically speaking. It's, it's deepen deep part of the brain. It's hard to get any, it's very small, so you can't get it from like brain scanning expresses a lot of dopamine, but people don't study it and we can actually quantify then some of these under-studied relationships, right? We're like, here's a brain region that we know expresses a lot of dopamine, but there's a a hundred papers only and another [00:18:00] brain region that's very sexy and too about domain has 10,000 papers. Right? So our system shows you an example well of the current state of scientific literature. So it's not necessarily 100% correct, but it reflects what scientists think as a whole at this point. Yeah, I agree. And we try and be very careful about that in the paper and in talking about it like we are right now Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 5: [00:18:30] you are listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. We're talking with user interface developer, Jessica Vojtech and neuroscientist Bradley Vojtech about brain scanner. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 4: I was really surprised you. I taught neuro anatomy for three semesters here at Berkeley and you know, so I know the anatomy pretty well. And on your first ran it, I had one of those like yes, kind [00:19:00] of moments like I can't believe this work because it really does find all of these clusters really nicely. And that was a very pleasant surprise because technically speaking it couldn't have been any other way. Like it just has to, you know, I mean these topics co-occur a lot, so it should be that way, but it's always nice to see something like that work. Brian, I wanted to ask about the journals that you sent the paper off too. How did you pick them? Art Of picking a journal where to send a paper. It's actually really hard. So certain journals get [00:19:30] more readership than others. And then there's the open access factor. Speaker 4: So I'm, I'm a big open science, open data advocate and so I try and shoot for that. I had forgotten, there's actually sort of a, a very wide protest of Elsevier, which is one of the publishing companies right now. And the journal that published my papers and Elsevier Journal, but, uh, I had signed the petition and I was part of that Nash shortly thereafter. That would have impacted my decision had I been thinking about it. Yeah. And yeah, so it's mainly a balance between readership and expectation and you sort [00:20:00] of get a feel after publishing a few papers of what editors are looking for. And so yeah, I am the one that has experience with navigating the academic publishing environment. Yeah. So yeah, we sent it out to a lot of journals and, uh, mostly it didn't pass editorial review, which means that there's an editor that decides whether or not conceptually it will be interesting for their journal to publish it once got center review at a journal and they're like, well, it was sort of torn. Speaker 4: There were four reviewers, four pure reviewers, [00:20:30] and two of them were fairly enthusiastic and the other two are like, this is cool, but so what? Right. Um, and the general consensus was it didn't fit with the theme of the Journal. The Journal of neuroscience methods point really well and your reviewers are very, and um, actually there's a figure at the end of the paper where we did some integration with the Allen Brain. Alice Paul Allen, one of the co founders of Microsoft who is a cuisine heir, has put half a billion dollars into this institute. [00:21:00] Initially the goal was to map, uh, the expression of all of these different genes in the human brain, in the mouse brain, and they made all that data publicly available. And so we use that as a test data set. So we said, okay, where are these different, uh, neurotransmitter related genes actually expressed in the brain and what does our system think about wearing the brain? These neurotransmitters are, there's a week but significant correlation between the two, which suggests that our system reflects actual reality to a certain extent at least. [00:21:30] And that was a suggestion I got from one of the peer reviewers and that was really good. It was a lot of extra work, but it ended up being a really good addition to the paper. Speaker 1: But both of you guys are involved in science education and science outreach. So I was hoping you can comment on that. I'm actually starting a project with a friend of mine building a neuroscience kids books. So we're going to teach neuroscience to elementary school kids with an electronic ebook featuring the neuron. Yes, featured his name is ned the neuron. He's a pure middle cell and he works in the motor cortex of the brain. [00:22:00] And is the neuroscience focus partly driven by bad or do you have any sort of personal interest in as well? I do have a personal interest in and I, I, you know, obviously it's convenient that my husband is a neuroscientist, but actually the character and the original story idea is my partners who's also a neuroscientist and phd in neuroscience here at cal here at cal. Speaker 4: Yeah. I get this question a fair amount. Like why do I do blogging and outreach and things like that. So there's actually a few answers to that. One I find blogging, uh, helps me [00:22:30] do better science. If I have to figure out a very simple way of explaining something, then I feel like I understand it better. It's sort of like one of the best ways to learn something is by trying to teach it. Right. I had a very strange path to academia. I actually got kicked out as an undergraduate from the university. I had to sort of beg my way back in because my grades were pretty low. You know, a couple of people help me out along the way and that were pretty important to me. And I think a lot of Grad students have this experience where they, they feel like they don't belong there in in sense that like, oh [00:23:00] my God, I'm not smart enough to do this. Speaker 4: You know? And when I look at the resumes or cvs of, you know, tenured faculty here at Berkeley, right? It's just paper after paper and award and amazing achievement and you're just like struggling to even understand how to write a paper and it seems just like this daunting, intractable problem. And so because of that, I actually have a section in my CV where I actually list every time a paper has been rejected. I've actually had graduate students tell me that. That's been kind of Nice to see that you know, you see somebody who's doing pretty well and you see that, you know, in order to get there [00:23:30] you sort of have to slog through a lot of crap. Speaker 1: Did you plan to work together some more? I think so. You know, we're obviously working together to raise a son right now. We actually were talking on the way over here about trying to implement some of the ideas we've Speaker 4: been talking about that people have suggested. I think we could definitely do that. Yeah, there's definitely a lot of overlap. I'm very interested in dynamic data visualization and that's something that Jesse's is obviously getting quite quite good at and so I'd [00:24:00] like to start doing that for a lot of my research papers as well. Brad and Jess, thanks for joining us. Oh, thank you very much for having us. Thank you so much for having us. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 6: and now for some science news headlines. Here's Renee Rao and Brad sweet Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 7: [00:24:30] the Berkeley new center reports researchers at the University of California Berkeley are gathering evidence this fall that the Feisty Fox squirrels scampering around campus or not just mindlessly foraging for food but engaging in a long term savings strategy to track the nut stashing activity. The student researchers are using GPS technology to record all of the food burials and in the process are creating [00:25:00] an elaborate map showing every campus tree building and garbage can. Miquel Delgado a doctorial student in psychology heads the squirrel research team in the laboratory of UC Berkeley, psychologist Luchea Jacobs. The research team is replicating the caching experiment on humans by timing students as they burry Easter eggs on campus and try to find them. We're using humans as a model for squirrel behavior to ask questions that we can't ask. Squirrels still got us said the group has a cow squirrels website to promote their work. Speaker 6: [00:25:30] UC Berkeley professor of cell and molecular biology and chemistry. Carolyn Bertozzi has won the 2012 Heinrich Violin prize. Professor Bartow Z has founded the field of bio orthogonal chemistry. In her groundbreaking approach, she creatively exploits the benefits of synthetic chemistry to study the vital processes within living beings. Professor Dr Volk Gang Baumeister, chair of the board of Trustees of the Heinrich Violin Prize says of Professor Berto z. [00:26:00] Her breakthrough method to identify sugar patterns on the cell surface is a milestone for our understanding of the functions of sugars in health and disease and paves the way for novel diagnostic and therapeutic approaches. Speaker 3: Irregular feature of spectrum is a calendar of some of the science and technology related events happening in the bay area over the next two weeks. Brad swift and Renee Rao join me for this. The second annual Bay Area Science Festival is wrapping up this weekend. [00:26:30] Highlights include art in science and gallery gala showing the intersection of image and research tonight at the Berkeley Arts Festival, Gallery Science superheros tonight at the Tech Museum in San Jose and discovery days at at and t park tomorrow November 3rd from 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM last year more than 21,000 people showed up to this free event this year. There are more than 150 exhibits. Visit Bay area science.org for more information about any of these [00:27:00] great activities and to see their regular calendar of science goings on. Speaker 6: Big Ideas. Berkeley is an annual innovation contest that provides funding, support, and encouragement to interdisciplinary teams of UC undergraduate and graduate students who have big ideas. The pre-proposal entry deadline is 5:00 PM November six 2012 all pre-proposals must be submitted via the online application on the big ideas website. Remember there are big idea advisers to help students craft [00:27:30] their pre-proposals. You can drop in at room 100 Blum hall during scheduled hours or email advisers to schedule an appointment at another time. Check the big ideas website for advisor times or to make an appointment. There will also be an editing blitz November 5th from five to 8:00 PM in room, 100 of bloom hall advisors and past winters will be available to provide applicants with valuable last-minute insights and advice on your pre-proposal. This is a great opportunity to hone your proposal and get support from those [00:28:00] who know what it takes to build a successful big idea. The big ideas website is big ideas.berkeley.edu Speaker 7: on November 8th the center for ethnographic research will hold a colloquium to understand cancer treatment trajectories using an array of ethnographic data. The Speaker Daniel Dohan and associate professor in the Phillip r Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies. We'll discuss this research about inequality and culture with a focus on cancer. He will focus on his most recent study which examines how patients [00:28:30] with advanced diseases find out about and decide whether to participate in clinical trials of new cancer drugs. The event, which is free and open to the public, will be held from four to 5:30 PM at 25 38 Channing waySpeaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 5: the music you [00:29:00] heard during say show was spend less on and David from his album book and Acoustic, it is released under a creative Commons license version 3.0 spectrum was recorded and edited by me, Rick Karnofsky, and by Brad Swift. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum dot k a l x@yahoo.com [00:29:30] join us in two weeks at this same time. [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Voyteks created the Brain Systems, Connections, Associations, and Network Relationships engine, or brainSCANr. The tool is used to explore the relationships between different terms in peer reviewed publications. http://brainscanr.com/TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum [00:00:30] the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 3: Good afternoon. I'm Rick Karnofsky. Brad swift and I are the hosts of today's show. We're speaking with Jessica and Bradley Vojtech. Jessica is a designer and a developer who earned her master's of information management and systems here at cal and has [00:01:00] worked on several UC Berkeley websites. She's also working on the future of science education through projects like ned the neuron. Brad is in NIH, N N I g m s postdoctoral fellow at ucs f. He got his phd from cal. He's a prolific blogger and Zombie expert. The void techs are here to talk about brain systems, connections and associations and network relationships or brain scanner. This website helps people explore [00:01:30] how neuroscience terms relate to one another in the peer reviewed literature. They've documented their project in our recent journal of neuroscience methods paper. Speaker 4: Brad and Jessica, welcome to spectrum. Thank you for having us. Thanks. Can you tell us a little bit about brain scanner? Actually, I was at a conference here at cal hell by the CSA, so the cognitive science student association and Undergraduate Association here at cal that they had several neuroscientists and cognitive scientists come and give presentations and I was one of those people. I [00:02:00] was on a panel with a Stanford cognitive scientists at the end of the day. It was a Q and a. We got into a question about what can be known in the neurosciences and I had mentioned that the peer reviewed neuroscientific literature probably smarter than we are. There's something like 3 million peer reviewed neuroscientific publications and I was saying that that is just too many. There is no way for anybody to to integrate all of those facts and I said if there some automated or algorithmic way of doing that, we could probably find some neat stuff out and he disagreed with me pretty strongly on the panel [00:02:30] and I sort of stewed on that for awhile. Speaker 4: That ended up becoming the brain scanner project actually, which is using text mining to look at how different topics in the neurosciences relate to one another. We had conversation about this and I had just started about six months before my a master's program at the School of Information. So all of the stuff that he was saying really jived with what I was learning. So we got together after that. We talked about it off and on sort of over dinner and stuff occasionally, but I think it was [00:03:00] right around won't. Right, right before we found out you were pregnant. Right, right around Christmas when we first actually sat down together to work on it and that was just a random evening. We didn't have, well, we didn't have a baby at the time, so we didn't have much else to do. Brad was working on this thing and he said, you know, I've been working on this all day. Speaker 4: I'm trying to get this algorithm to work and see if we can get any results out of this. And I kind of challenged him. I said, I can do that faster than you can started taking my course. I had [00:03:30] all of these new skills that I just wanted to kind of show off. And I did. She actually beat me. You guys were both sort of where we were. We're basically coding. Yeah. We're sitting on the couch. Not really cause we weren't actually doing it together. We are using two different competitor competing. Exactly. So who do you see as the audience for brain scanner? Well I know the answer to that someone. Right. So I have colleagues who tell me a lot of Grad students actually mostly a who say that they use it as a stop for [00:04:00] searching. The peer reviewed neuroscientific literature. So pub med, which is the surface run by the National Library of medicine, which is part of the national institutes for health index is a lot of these peer reviewed biomedical journals. Speaker 4: Their search engine is quite good but it returns just textual information. You know, you just, you see the 20 most recently published papers or you know, however you want to sort it related to the search term or of interest. Yeah. So basically anybody who wants to create an app can get access to this data. You have to follow certain [00:04:30] rules, but otherwise you can get the information out of this database easily. In a, in a sort of standard format, we provide a graphic or a visualization layer on top of the search so you can put in one of these search terms and you can see here are the topics that relate to it very strongly in literature. Statistically speaking, you know, uh, by that I mean here are the words or terms that show up a lot in papers with the term memory for example. We also then list the papers that are related and you can see the full list of terms and [00:05:00] how it relates to different topics and things like that. Um, if I want to look at a brain region and say, okay, what are the other brain regions that are related to this can really quickly visually see that based upon these 3 million publications that we, we searched through Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 4: you are listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. We're talking to with user interface developer, Jessica Vojtech. And neuroscientists, Bradley Wojciech about brain scanner Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 4: [00:05:30] do you see other potentially valuable ways you can harness PubMed's data or other reference sources? Yeah, absolutely. So one of the aspects actually of the paper that we published was ways to address that, that very question. Uh, initially we tried to publish the paper just as a here's a, here's a resource or one of the editor's version on that rejected the paper, said, you know, what, what can you do with this? And a, of course, you know, this is something we've been thinking about. And [00:06:00] so I tried to build a proof of concept. So one of the, one of the things that we showed statistically speaking that you can do with this, does the data they call hypothesis generation or semiautomated hypothesis generation. And this works off of a very simple idea. Um, it's almost like recommend their algorithms and um, like linkedin or Facebook or something like that. Speaker 4: You know, it's like if you know this person, you might know this person, kind of a friend of a friend should be a friend idea. You know, Rick and I, I know you and you know Rick, maybe you have a friend named Jim. And so statistically speaking, [00:06:30] Jim and I might get along right because you and I get along and you, and he'd get along, especially if I and Jim get along. And so you can go through algorithmically and say, you know, in the literature if Migraine for example, which is the example you give in the paper, uh, is strongly related to a neurotransmitter Serotonin, which I didn't know before we made the website actually, um, that in the medical literature there's a whole serotonin hypothesis from migraines I guess because Migraines respond to, uh, antidepressants, which are usually serotonergic drugs. So anyway, Serotonin [00:07:00] and Migraines are very strongly related and neuroscientists know a lot about the basic physiology of Serotonin, where in the brain is expressed and things like that. Speaker 4: And so on the neuroscience side, we know that Serotonin is very strongly expressed in, in a brain region called the striatum, which is sort of deep frontal part of the brain. And, uh, there's thousands of papers that talk about Serotonin and Migraines and Serotonin in this brain region, the striatum respectively, but there's only 19 papers or something like that to talk about that brain region and migraines. [00:07:30] And so statistically speaking, maybe we're missing something here, right? Maybe just nobody's really looked at this connection between migraines in that brain region. Maybe there aren't papers published on it because people have looked and there's nothing there. But, uh, that's why it's somewhat automated. You can go through this list of recommended hypotheses and you as an expert, I can go through that list and say, oh, some of these are nonsense. Or Oh, that's, that could be interesting. Speaker 4: Maybe. Maybe we should look into that. So it gives you a low hanging fruit basically. Yeah. And so that would be something [00:08:00] eventually I would like to build into the site. Are you continuing to analyze new papers as they enter in pub med? We haven't rerun it for awhile. I think there's something on the order of 10,000 new papers published every month in the neurosciences. But when you're standing in the face of 3 million, it's sort of drop in the bucket. So we, we worry running it every month or two. Um, but the results really don't change very quickly. Right. It's pretty stable. So yes, we, we should actually [00:08:30] run it again. It's been about six months or so. If you guys actually like, well I mean as a or perhaps how, you know, the ideas in the literature might change. For instance, that's actually something that I did do. Speaker 4: Um, I eliminated the searches to just bring the regions, so how different brain regions relate to each other across time. So I did a search for all papers published up to like 1905, which wasn't very many. Of course not in your, you know, you have an exponential increase in the number of being published. Okay. But then again, I ran it again for all papers published to like up to 1935, [00:09:00] 55, 75, 95 and you know, 2005, right? Uh, or 2011. And you could actually see how our understanding of how different brain regions relate change over time. And that was kind of neat. Um, if I was going to be a little bit statistically, uh, stronger about this, what I should have done in the original paper, and I didn't think about it until after we republished it was I should've run the semiautomated hypothesis generation algorithm, uh, on a limited amount of data. So I test data set up to like say 1990 [00:09:30] and then found plausible hypotheses from that Dataset and then run it again on the entire thing and see, you know, if we had found new things. And you know, if that corroborated what we've learned in the last 22 years. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 5: you're listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. We're talking with Brad and Jessica Vojtech about brain scanner. They're a site to show links [00:10:00] that may exist between brain structures, cognitive functions, neurological disorders, and more as data mined from the academic literature. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 4: I mean this is a side side project for us. Yeah, Speaker 1: it was two weeks in $11 and 50 cents. And what did that go to? Um, coffee and coffee. Yeah. [00:10:30] Um, no it, it went into the Google app engine server time. So we actually were able to use Google app engine to distribute the processing, which is also what made mind my code a little bit quicker to run through all of this data. Speaker 4: I was doing single queries at a time and because we have 800 terms in the database and we have to do how every term relates to every other term, it's 800 squared,Speaker 1: try to buy two essentially. And then there's the roundtrip between between his your machine and the um, [00:11:00] pub met database. So, you know, you're making requests, you're making requests, making requests anyway. It was maybe three days, three days or four days. And I was able to do it in about two hours by um, putting it into the cloud and using app engine. So that $11 and 50 cents went to paying for the service and agree to say a hundred squared divided by two minus 800 a lot. So do you want to talk about how that dictionary of keywords was generated? Speaker 4: Initially I [00:11:30] had wanted to try and figure out how brain regions relate this. This grew out of my phd work actually at Berkeley. I worked with Professor Bob Knight who used to be the head of the neurosciences institute, Helen Wells neuroscience here. And my phd thesis was looking at how to brain regions, the prefrontal cortex and the Basal Ganglia related to working memory. And as I was standing for my qualifying exams, I was trying to figure out, okay, what are the brain regions that send inputs to [00:12:00] [inaudible], which is one of the parts of the Basal Ganglia and where he dies this ride in project two. And in order to figure that out, I spent, I don't know, two months off and on three months off and on over at the biomedical library here, digging through old, uh, anatomical papers from the 1970s and basically drawing little hand-drawn charts to try and figure out how these things connected. Speaker 4: And it really surprised me. It was frustrating because you know, here we are in, well, when [00:12:30] I was doing this, it was like 2008 right? And all I wanted to know is how different brain regions connect. And I was like, why can't I just go to a website and say, okay, striatum, what are its inputs and outputs? Like we have that information, right? Why can't I do that? Um, and so anyway, that was one of the motivating factors for me also. And there's actually a paper published in 2002 called neuro names. And then this researcher was trying to create an ontology of, of brain region names Ryan. So the terms that we use now in 2012 aren't necessarily [00:13:00] the same that people were using back in 1900 when they were first describing the basic anatomy. And so you have some Latin names for brain regions. Speaker 4: You have modern names for brain regions, you have names for different groupings of brain regions. So I referred earlier to the base like Ganglia, uh, and that is composed of, you know, maybe five different brain regions. And if I talk about three of those brain regions, uh, can I give examples? Is the putamen and the Globus Pallidus, uh, Globus Pallidus is actually contained [00:13:30] of two separate ones. And the putamen and Globus Pallidus if you combine them together or known by one name. But if you combine the putamen with the striatum, that's a different name. And so you actually have these weird venn diagram overlapping naming Schema. Speaker 1: There's a significant vocabulary problem, which is the term that we use in the information sciences. Basically the fact that you have multiple names for the same thing and you have the same name for some different things. So you know this venn diagram idea. Um, so yeah, [00:14:00] if you're going to use a very simple search algorithm, you have, you can't do it, you wouldn't, you're not going to get all of the results. So, um, I think our system tries to solve that vocabulary problem a little bit. Speaker 4: And then there's actually a researcher, um, Russ Poltrack drag, who used to be a faculty of neuroscience at UCLA and I think he's in University of Texas now. And he actually tried to create an ontology for cognitive term. So in cognitive science and psychology and cognitive neuroscience, you know, we have terms like working memory [00:14:30] and attention and in they're trying to create a whole ontology for how these different things really. So like working memory as part of memory, which you know, in memory also contains a longterm memory. And so we'll use his first attempt as a dictionary as well. And then we went to the NIH website and they've got a listing of all these different kinds of neurological disorders and we use that. So we pulled a bunch of publicly available data basically and use those dictionaries as our starting point. Speaker 1: And then we [00:15:00] also took suggestions from the people on our website almost immediately we started getting requests for more and different terms. So you had the, when you find two keywords that appear in a paper together, you assume that they're actually related. Can you comment on if people might have demonstrated that they're not actually related, how does that affect your system? Like some, like an instance in which, uh, it says this brain region is not connected to this other [00:15:30] brain region, right? Um, yes, we have assumed that there's a publication bias that if there is not a connection then someone does not publish a paper about that. Speaker 4: Okay. And negative publications or negative findings go very under reported in the scientific literature. Speaker 1: Right. So we're hopefully taking advantage of that. Hopefully the law of large numbers means that our data is mostly correct and it does seem to be that way. The example that Brad gave, uh, with the Allen Brain Atlas, [00:16:00] that there is certain corroborating evidence that seems to suggest that this is a, at least plausible connections. There's obviously no one say that better. No, that's perfectly scientifically accurate. I tend to get a little bit specific when I'm talking about this kind of stuff. Speaker 4: Is there already some sort of bias that might drive certain kinds of papers up? If the paper has a lot of buzzwords, perhaps it suddenly becomes more important. Do you 100% yes, absolutely. There are always [00:16:30] hot topics. Uh, and that shows up for sure Speaker 1: only because there's more papers published on that subject. We don't currently have a any kind of waiting per paper. Speaker 4: Yeah. Like when you go into the website and you'd do something like, um, there's a brain region called the Amygdala and you know, it'll be very strongly associated with fear. And so that's actually one of my concerns is problem getting these biases. So, you know, there's a lot of literature on this brain region, the Amygdala and how it relates to fear, but it certainly does a lot more than just processing fear, [00:17:00] right? It's this general emotional affective labeling sort of idea that anyway, that's, that's neuroscience specific stuff, you know, and brain region called the insula and disgust or love or you know, these other kinds of strong emotions. And so yeah, it definitely reflects certain biases as well. And we, we try and quantify that even to an extent a little bit. So again, using the Allen Brain Atlas data, we show from our Dataset, what are the top five brain regions that express or that are related to dopamine, for example. Speaker 4: And in the real human brain, what are the top five brain [00:17:30] regions that express dopaminergic related genes? And you can actually see that there's a very clear bias. So one of the regions that expresses dobutamine very strongly is very hard to study. Neuroscientifically speaking. It's, it's deepen deep part of the brain. It's hard to get any, it's very small, so you can't get it from like brain scanning expresses a lot of dopamine, but people don't study it and we can actually quantify then some of these under-studied relationships, right? We're like, here's a brain region that we know expresses a lot of dopamine, but there's a a hundred papers only and another [00:18:00] brain region that's very sexy and too about domain has 10,000 papers. Right? So our system shows you an example well of the current state of scientific literature. So it's not necessarily 100% correct, but it reflects what scientists think as a whole at this point. Yeah, I agree. And we try and be very careful about that in the paper and in talking about it like we are right now Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 5: [00:18:30] you are listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. We're talking with user interface developer, Jessica Vojtech and neuroscientist Bradley Vojtech about brain scanner. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 4: I was really surprised you. I taught neuro anatomy for three semesters here at Berkeley and you know, so I know the anatomy pretty well. And on your first ran it, I had one of those like yes, kind [00:19:00] of moments like I can't believe this work because it really does find all of these clusters really nicely. And that was a very pleasant surprise because technically speaking it couldn't have been any other way. Like it just has to, you know, I mean these topics co-occur a lot, so it should be that way, but it's always nice to see something like that work. Brian, I wanted to ask about the journals that you sent the paper off too. How did you pick them? Art Of picking a journal where to send a paper. It's actually really hard. So certain journals get [00:19:30] more readership than others. And then there's the open access factor. Speaker 4: So I'm, I'm a big open science, open data advocate and so I try and shoot for that. I had forgotten, there's actually sort of a, a very wide protest of Elsevier, which is one of the publishing companies right now. And the journal that published my papers and Elsevier Journal, but, uh, I had signed the petition and I was part of that Nash shortly thereafter. That would have impacted my decision had I been thinking about it. Yeah. And yeah, so it's mainly a balance between readership and expectation and you sort [00:20:00] of get a feel after publishing a few papers of what editors are looking for. And so yeah, I am the one that has experience with navigating the academic publishing environment. Yeah. So yeah, we sent it out to a lot of journals and, uh, mostly it didn't pass editorial review, which means that there's an editor that decides whether or not conceptually it will be interesting for their journal to publish it once got center review at a journal and they're like, well, it was sort of torn. Speaker 4: There were four reviewers, four pure reviewers, [00:20:30] and two of them were fairly enthusiastic and the other two are like, this is cool, but so what? Right. Um, and the general consensus was it didn't fit with the theme of the Journal. The Journal of neuroscience methods point really well and your reviewers are very, and um, actually there's a figure at the end of the paper where we did some integration with the Allen Brain. Alice Paul Allen, one of the co founders of Microsoft who is a cuisine heir, has put half a billion dollars into this institute. [00:21:00] Initially the goal was to map, uh, the expression of all of these different genes in the human brain, in the mouse brain, and they made all that data publicly available. And so we use that as a test data set. So we said, okay, where are these different, uh, neurotransmitter related genes actually expressed in the brain and what does our system think about wearing the brain? These neurotransmitters are, there's a week but significant correlation between the two, which suggests that our system reflects actual reality to a certain extent at least. [00:21:30] And that was a suggestion I got from one of the peer reviewers and that was really good. It was a lot of extra work, but it ended up being a really good addition to the paper. Speaker 1: But both of you guys are involved in science education and science outreach. So I was hoping you can comment on that. I'm actually starting a project with a friend of mine building a neuroscience kids books. So we're going to teach neuroscience to elementary school kids with an electronic ebook featuring the neuron. Yes, featured his name is ned the neuron. He's a pure middle cell and he works in the motor cortex of the brain. [00:22:00] And is the neuroscience focus partly driven by bad or do you have any sort of personal interest in as well? I do have a personal interest in and I, I, you know, obviously it's convenient that my husband is a neuroscientist, but actually the character and the original story idea is my partners who's also a neuroscientist and phd in neuroscience here at cal here at cal. Speaker 4: Yeah. I get this question a fair amount. Like why do I do blogging and outreach and things like that. So there's actually a few answers to that. One I find blogging, uh, helps me [00:22:30] do better science. If I have to figure out a very simple way of explaining something, then I feel like I understand it better. It's sort of like one of the best ways to learn something is by trying to teach it. Right. I had a very strange path to academia. I actually got kicked out as an undergraduate from the university. I had to sort of beg my way back in because my grades were pretty low. You know, a couple of people help me out along the way and that were pretty important to me. And I think a lot of Grad students have this experience where they, they feel like they don't belong there in in sense that like, oh [00:23:00] my God, I'm not smart enough to do this. Speaker 4: You know? And when I look at the resumes or cvs of, you know, tenured faculty here at Berkeley, right? It's just paper after paper and award and amazing achievement and you're just like struggling to even understand how to write a paper and it seems just like this daunting, intractable problem. And so because of that, I actually have a section in my CV where I actually list every time a paper has been rejected. I've actually had graduate students tell me that. That's been kind of Nice to see that you know, you see somebody who's doing pretty well and you see that, you know, in order to get there [00:23:30] you sort of have to slog through a lot of crap. Speaker 1: Did you plan to work together some more? I think so. You know, we're obviously working together to raise a son right now. We actually were talking on the way over here about trying to implement some of the ideas we've Speaker 4: been talking about that people have suggested. I think we could definitely do that. Yeah, there's definitely a lot of overlap. I'm very interested in dynamic data visualization and that's something that Jesse's is obviously getting quite quite good at and so I'd [00:24:00] like to start doing that for a lot of my research papers as well. Brad and Jess, thanks for joining us. Oh, thank you very much for having us. Thank you so much for having us. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 6: and now for some science news headlines. Here's Renee Rao and Brad sweet Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 7: [00:24:30] the Berkeley new center reports researchers at the University of California Berkeley are gathering evidence this fall that the Feisty Fox squirrels scampering around campus or not just mindlessly foraging for food but engaging in a long term savings strategy to track the nut stashing activity. The student researchers are using GPS technology to record all of the food burials and in the process are creating [00:25:00] an elaborate map showing every campus tree building and garbage can. Miquel Delgado a doctorial student in psychology heads the squirrel research team in the laboratory of UC Berkeley, psychologist Luchea Jacobs. The research team is replicating the caching experiment on humans by timing students as they burry Easter eggs on campus and try to find them. We're using humans as a model for squirrel behavior to ask questions that we can't ask. Squirrels still got us said the group has a cow squirrels website to promote their work. Speaker 6: [00:25:30] UC Berkeley professor of cell and molecular biology and chemistry. Carolyn Bertozzi has won the 2012 Heinrich Violin prize. Professor Bartow Z has founded the field of bio orthogonal chemistry. In her groundbreaking approach, she creatively exploits the benefits of synthetic chemistry to study the vital processes within living beings. Professor Dr Volk Gang Baumeister, chair of the board of Trustees of the Heinrich Violin Prize says of Professor Berto z. [00:26:00] Her breakthrough method to identify sugar patterns on the cell surface is a milestone for our understanding of the functions of sugars in health and disease and paves the way for novel diagnostic and therapeutic approaches. Speaker 3: Irregular feature of spectrum is a calendar of some of the science and technology related events happening in the bay area over the next two weeks. Brad swift and Renee Rao join me for this. The second annual Bay Area Science Festival is wrapping up this weekend. [00:26:30] Highlights include art in science and gallery gala showing the intersection of image and research tonight at the Berkeley Arts Festival, Gallery Science superheros tonight at the Tech Museum in San Jose and discovery days at at and t park tomorrow November 3rd from 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM last year more than 21,000 people showed up to this free event this year. There are more than 150 exhibits. Visit Bay area science.org for more information about any of these [00:27:00] great activities and to see their regular calendar of science goings on. Speaker 6: Big Ideas. Berkeley is an annual innovation contest that provides funding, support, and encouragement to interdisciplinary teams of UC undergraduate and graduate students who have big ideas. The pre-proposal entry deadline is 5:00 PM November six 2012 all pre-proposals must be submitted via the online application on the big ideas website. Remember there are big idea advisers to help students craft [00:27:30] their pre-proposals. You can drop in at room 100 Blum hall during scheduled hours or email advisers to schedule an appointment at another time. Check the big ideas website for advisor times or to make an appointment. There will also be an editing blitz November 5th from five to 8:00 PM in room, 100 of bloom hall advisors and past winters will be available to provide applicants with valuable last-minute insights and advice on your pre-proposal. This is a great opportunity to hone your proposal and get support from those [00:28:00] who know what it takes to build a successful big idea. The big ideas website is big ideas.berkeley.edu Speaker 7: on November 8th the center for ethnographic research will hold a colloquium to understand cancer treatment trajectories using an array of ethnographic data. The Speaker Daniel Dohan and associate professor in the Phillip r Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies. We'll discuss this research about inequality and culture with a focus on cancer. He will focus on his most recent study which examines how patients [00:28:30] with advanced diseases find out about and decide whether to participate in clinical trials of new cancer drugs. The event, which is free and open to the public, will be held from four to 5:30 PM at 25 38 Channing waySpeaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 5: the music you [00:29:00] heard during say show was spend less on and David from his album book and Acoustic, it is released under a creative Commons license version 3.0 spectrum was recorded and edited by me, Rick Karnofsky, and by Brad Swift. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum dot k a l x@yahoo.com [00:29:30] join us in two weeks at this same time. [inaudible]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's the perennial dream: build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door. We go to San Jose's famed Tech Museum to learn what it takes to turn a good idea into a grand success. Remember the Super Soaker squirt gun? Hear how its inventor is now changing the rules for solar energy. Where do good ideas come from? A Eureka moment in the bathtub? We'll find out that it doesn't happen so quickly – or easily. And finally, the life cycle of society-changing technologies, from the birth of radio to the future of the Internet. Inventions, inventors and innovation: all part of the mix on “Better Mousetrap.” Guests: Steven Johnson - Author of Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation Lonnie Johnson - Inventor and former NASA engineer; CEO of Johnson Research and Development Company Tim Wu - Professor of Communication Law at Columbia University and author of The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires (Borzoi Books) Alana Connor - Vice President Content Development, The Tech Museum, San Jose Descripción en español Originally released February 7, 2011 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

ENCORE It’s the perennial dream: build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door. We go to San Jose’s famed Tech Museum to learn what it takes to turn a good idea into a grand success. Remember the Super Soaker squirt gun? Hear how its inventor is now changing the rules for solar energy. Where do good ideas come from? A Eureka moment in the bathtub? We’ll find out that it doesn’t happen so quickly – or easily. And finally, the life cycle of society-changing technologies, from the birth of radio to the future of the Internet. Inventions, inventors and innovation: all part of the mix on “Better Mousetrap.” Guests: Steven Johnson - Author of Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation Lonnie Johnson - Inventor and former NASA engineer; CEO of Johnson Research and Development Company Tim Wu - Professor of Communication Law at Columbia University and author of The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires (Borzoi Books) Alana Connor - Vice President Content Development, The Tech Museum, San Jose Descripción en español Originally released February 7, 2011

What happens when you leverage the power of internet volunteerism in much the same way as Wikipedia, but with the intention of translating and subtitling videos? This was the question that Dean Jansen wanted to answer when he co-founded Universal Subtitles (now Amara), a collaborative platform that allows for accessible and user-friendly subtitling of videos. Universal Subtitles replaces previously laborious tasks such as time-syncing with much easier tools, drawing inspiration from popular game interfaces. With over 40,000 videos already subtitled and key partnerships with PBS, Al Jazeera, and Khan Academy in place, there is no doubt that the model has a growing user base. In this audio interview, Sheela Sethuraman asks Dean Jansen about the organization’s first 18 months, winning the Tech Museum’s 2011 Catherine Swanson Equality Award, and the challenges of scalability and quality assurance moving forward. https://ssir.org/podcasts/entry/leveraging_online_collaboration

Mom and apple pie. Computers and silicon. Martians and death rays. Some things just go together naturally. But how about science and politics? Science and religion? Science and fiction? These pairings are often unnatural and contentious … but they don't have to be. Discover how science can team up with other endeavors in productive, if surprising, symbiosis. Meet a particle physicist, turned U.S. Congressman, who calls for more scientists on Capitol Hill. Also, a tour of the Golden Age of Islamic Science. Plus, scientists named Elmo and Super Grover 2.0 teach small children to conduct experiments with the help of chickens and dancing penguins. And, it's not quite science but it's not entirely fiction either: how sci-fi helps shape our cultural debates about the future. Guests: Bill Foster - Physicist and former U.S. representative from Illinois Carol-Lynn Parente - Executive Producer, Sesame Street Ranjana Mehra - Docent at The Tech Museum, San Jose, California Brooks Peck - Curator, EMP Museum, Seattle, Washington Descripción en español Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mom and apple pie. Computers and silicon. Martians and death rays. Some things just go together naturally. But how about science and politics? Science and religion? Science and fiction? These pairings are often unnatural and contentious … but they don’t have to be. Discover how science can team up with other endeavors in productive, if surprising, symbiosis. Meet a particle physicist, turned U.S. Congressman, who calls for more scientists on Capitol Hill. Also, a tour of the Golden Age of Islamic Science. Plus, scientists named Elmo and Super Grover 2.0 teach small children to conduct experiments with the help of chickens and dancing penguins. And, it’s not quite science but it’s not entirely fiction either: how sci-fi helps shape our cultural debates about the future. Guests: Bill Foster - Physicist and former U.S. representative from Illinois Carol-Lynn Parente - Executive Producer, Sesame Street Ranjana Mehra - Docent at The Tech Museum, San Jose, California Brooks Peck - Curator, EMP Museum, Seattle, Washington Descripción en español

Paul Birkmeyer, EECS at UC Berkeley, talks about his work in the Biomimetic Millisystems Lab designing and building robots. The Lab seeks to harness features of locomotion, actuation, mechanics, and control strategies to improve millirobot capabilities.TranscriptSpeaker 1: [inaudible] [inaudible]. Welcome to spectrum Speaker 2: the science and technology show [00:00:30] on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program with interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists, a calendar of local events and news. My name is Brad swift and I'm the host of today's show. Today's interview is with Paul Burke Meyer, a phd candidate in the electrical engineering and computer science department known as Ekes. He is working with Professor Ron fearing in his biomimetic millis systems lab building six legged crawling and climbing robots. [00:01:00] The goal of the biomimetic Miller systems lab is to harness features of animal manipulations, locomotion, sensing actuation, mechanics, dynamics and control strategies to radically improve Miller robot capabilities. Miller robots are small robots. For instance, the robot Paul Burke Meyer has built named dash is 10 centimeters long, five centimeters wide and weighs 15 grams. This interview [00:01:30] is prerecorded and edited. Welcome to spectrum Paul Burke. Myer, thanks for coming. Speaker 3: Yeah. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Where are you situated at cal? What's your current status there? I am pursuing my phd here. I'm entering into my fifth year actually. Uh, and I'm studying Ekes specifically electrical engineering and I'm working on robotics in the w department. So Speaker 2: are you in a specific group with any x or is [00:02:00] it just a general study thing? No, it's gotta be something more specific for a Ph d Speaker 3: it is. So, uh, I've been working with Professor Ron fearing since I arrived and he runs the biomimetic Milly systems lab. And within that he has a few different projects, but specifically I'm working on a sort of six legged crawling and climbing robots. Describe for us the robots you're building that my goal for my phd when I first came and still true is to make [00:02:30] a robot that can dynamically climb up a any sort of surface that it's presented with. So the contribution I'm trying to make is how do you make a robot that's minimally actuated? So class uses only a single actuator right now, single motor to drive all the legs. How do you create something that is passively stable? So the structure itself makes it stable when it's climbing. So you don't actually have to spend extra computation and have extra motors on there to keep you from either [00:03:00] falling off the wall or turning and things like that. Speaker 3: Um, how can you climb dynamically, not this sort of slow plodding climbing. How can you climb dynamically, rapidly up a surface and do it stable and do it with very little effort. And what does the foot look like that allows you to make a robot like that. So what does your foot need to do in order to be able to engage and disengage rapidly and without any actuation? So that's [00:03:30] sort of what my phd will say in the end, hopefully. And maybe a year and a half or two years. How did you go about building that kind of a robot? Speaker 3: So the design was long and hard. Um, so when I first came to the biomimetic Mullin systems lab, they were already using what they're calling the smart composite manufacturing process, if you want to describe it. Yeah. So the original process was taking [00:04:00] two pieces of carbon fiber and cutting mirrored slits in both. You cut a bunch of slits on the one piece and you mere it across to the other, and then you take a piece of thin Palmer thin plastic sheet and then you take those two mirrored pieces and put them together and make a sandwich structure. And so you have carbon fiber with one pattern polymer, and then the other piece of carbon fiber with the same pattern that now aligns with the other one, it [00:04:30] bends. Now it's flexible at those polymer hinges at those where those slits were originally. So if each slit is a joint, it doesn't cost you anything to cut more joints out. Speaker 3: Whereas if you're making sort of traditional machined robot out of say aluminum and ball-bearings and things, each new joint does a new bearing, which has some costs, has extra weight. So you can add many, many joints. For example, Dash I think has 75 or more joints in [00:05:00] the robot. Um, many of them are fixed, so they're used just to fold up the final structure and then you glue them in place. Each hip has six moving joints. So each hip has six moving joints. They're six hips. So Justin, the hips alone, they're already 36 moving joints. Um, whereas if you were to do this with ball-bearings, you quickly get something very big and very heavy. So this actually started off as a prototyping process. [00:05:30] Before they would use the carbon fiber process to make their robots. At the time they were making very small robotic flies and you have to assemble these flies under microscopes and it's very tedious. Speaker 3: And if you, if you mess up, so in your design process, you didn't account for something or something doesn't quite align. You've lost a couple of days just working under a microscope, your back hurts, your eyes are tired and it's very frustrating. They realize, hey, this is just a geometric [00:06:00] pattern. So if we make it very small, little fold up the exact same way as if we make it very big, the pattern is the same, the folds are the same. So they take cardboard and make the pattern just bigger and then assemble it by hand without a microscope within a few hours. And exactly, they can tell it's gonna move in the way I want. So this started off as a prototyping process designed by, uh, Aaron Hoover, who's now a professor at Olin and he just graduated. So I actually took this process and started to make [00:06:30] robot designs and realized, Hey, these are actually very functional. Speaker 3: They don't have to be prototypes necessarily. They're actually functional robots at the end. And uh, the cardboard was used, it's cheap cuts very quickly on a laser and you can go through designs very quickly. So instead of having one design that takes two days to build, you can build one in an hour or two. And so you can sort of explore that design space very quickly. So coming into the lab, they were using this manufacturing process where you design everything flat and you cut it out with the laser and you have to fold [00:07:00] it up into something that is functional and moves in the way that you want. And at the time, and still true, we don't have any good way of mapping what a 2d pattern is in the laser cutter, what that map looks like. And what you'll get out when you fold it up into three dimensions. Speaker 3: Keeping in mind that these joints can't spin 360 degrees like a ball bearing. They're limited to at most 180 [00:07:30] degrees before they hit the link on the other side. So you have to in your in your head or on paper draw these structures. Say I started with hips, how can I get a nice leg motion out? And so I designed the hips and then like extrapolated that to six hips and sort of as you go you have to sort of mentally unfold these hips and figure out what that pattern looks like and then you put six hips and then you have to make sure that it can all fit on a flat piece and that when you unfolded [00:08:00] they don't have pieces that are unfolded on top of each other. As you go. Say you'll make a pattern and the first one you make, you fold it up and you realize that some part has to go through another part because the way you designed it actually you didn't realize this part was going to fold into the other cause you have to go back and redesign it. Speaker 3: A lot of trial and error, a lot of trial and error and it took more than 50, maybe, maybe less than a hundred different design iterations for the dash that is [00:08:30] published now from where I started. And even then there were some designs I did with just a single hip just to see what a good hip design was. And it took a lot of time just to get familiar with this folding and unfolding process and laying out parts in two dimensions. And that took me six months just to get familiar with that when I first came. So, so dash is made out of this paper composite. Um, but I've made Balsa wood versions, [00:09:00] I've made fiberglass versions. I actually have not made carbon fiber just because our laser that we use to cut carbon fiber, the bed is not quite big enough so you can't cut pieces quite big enough to make dash. But now we have actually a new laser that I, I will probably pursue carbon fiber if only for the novelty. Um, so it was a, it was a long process. Speaker 4: [inaudible] you are listening to spectrum [00:09:30] line a l x Berkeley. You're talking with Paul Burke Meyer about designing and building small six legged crawling and climbing robots. Speaker 2: The robot that you've built and published a paper about is called Dash. What does that stand for? Dash stands for the dynamic autonomous sprawled hexapod. Once you'd spent a lot of time with Dash, you then wanted [00:10:00] to create an x generation. What was it out of dash that you wanted to explore with clash? Speaker 3: So the things I liked about dash were the fact that it was still fairly small, 10 centimeters long, only 15 grams and very powerful. So if I kept it attached to a wall so it couldn't fall backwards off the wall, it had a lot of power. Could accelerate to full speed within a few hundred milliseconds. I mean it was very, very powerful. So that was nice. But its failure [00:10:30] was in the fact that in order to run it has these two plates basically that move up and down and forward and back relative to each other to drive the legs. That's basically the body is the transmission and it's true, the transmission is moving up and down. And so that's actually the problem is that it's pushing itself off the wall and it does this. So that was the, the main thing I wanted to address, but I liked the way the legs moved. Speaker 3: They call it alternating tripod gait where you have three legs in contact of any one time, so you have this [00:11:00] sort of tripod of support. So I knew what I had generally that worked and I knew sort of what didn't work. And so with clash it was how do I get rid of this up and down motion? And I'd spent enough years doing this smart composite manufacturing that the transition from dash to an entirely new design was only a couple iterations before I got something that actually climbed rather than multiple 50 or so iterations. So that was a lot smoother. The hips are essentially the same, but though the way that they're driven is a little bit different. [00:11:30] And now instead of moving up and down, it's sort of moving side to side and forward and back. So it's not pushing itself off the wall. Speaker 2: Can you describe the control systems you use for your robots? So the, the Speaker 3: interesting thing with the robots that we're making in our lab is that we're trying to reduce the amount of controls necessary as much as possible. Traditional robots, heavy computational power, um, so that they can control each limb and very precisely so in, in, or wants, they don't fall over. [00:12:00] Basically the biggest problem is not falling over for, for legged robots and maintaining stability at least traditionally. So what we're trying to do is to minimize the amount of overhead you have to have, just to be functional. So we've worked with biologists here at Berkeley. They've sort of found these really interesting properties and cockroaches where if they're running over smooth terrain, if you measure their, uh, leg muscle activity, it follows some very repeatable pattern [00:12:30] over smooth terrain, meaning that they're, they're activating the legs the same and then they give them this very rough, varied terrain with bumps, maybe two or three times the height of the cockroach. Speaker 3: They're very significant and they measure the leg activity and it looks almost exactly the same as when it's running on flat terrain. So what that that said to them was the roach is basically saying run and it doesn't care what the terrain is. They've decided that there's this [00:13:00] mechanical complexity and compliance. So the legs basically act as shock absorbers. They're just running and the legs sort of compensate for any roughness in the terrain. What we're trying to do is basically have a robot that does that where you just tell the robot to run and it doesn't care what it hits or what it's running over. It just basically runs and the legs are soft enough and bend enough to sort of compensate forever variation. There isn't the terrain. So the first design of dash that actually [00:13:30] put a motor in the motor actually came from a radio shack toy and I just took the electronics from that toy because it was remote controlled. Speaker 3: Since then, the electronics have been swapped for custom electronics. A couple other students in our lab have designed really small lightweight electronics with an accelerometer and a gyroscope, even a port for uh, integrating a cell phone camera and there students who are using that cell phone camera to sort of [00:14:00] guide the robot from my end. I'm basically doing the robot design and I put these electronics on and I have two commands, three really run. And I tell it how fast and turn left or turn right. And that's it. The nice thing is you don't have to do anything more than that because it, it, it runs well and it can go over a different terrain. It can climb obstacles and dash climb obstacles as tall as itself and it doesn't really care. And so that was what that lets you do is get really [00:14:30] small CPS, really small computers that basically you put on these robots and they take very little power. But now for control, all of all they have to say is go or turn when they can use the rest of their computational time to say, read information from the camera and decide which way do I want to go? What's my objective? So from a stability controls point, it's couldn't be easier. Um, and now we're using these whatever extra [00:15:00] CPU cycles in our small board to do sort of more complicated behavior, but that's sort of another person's project. Speaker 2: What sort of applications do you see this robot having? I know that you would want to use it as a vehicle, right? To have payloads on it. Right? And it also then goes into these strange places or if it can climb walls that's astounding. Right. On its own. Right. And then how do you then utilize it? Speaker 3: The original goal was to have a robot that you could deploy [00:15:30] in search and rescue operations. So, um, say in an earthquake where you have claps buildings or claps minds, um, you can send in very small robots, uh, through the cracks, through the crevices down to find survivors. And you can have thousands of these really cheap and small robots and you don't care if 99% of the robots fail to find anyone or fail to even make it down as long as some small fraction finds a survivor, then you have, [00:16:00] technically you've succeeded. So the goal is to make lots of these small, inexpensive robots that can climb through the cracks, have sensors on them that can detect if someone's alive and then little radios to communicate with each other and communicate with the outside world to say, this is where someone is. Even if it's with some high probability that there's someone here, you know, it's worth spending your time digging in this exact location rather than having to uncover the entire building. Speaker 2: I would imagine there are lots of uses in that realm of, of sensing [00:16:30] environments just in general, whether it's a collapse, building, a search and rescue, but you're just a hazardous place to monitor. And to have these things patrolling. So there's the, the whole idea is numbers and inexpensive, right? Manufacturer, Speaker 3: right. So, so there are also proposals for environmental sensing. So deploying these robots, especially these nice mobile robots and say agricultural areas where you want to track how a crop dusters pesticides [00:17:00] travel across the countryside. You could have robots that sort of move and they can respond to say changing winds so that it can sort of get into the line of you know, the the path of these plumes of pesticides and sort of track how they're progressing across the country if they're affecting, you know, downwind communities. Also we have visions of putting these on bridges to do, checking for signs of stress on bridges and or say the nuclear power plants [00:17:30] in Japan. You could deploy these and have them run around and find you know, leaks or just have a nice mesh sort of deployed sensor network and sort of get readings from lots of different spaces and sort of try to understand how the radiation is moving. Oh Speaker 4: you are listening to spectrum line k a l x Berkeley. We are talking with Paul Burke Meyer about designing and building small six legged crawling [00:18:00] and climbing robots. Speaker 2: So Paul, how did you become interested in engineering? Speaker 3: For me it was pretty clear from the beginning. So when I was younger, um, I was really interested in, well like most people in engineering right now. I built a lot of things out of Legos and connects and things and was really interested in electronics. I actually had [00:18:30] an elderly neighbor next door to me who I would go over and visit and uh, he would give me all of his popular mechanics magazines and popular science magazines when he was done reading them. And I think that was really the hook that got me because I was reading these magazines, seeing all these cool things and thinking like, how can I end up in this magazine? What can I do to be in this magazine because these are all really, really neat things. I think that was the, the original hook. Then, uh, it sort of blossomed [00:19:00] in high school. Speaker 3: We had, uh, an advanced physics class. It was the first time it was offered and it was really sort of undefined. The curriculum wasn't really well formed and uh, as a result we had some freedom that you might not normally have in a high school course to do different projects that we wanted. Uh, the teacher at the time approached me maybe two thirds of the way into the year and said, hey, I have this, uh, this little programming board that they use at MIT for basic robotics things and I just have one of them and [00:19:30] you're doing well in the class. You want to see if you can maybe make a something and we can try to define a project for you using this board. The project ended up being making a robot that could drive through a maze and pop a balloon at the end. And he actually let me pick a partner to work with me. And I actually chose my girlfriend at the time who is now my wife. Um, and so we worked on this project for a long time and had a lot of fun. We made the whole, like the car system programmed the robot [00:20:00] and it was a spectacular failure, but it really was a lot of fun. And I think that was sort of what really cemented engineering for me. Speaker 2: So you mentioned in, in talking about getting started in robotics and engineering, the the aspect of having a lot of fun with it and are you able to maintain that sense of fun and play in your work? For me Speaker 3: this is, it's all fun. It's, I feel like I'm making toys all day [00:20:30] and I don't have to work at it to keep it fun because I love making these things and I think it's really exciting to come up with new structures and sort of understand why things aren't working, what you can do to change them. So for me it's, I mean adjust the, the project itself is so I think, I think it can be fun for other people when you have a like I can make this project fun for other people by actually making something that works and [00:21:00] sharing it with people and having this cool little robot that they can play with that can run up walls and things like that. But I think, I think it's true for lots of people in their careers. I think if you find the one you like, it's fun no matter what you do as long as, as long as you get to do it. So Speaker 2: well thanks very much Paul for coming in and talking. Speaker 3: Came with us was great. You're welcome. There was a lot of fun. Speaker 4: The [00:21:30] video of dash on Youtube, search for dash resilient, high speed 16 gram x and pedal robot regular feature of spectrum is to mention a few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next few weeks. [inaudible]. Speaker 2: The Science at Cau lecture series for July will be presented by professor Romanian Kezar Rooney [00:22:00] and will be entitled Exoskeleton Systems for medical applications. Dr Casa Rooney is a professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of California, Berkeley and director of the Berkeley Robotics and human engineering laboratory is one of the world's leading experts in robotic human augmentation. The date of the lecture is Saturday, July 16th at 11:00 AM in the genetics and plant biology building room 100 which is on the northwest corner of the UC Berkeley campus. [00:22:30] The East Bay Science cafe is held the first Wednesday of every month that the cafe of Valparaiso at La Pena Cultural Center, 31 oh five Shattuck avenue in Berkeley from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM the cost of admittance is the purchase of a beverage or food item of your choice. Wednesday, July 6th our crystal Cha graduate student and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow in the Department of integrative biology at UC Berkeley will present. [00:23:00] Her topic is titled Spiders, Crustaceans, and sells omi. A story of how animals use cells to put themselves together. Speaker 2: UC Berkeley. Professor Gordon. Frankie will present a discussion on native bee populations in the bay area at the Peralta community garden. This event is free and open to the public. It will be held Saturday, July 9th at noon in the Peralta community garden. The garden address is 1400 Peralta [00:23:30] AV in Berkeley. Since today's show is at the beginning of the month, let me remind you of the free admittance days for some of the local institutions that normally charge admission. The exploratorium in San Francisco is the first Wednesday of each month. The UC botanical garden in Strawberry Canyon. Berkeley is the first Thursday of each month. The Tech Museum in San Jose is the second Sunday of each month. The Cal Academy of Science in San Francisco is the third Wednesday of each month. [00:24:00] Now several news stories from the UC Berkeley News Center. The story about a new public website providing access to extensive climate change research being conducted at California universities and research centers. Speaker 2: The website. cal-adapt.org has a variety of features tailored for different types of users, including members of the general public, concerned about their neighborhood or region decision-makers such as city planners and resource managers [00:24:30] and experts who want to examine data. The information on the website comes from peer reviewed climate change research funded by the California Energy Commission's public interest energy research program. The site displays the research data in a variety of climate change related scenarios and in map format modeling various projections such as changes in snowpack, wildfire, danger and temperature throughout the end of the century. The cal dash adapt website was developed by the [00:25:00] geospatial innovation facility at UC Berkeley's College of natural resources. Speaker 2: The journal Science gives out a monthly prize called spore. Spore stands for science prize for online resources in education. The June award was given to the molecular work bench software developed by the Concord consortium. The molecular workbench is a free open source software tool that helps learners overcome challenges and understanding the science of atoms [00:25:30] and molecules. This software simulates atomic scale phenomenon, permits users to interact with them. It can model electrons, atoms, and molecules, which makes it exceptable across physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering. Students from grades five through college can use the software to experiment with atomic scale systems. The software includes an author ing tool that enables educators to create complete learning activities with simulations, [00:26:00] text, images, graphs, navigation links and embedded assessments. Hundreds of these activities have been created and tested in classrooms. Educators are free to download and use completed activities or simulations or create their own. Speaker 2: The website is mw.concorde.org/modeler/in an earlier show, we carried a story [00:26:30] about research into toxic flame retardant chemicals in clothing and furniture which pose health hazards for babies and young children. A companion study on the efficacy of the flame retardants was released in June in a peer study presented at the 10th annual symposium on fire safety science at the University of Maryland on June 21st scientists found that California's furniture flammability standard technical bulletin one one seven does not provide measurable fire safety [00:27:00] benefits. The standard has led to the unnecessary use of flame retardant chemicals at high levels and baby products and furniture, widespread human and animal exposure, and the potential to harm human health and the environment. While there are no proven fire safety benefits to technical bulletin one one seven the chemicals used to meet it leak from furniture into house dust, which is ingested by people in pets. Speaker 2: Humans studies have shown associations [00:27:30] between increased flame retardant body levels and reduced IQ in children reduced fertility and to Krinn and thyroid disruption changes in male hormone levels, adverse birth outcomes and impaired development. Flame retardants have been found in the bodies of nearly all north Americans tested with the highest human levels in young children and Californians. Dogs have retardant [00:28:00] levels up to 10 times higher than humans and cats because of their grooming behavior have levels up to 100 times higher. The California standard established by technical bulletin one one seven has become a de facto national standard legislation to allow an alternative fabric flammability standard that would provide equal or greater fire safety without the use of chemical flame retardants failed last month with strong opposition [00:28:30] from lobbyists for Kim Torah, Alber Marley and Israeli chemicals limited. For more information and the complete study, go to the website, green science policy.org Speaker 5: [inaudible] [inaudible]. Speaker 4: The abuse occurred during the show is by Listonic Donna David from his album folk and acoustic made [00:29:00] available by a creative Commons attribution only licensed 3.0 editing assistance was provided by Judith White Marceline and Gretchen Sanders. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have any comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum dot k a l x@yahoo.com join us in two weeks [00:29:30] at the same time. Speaker 5: [inaudible]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Paul Birkmeyer, EECS at UC Berkeley, talks about his work in the Biomimetic Millisystems Lab designing and building robots. The Lab seeks to harness features of locomotion, actuation, mechanics, and control strategies to improve millirobot capabilities.TranscriptSpeaker 1: [inaudible] [inaudible]. Welcome to spectrum Speaker 2: the science and technology show [00:00:30] on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program with interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists, a calendar of local events and news. My name is Brad swift and I'm the host of today's show. Today's interview is with Paul Burke Meyer, a phd candidate in the electrical engineering and computer science department known as Ekes. He is working with Professor Ron fearing in his biomimetic millis systems lab building six legged crawling and climbing robots. [00:01:00] The goal of the biomimetic Miller systems lab is to harness features of animal manipulations, locomotion, sensing actuation, mechanics, dynamics and control strategies to radically improve Miller robot capabilities. Miller robots are small robots. For instance, the robot Paul Burke Meyer has built named dash is 10 centimeters long, five centimeters wide and weighs 15 grams. This interview [00:01:30] is prerecorded and edited. Welcome to spectrum Paul Burke. Myer, thanks for coming. Speaker 3: Yeah. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Where are you situated at cal? What's your current status there? I am pursuing my phd here. I'm entering into my fifth year actually. Uh, and I'm studying Ekes specifically electrical engineering and I'm working on robotics in the w department. So Speaker 2: are you in a specific group with any x or is [00:02:00] it just a general study thing? No, it's gotta be something more specific for a Ph d Speaker 3: it is. So, uh, I've been working with Professor Ron fearing since I arrived and he runs the biomimetic Milly systems lab. And within that he has a few different projects, but specifically I'm working on a sort of six legged crawling and climbing robots. Describe for us the robots you're building that my goal for my phd when I first came and still true is to make [00:02:30] a robot that can dynamically climb up a any sort of surface that it's presented with. So the contribution I'm trying to make is how do you make a robot that's minimally actuated? So class uses only a single actuator right now, single motor to drive all the legs. How do you create something that is passively stable? So the structure itself makes it stable when it's climbing. So you don't actually have to spend extra computation and have extra motors on there to keep you from either [00:03:00] falling off the wall or turning and things like that. Speaker 3: Um, how can you climb dynamically, not this sort of slow plodding climbing. How can you climb dynamically, rapidly up a surface and do it stable and do it with very little effort. And what does the foot look like that allows you to make a robot like that. So what does your foot need to do in order to be able to engage and disengage rapidly and without any actuation? So that's [00:03:30] sort of what my phd will say in the end, hopefully. And maybe a year and a half or two years. How did you go about building that kind of a robot? Speaker 3: So the design was long and hard. Um, so when I first came to the biomimetic Mullin systems lab, they were already using what they're calling the smart composite manufacturing process, if you want to describe it. Yeah. So the original process was taking [00:04:00] two pieces of carbon fiber and cutting mirrored slits in both. You cut a bunch of slits on the one piece and you mere it across to the other, and then you take a piece of thin Palmer thin plastic sheet and then you take those two mirrored pieces and put them together and make a sandwich structure. And so you have carbon fiber with one pattern polymer, and then the other piece of carbon fiber with the same pattern that now aligns with the other one, it [00:04:30] bends. Now it's flexible at those polymer hinges at those where those slits were originally. So if each slit is a joint, it doesn't cost you anything to cut more joints out. Speaker 3: Whereas if you're making sort of traditional machined robot out of say aluminum and ball-bearings and things, each new joint does a new bearing, which has some costs, has extra weight. So you can add many, many joints. For example, Dash I think has 75 or more joints in [00:05:00] the robot. Um, many of them are fixed, so they're used just to fold up the final structure and then you glue them in place. Each hip has six moving joints. So each hip has six moving joints. They're six hips. So Justin, the hips alone, they're already 36 moving joints. Um, whereas if you were to do this with ball-bearings, you quickly get something very big and very heavy. So this actually started off as a prototyping process. [00:05:30] Before they would use the carbon fiber process to make their robots. At the time they were making very small robotic flies and you have to assemble these flies under microscopes and it's very tedious. Speaker 3: And if you, if you mess up, so in your design process, you didn't account for something or something doesn't quite align. You've lost a couple of days just working under a microscope, your back hurts, your eyes are tired and it's very frustrating. They realize, hey, this is just a geometric [00:06:00] pattern. So if we make it very small, little fold up the exact same way as if we make it very big, the pattern is the same, the folds are the same. So they take cardboard and make the pattern just bigger and then assemble it by hand without a microscope within a few hours. And exactly, they can tell it's gonna move in the way I want. So this started off as a prototyping process designed by, uh, Aaron Hoover, who's now a professor at Olin and he just graduated. So I actually took this process and started to make [00:06:30] robot designs and realized, Hey, these are actually very functional. Speaker 3: They don't have to be prototypes necessarily. They're actually functional robots at the end. And uh, the cardboard was used, it's cheap cuts very quickly on a laser and you can go through designs very quickly. So instead of having one design that takes two days to build, you can build one in an hour or two. And so you can sort of explore that design space very quickly. So coming into the lab, they were using this manufacturing process where you design everything flat and you cut it out with the laser and you have to fold [00:07:00] it up into something that is functional and moves in the way that you want. And at the time, and still true, we don't have any good way of mapping what a 2d pattern is in the laser cutter, what that map looks like. And what you'll get out when you fold it up into three dimensions. Speaker 3: Keeping in mind that these joints can't spin 360 degrees like a ball bearing. They're limited to at most 180 [00:07:30] degrees before they hit the link on the other side. So you have to in your in your head or on paper draw these structures. Say I started with hips, how can I get a nice leg motion out? And so I designed the hips and then like extrapolated that to six hips and sort of as you go you have to sort of mentally unfold these hips and figure out what that pattern looks like and then you put six hips and then you have to make sure that it can all fit on a flat piece and that when you unfolded [00:08:00] they don't have pieces that are unfolded on top of each other. As you go. Say you'll make a pattern and the first one you make, you fold it up and you realize that some part has to go through another part because the way you designed it actually you didn't realize this part was going to fold into the other cause you have to go back and redesign it. Speaker 3: A lot of trial and error, a lot of trial and error and it took more than 50, maybe, maybe less than a hundred different design iterations for the dash that is [00:08:30] published now from where I started. And even then there were some designs I did with just a single hip just to see what a good hip design was. And it took a lot of time just to get familiar with this folding and unfolding process and laying out parts in two dimensions. And that took me six months just to get familiar with that when I first came. So, so dash is made out of this paper composite. Um, but I've made Balsa wood versions, [00:09:00] I've made fiberglass versions. I actually have not made carbon fiber just because our laser that we use to cut carbon fiber, the bed is not quite big enough so you can't cut pieces quite big enough to make dash. But now we have actually a new laser that I, I will probably pursue carbon fiber if only for the novelty. Um, so it was a, it was a long process. Speaker 4: [inaudible] you are listening to spectrum [00:09:30] line a l x Berkeley. You're talking with Paul Burke Meyer about designing and building small six legged crawling and climbing robots. Speaker 2: The robot that you've built and published a paper about is called Dash. What does that stand for? Dash stands for the dynamic autonomous sprawled hexapod. Once you'd spent a lot of time with Dash, you then wanted [00:10:00] to create an x generation. What was it out of dash that you wanted to explore with clash? Speaker 3: So the things I liked about dash were the fact that it was still fairly small, 10 centimeters long, only 15 grams and very powerful. So if I kept it attached to a wall so it couldn't fall backwards off the wall, it had a lot of power. Could accelerate to full speed within a few hundred milliseconds. I mean it was very, very powerful. So that was nice. But its failure [00:10:30] was in the fact that in order to run it has these two plates basically that move up and down and forward and back relative to each other to drive the legs. That's basically the body is the transmission and it's true, the transmission is moving up and down. And so that's actually the problem is that it's pushing itself off the wall and it does this. So that was the, the main thing I wanted to address, but I liked the way the legs moved. Speaker 3: They call it alternating tripod gait where you have three legs in contact of any one time, so you have this [00:11:00] sort of tripod of support. So I knew what I had generally that worked and I knew sort of what didn't work. And so with clash it was how do I get rid of this up and down motion? And I'd spent enough years doing this smart composite manufacturing that the transition from dash to an entirely new design was only a couple iterations before I got something that actually climbed rather than multiple 50 or so iterations. So that was a lot smoother. The hips are essentially the same, but though the way that they're driven is a little bit different. [00:11:30] And now instead of moving up and down, it's sort of moving side to side and forward and back. So it's not pushing itself off the wall. Speaker 2: Can you describe the control systems you use for your robots? So the, the Speaker 3: interesting thing with the robots that we're making in our lab is that we're trying to reduce the amount of controls necessary as much as possible. Traditional robots, heavy computational power, um, so that they can control each limb and very precisely so in, in, or wants, they don't fall over. [00:12:00] Basically the biggest problem is not falling over for, for legged robots and maintaining stability at least traditionally. So what we're trying to do is to minimize the amount of overhead you have to have, just to be functional. So we've worked with biologists here at Berkeley. They've sort of found these really interesting properties and cockroaches where if they're running over smooth terrain, if you measure their, uh, leg muscle activity, it follows some very repeatable pattern [00:12:30] over smooth terrain, meaning that they're, they're activating the legs the same and then they give them this very rough, varied terrain with bumps, maybe two or three times the height of the cockroach. Speaker 3: They're very significant and they measure the leg activity and it looks almost exactly the same as when it's running on flat terrain. So what that that said to them was the roach is basically saying run and it doesn't care what the terrain is. They've decided that there's this [00:13:00] mechanical complexity and compliance. So the legs basically act as shock absorbers. They're just running and the legs sort of compensate for any roughness in the terrain. What we're trying to do is basically have a robot that does that where you just tell the robot to run and it doesn't care what it hits or what it's running over. It just basically runs and the legs are soft enough and bend enough to sort of compensate forever variation. There isn't the terrain. So the first design of dash that actually [00:13:30] put a motor in the motor actually came from a radio shack toy and I just took the electronics from that toy because it was remote controlled. Speaker 3: Since then, the electronics have been swapped for custom electronics. A couple other students in our lab have designed really small lightweight electronics with an accelerometer and a gyroscope, even a port for uh, integrating a cell phone camera and there students who are using that cell phone camera to sort of [00:14:00] guide the robot from my end. I'm basically doing the robot design and I put these electronics on and I have two commands, three really run. And I tell it how fast and turn left or turn right. And that's it. The nice thing is you don't have to do anything more than that because it, it, it runs well and it can go over a different terrain. It can climb obstacles and dash climb obstacles as tall as itself and it doesn't really care. And so that was what that lets you do is get really [00:14:30] small CPS, really small computers that basically you put on these robots and they take very little power. But now for control, all of all they have to say is go or turn when they can use the rest of their computational time to say, read information from the camera and decide which way do I want to go? What's my objective? So from a stability controls point, it's couldn't be easier. Um, and now we're using these whatever extra [00:15:00] CPU cycles in our small board to do sort of more complicated behavior, but that's sort of another person's project. Speaker 2: What sort of applications do you see this robot having? I know that you would want to use it as a vehicle, right? To have payloads on it. Right? And it also then goes into these strange places or if it can climb walls that's astounding. Right. On its own. Right. And then how do you then utilize it? Speaker 3: The original goal was to have a robot that you could deploy [00:15:30] in search and rescue operations. So, um, say in an earthquake where you have claps buildings or claps minds, um, you can send in very small robots, uh, through the cracks, through the crevices down to find survivors. And you can have thousands of these really cheap and small robots and you don't care if 99% of the robots fail to find anyone or fail to even make it down as long as some small fraction finds a survivor, then you have, [00:16:00] technically you've succeeded. So the goal is to make lots of these small, inexpensive robots that can climb through the cracks, have sensors on them that can detect if someone's alive and then little radios to communicate with each other and communicate with the outside world to say, this is where someone is. Even if it's with some high probability that there's someone here, you know, it's worth spending your time digging in this exact location rather than having to uncover the entire building. Speaker 2: I would imagine there are lots of uses in that realm of, of sensing [00:16:30] environments just in general, whether it's a collapse, building, a search and rescue, but you're just a hazardous place to monitor. And to have these things patrolling. So there's the, the whole idea is numbers and inexpensive, right? Manufacturer, Speaker 3: right. So, so there are also proposals for environmental sensing. So deploying these robots, especially these nice mobile robots and say agricultural areas where you want to track how a crop dusters pesticides [00:17:00] travel across the countryside. You could have robots that sort of move and they can respond to say changing winds so that it can sort of get into the line of you know, the the path of these plumes of pesticides and sort of track how they're progressing across the country if they're affecting, you know, downwind communities. Also we have visions of putting these on bridges to do, checking for signs of stress on bridges and or say the nuclear power plants [00:17:30] in Japan. You could deploy these and have them run around and find you know, leaks or just have a nice mesh sort of deployed sensor network and sort of get readings from lots of different spaces and sort of try to understand how the radiation is moving. Oh Speaker 4: you are listening to spectrum line k a l x Berkeley. We are talking with Paul Burke Meyer about designing and building small six legged crawling [00:18:00] and climbing robots. Speaker 2: So Paul, how did you become interested in engineering? Speaker 3: For me it was pretty clear from the beginning. So when I was younger, um, I was really interested in, well like most people in engineering right now. I built a lot of things out of Legos and connects and things and was really interested in electronics. I actually had [00:18:30] an elderly neighbor next door to me who I would go over and visit and uh, he would give me all of his popular mechanics magazines and popular science magazines when he was done reading them. And I think that was really the hook that got me because I was reading these magazines, seeing all these cool things and thinking like, how can I end up in this magazine? What can I do to be in this magazine because these are all really, really neat things. I think that was the, the original hook. Then, uh, it sort of blossomed [00:19:00] in high school. Speaker 3: We had, uh, an advanced physics class. It was the first time it was offered and it was really sort of undefined. The curriculum wasn't really well formed and uh, as a result we had some freedom that you might not normally have in a high school course to do different projects that we wanted. Uh, the teacher at the time approached me maybe two thirds of the way into the year and said, hey, I have this, uh, this little programming board that they use at MIT for basic robotics things and I just have one of them and [00:19:30] you're doing well in the class. You want to see if you can maybe make a something and we can try to define a project for you using this board. The project ended up being making a robot that could drive through a maze and pop a balloon at the end. And he actually let me pick a partner to work with me. And I actually chose my girlfriend at the time who is now my wife. Um, and so we worked on this project for a long time and had a lot of fun. We made the whole, like the car system programmed the robot [00:20:00] and it was a spectacular failure, but it really was a lot of fun. And I think that was sort of what really cemented engineering for me. Speaker 2: So you mentioned in, in talking about getting started in robotics and engineering, the the aspect of having a lot of fun with it and are you able to maintain that sense of fun and play in your work? For me Speaker 3: this is, it's all fun. It's, I feel like I'm making toys all day [00:20:30] and I don't have to work at it to keep it fun because I love making these things and I think it's really exciting to come up with new structures and sort of understand why things aren't working, what you can do to change them. So for me it's, I mean adjust the, the project itself is so I think, I think it can be fun for other people when you have a like I can make this project fun for other people by actually making something that works and [00:21:00] sharing it with people and having this cool little robot that they can play with that can run up walls and things like that. But I think, I think it's true for lots of people in their careers. I think if you find the one you like, it's fun no matter what you do as long as, as long as you get to do it. So Speaker 2: well thanks very much Paul for coming in and talking. Speaker 3: Came with us was great. You're welcome. There was a lot of fun. Speaker 4: The [00:21:30] video of dash on Youtube, search for dash resilient, high speed 16 gram x and pedal robot regular feature of spectrum is to mention a few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next few weeks. [inaudible]. Speaker 2: The Science at Cau lecture series for July will be presented by professor Romanian Kezar Rooney [00:22:00] and will be entitled Exoskeleton Systems for medical applications. Dr Casa Rooney is a professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of California, Berkeley and director of the Berkeley Robotics and human engineering laboratory is one of the world's leading experts in robotic human augmentation. The date of the lecture is Saturday, July 16th at 11:00 AM in the genetics and plant biology building room 100 which is on the northwest corner of the UC Berkeley campus. [00:22:30] The East Bay Science cafe is held the first Wednesday of every month that the cafe of Valparaiso at La Pena Cultural Center, 31 oh five Shattuck avenue in Berkeley from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM the cost of admittance is the purchase of a beverage or food item of your choice. Wednesday, July 6th our crystal Cha graduate student and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow in the Department of integrative biology at UC Berkeley will present. [00:23:00] Her topic is titled Spiders, Crustaceans, and sells omi. A story of how animals use cells to put themselves together. Speaker 2: UC Berkeley. Professor Gordon. Frankie will present a discussion on native bee populations in the bay area at the Peralta community garden. This event is free and open to the public. It will be held Saturday, July 9th at noon in the Peralta community garden. The garden address is 1400 Peralta [00:23:30] AV in Berkeley. Since today's show is at the beginning of the month, let me remind you of the free admittance days for some of the local institutions that normally charge admission. The exploratorium in San Francisco is the first Wednesday of each month. The UC botanical garden in Strawberry Canyon. Berkeley is the first Thursday of each month. The Tech Museum in San Jose is the second Sunday of each month. The Cal Academy of Science in San Francisco is the third Wednesday of each month. [00:24:00] Now several news stories from the UC Berkeley News Center. The story about a new public website providing access to extensive climate change research being conducted at California universities and research centers. Speaker 2: The website. cal-adapt.org has a variety of features tailored for different types of users, including members of the general public, concerned about their neighborhood or region decision-makers such as city planners and resource managers [00:24:30] and experts who want to examine data. The information on the website comes from peer reviewed climate change research funded by the California Energy Commission's public interest energy research program. The site displays the research data in a variety of climate change related scenarios and in map format modeling various projections such as changes in snowpack, wildfire, danger and temperature throughout the end of the century. The cal dash adapt website was developed by the [00:25:00] geospatial innovation facility at UC Berkeley's College of natural resources. Speaker 2: The journal Science gives out a monthly prize called spore. Spore stands for science prize for online resources in education. The June award was given to the molecular work bench software developed by the Concord consortium. The molecular workbench is a free open source software tool that helps learners overcome challenges and understanding the science of atoms [00:25:30] and molecules. This software simulates atomic scale phenomenon, permits users to interact with them. It can model electrons, atoms, and molecules, which makes it exceptable across physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering. Students from grades five through college can use the software to experiment with atomic scale systems. The software includes an author ing tool that enables educators to create complete learning activities with simulations, [00:26:00] text, images, graphs, navigation links and embedded assessments. Hundreds of these activities have been created and tested in classrooms. Educators are free to download and use completed activities or simulations or create their own. Speaker 2: The website is mw.concorde.org/modeler/in an earlier show, we carried a story [00:26:30] about research into toxic flame retardant chemicals in clothing and furniture which pose health hazards for babies and young children. A companion study on the efficacy of the flame retardants was released in June in a peer study presented at the 10th annual symposium on fire safety science at the University of Maryland on June 21st scientists found that California's furniture flammability standard technical bulletin one one seven does not provide measurable fire safety [00:27:00] benefits. The standard has led to the unnecessary use of flame retardant chemicals at high levels and baby products and furniture, widespread human and animal exposure, and the potential to harm human health and the environment. While there are no proven fire safety benefits to technical bulletin one one seven the chemicals used to meet it leak from furniture into house dust, which is ingested by people in pets. Speaker 2: Humans studies have shown associations [00:27:30] between increased flame retardant body levels and reduced IQ in children reduced fertility and to Krinn and thyroid disruption changes in male hormone levels, adverse birth outcomes and impaired development. Flame retardants have been found in the bodies of nearly all north Americans tested with the highest human levels in young children and Californians. Dogs have retardant [00:28:00] levels up to 10 times higher than humans and cats because of their grooming behavior have levels up to 100 times higher. The California standard established by technical bulletin one one seven has become a de facto national standard legislation to allow an alternative fabric flammability standard that would provide equal or greater fire safety without the use of chemical flame retardants failed last month with strong opposition [00:28:30] from lobbyists for Kim Torah, Alber Marley and Israeli chemicals limited. For more information and the complete study, go to the website, green science policy.org Speaker 5: [inaudible] [inaudible]. Speaker 4: The abuse occurred during the show is by Listonic Donna David from his album folk and acoustic made [00:29:00] available by a creative Commons attribution only licensed 3.0 editing assistance was provided by Judith White Marceline and Gretchen Sanders. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have any comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum dot k a l x@yahoo.com join us in two weeks [00:29:30] at the same time. Speaker 5: [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Gillian Caldwell Executive Director, Witness Date: August 9, 2007 NCWIT Interview with Gillian Caldwell BIO: Gillian Caldwell took the helm as the CEO for Global Witness in July of 2015. Prior to that, she was the Executive Director of WITNESS (www.witness.org), which uses the power of video to open the eyes of the world to human rights abuses. By partnering with local organizations around the globe, WITNESS empowers human rights defenders to use video as a tool to shine a light on those most affected by human rights violations, and to transform personal stories of abuse into powerful tools of justice. Since its founding in 1992, WITNESS has partnered with groups in more than 60 countries, bringing often unseen images, untold stories and seldom heard voices to the attention of key decision makers, the media, and the general public -- prompting grassroots activism, political engagement, and lasting change. A film-maker and an attorney, Gillian has experience in the areas of international human rights, civil rights, intellectual property, contracts, and family law. At WITNESS, she has helped produce numerous documentary videos for use in advocacy campaigns around the world, including Outlawed: Extraordinary Rendition, Torture and Disappearances in the "War on Terror";System Failure: Violence, Abuse and Neglect in the California Youth Authority; Books Not Bars; and Operation Fine Girl: Rape Used as a Weapon of War in Sierra Leone. She is also co-editor and author of a book published by Pluto Press called Video for Change: A Guide to Advocacy and Activism (2005). Gillian was formerly the Co-Director of the Global Survival Network, where she coordinated a two-year undercover investigation into the trafficking of women for forced prostitution from Russia and the Newly Independent States that helped spur new anti-trafficking legislation in the U.S. and abroad. She also produced and directed Bought & Sold, a documentary film based on the investigation which received widespread media coverage. Gillian lived in South Africa during 1991 and 1992, investigating hit squads and security force involvement in township violence, and has worked in Boston, Washington, D.C., and New York on issues related to poverty and violence. Gillian has been awarded the Echoing Green Fellowship (1996-1998), the Rockefeller Foundation Next Generation Leadership Award (2000), the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship Award Winner (2001-present), the Tech Laureate of the Tech Museum (2003), Ashoka: Innovators for the Public as a special partner (2003), Journalist of the Month by Women's Enews (2004), and the Skoll Social Entrepreneurship Award (2005). Gillian is a member of the Social Venture Network, promoting new models and leadership for socially and environmentally sustainable business in the 21st century, and she is admitted to the Bar in NY and Washington, D.C. She received her BA from Harvard University and her J.D. from Georgetown University, where she was honored as a Public Interest Law Scholar. Larry Nelson: This is Larry Nelson, with w3w3.com, Colorado's Voice of the Technology and Business Community. And we are a very fortunate proud partner with the National Center for Women and Information Technology, or, as we call it, NCWIT. And we've got a three‑part interview here; we're doing a wonderful interview with a very strong entrepreneur that we are very interested in talking with on some interesting topics. And we're here today with Lucinda Sanders ‑ we call her Lucy; all of her friends do ‑ who is the CEO of NCWIT, as well as Leigh Kennedy, who is on the board at NCWIT; and she's a serial entrepreneur herself. So, Lucy, welcome to the show. Let's get into it and introduce your guest. Lucy Sanders: Well, today, we're introducing Gillian Caldwell, who is the executive director of Witness. I have to say, Gillian, after really looking at your website and understanding what the mission of Witness is, it's a very compelling mission that you have. And your tagline, "See It, Film It, Change It", I thought, was one of the best tag lines I've ever seen for the mission of an organization. Can you give us a little bit of background about witness? I know you started it in 1992. Gillian Caldwell: Yes. So, witness was founded in 1992 by musician and advocate Peter Gabriel. He was struck, when he was touring with Amnesty International, by the isolation of the human‑rights defenders that he met in countries around the world who had had their stories of abuse denied and covered up and forgotten. And he had with him, at that time, in 1989, a handheld video camera; it was a Hi8; it cost about $1, 800. And he was using that camera to record their stories and their experiences; and he was struck by the potential of those stories and that technology to bridge the gap and connect audiences all around the world to those realities and ensure they weren't covered up and forgotten. And Witness was founded just a few years later, in the wake of the beating of Rodney King, which, of course, was shot by a handheld video camera, which galvanized an international conversation about police brutality. The Reebok Human Rights Foundation provided the early seed funding in 1992. And witness began as a technology‑transfer organization, with a primary focus on donating handheld video cameras to human‑rights advocates around the world. Over the last fifteen years, since we were founded in 1992, Witness has evolved considerably. And, at this stage, as you suggest at the outset, our focus is on enabling people to see it, film it, and change it. We don't just provide the camera: but we provide both the technical and strategic support that human‑rights defenders need to document the violations; ensure that they can, in a compelling, story‑driven way, explain not just the problem, but the solution; and get that media in front of the audiences that can make a difference, whether it's a Congressional subcommittee trying to decide whether or not to allocate armed forces and funding in the context of the genocide in Darfur, or whether it's a local judicial official who is being influenced by the evidence that's being presented before him on a videotape. Lucy: Well, and I think, in looking at your site, as well, you're using all the Internet and Web 2.0 technology now to really create this worldwide audience. I mean it's a very compelling use of technology to achieve social good. Gillian: What's really exciting at this stage is that I'm just about to launch something called "the Hub", which will basically be a kind of a YouTube for human rights or, as I like to think of it, a YouMyWikiTube for human rights. If you imagine the technologies and the philosophies of YouTube, MySpace, and Wikipedia, you get close to what we're trying to do at the Hub, which is a site that will be premiering in the fall of 2007. So this is a destination, a website, to which anybody anywhere could upload visual imagery, whether it's photographs or video, or possibly even audio content, of human‑rights‑related issues in their communities, here in the United States and around the world. They can upload it and opt in to a community of people that care about those issues and support campaigns for change. Lucy: Well, so, it's real evidence of how technology supports social entrepreneurism. And that gets me to my first question about technology in general: what technologies do you see on the horizon that are really going to make a difference for you, in addition to the Web 2.0 and Internet types of technology? Gillian: Well, of course, the cell phone, and particularly video‑ and photograph‑enabled cell phones, are really making a difference. I mean, historically, when people thought about the Rodney King beating, they thought "Oh, if you can just capture the abuse as it happens, it will make all the difference"; and the reality is that, with the larger video cameras people have historically used, you're unlikely to be in the wrong place at the right time. But, now, with the handheld cell phones, so many of which are video‑enabled and photograph‑enabled, there is a brand new opportunity to capture that abuse as it happens. If you think back to the London Tube bombings, just a couple of years ago, when a so‑called citizen journalist was reporting live from inside the London Tubes and the BBC moved ahead to create an email address to which anybody could email imagery of news‑related stories in their community, you start to realize that the cell phone is actually really revolutionizing the way we access information, as is text‑messaging and, of course, the Internet, which really didn't exist when Witness was founded. Lucy: And the cell network is very ubiquitous as well, especially in developing countries. Gillian: Right. I mean we still have a massive digital divide: but the beauty of the cell networks is that many of the countries which have historically been confronted with that massive divide will be able to leapfrog over the physical infrastructure, as those cellular networks are strengthened; and we'll be able to embed larger and larger files and transmit larger files over the cellular networks. But it is a concern, still, of course, when we think about the challenges of the Hub. And to take, for example, perhaps a humanitarian‑aid worker in Darfur, who happens to be on the spot as a genocide unfolds, who captures some of that imagery on their cell phone, and who wants to upload it to the Hub so that maybe the Save Darfur Coalition, in Washington, D.C., can then download it and provide that to the Congressional subcommittee: that aid worker faces several challenges. First of all: What's the bandwidth? What's the cost? What's the expense to upload that content? And does he have the strength of signal to do it? And secondly: What about the security risks? Here's a big issue for us, because, of course, if we log the IP addresses of the people who are uploading content, even if we enable them to upload the content anonymously, they really may be at risk, and we could face a subpoena, as Yahoo! Did in the case of Chinese dissidents. So the simple size of the file, of the video file, as it stands, makes it very difficult to encrypt or anonymize those files and it does put people at risk. So the technology is still insipient in terms of really fully enabling what we're talking about. Lucy: It is interesting how you've continually used the latest technologies to help in the pursuit. So, if we switch gears a little bit and we think about you being an entrepreneur: why did you decide to be an entrepreneur, and what is it about entrepreneurship that really makes you tick? Gillian: Well, I mean it's interesting that I have been sort of dubbed a social entrepreneur by a variety of organizations that recognize people in that field, whether it's Ashoka, or the Skoll Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, or the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, really going back to about 2001. And a social entrepreneur is defined variously; but it's really understood as somebody who's really taking an innovative and sustainable approach to an old problem. And what Ashoka says about social entrepreneurs is that they're born that way. And it's funny: it isn't a primary identity for me; but, more and more, I do understand myself as somebody who's genetically inclined towards innovation and towards growing new ideas and towards thinking really tactically and strategically about what's sustainable. But my passion is not earning income: my passion is doing work that feeds my soul; and that's why I've always invested myself in work that delivers social value.. Larry Nelson: Gillian, who in your life really helped, supported your ‑ whether it was genetically inclined beginnings, or was it a mentor that came along the way? Was it a particular group that really had a major influence on your direction? Gillian: Well, I think, like so many people, the most formative influences for me were both my family ‑ particularly parents, who were not, themselves, deeply involved at a political level but who really had what I would call progressive values and who were very driven by integrity, in terms of how they thought about the world ‑ and then, of course, my teachers, particularly my history teachers, in grammar school and in high school, who introduced me to Amnesty International. I began running my high‑school chapter of Amnesty International when I was 12 years old; and I recall organizing weekly Urgent Action letter‑writing campaigns with students, getting dozens of students to write letters to President Zia‑ul‑Haq, in Pakistan, at the time, about political prisoners. And I remember organizing a school symposium on torture. And, I think, there, again, not just my parents and their support of my commitment to doing social‑justice work, but the teachers that encouraged me. And then additionally, interestingly, the work of an artist by the name of Leon Galag, who died quite recently, but who did a series called The Mercenary Series, which was very powerful, enormous canvases of mercenaries in Latin America torturing political prisoners. And, strangely enough, because I lived in the back of an art gallery in SoHo, in New York, when I was growing up, those paintings were in my living‑room for a period of time. In fact, I've often commented that, in these paintings, in The Mercenary Series, there was always a perpetrator looking at you looking at them, almost making a witness out of you and demanding that you do something about it. So I see a very consistent narrative thread, in terms of my focus on social justice and my focus on enterprise, going back to the days when I used to host regular bake sales on the local street corner to try to earn a little income. Lucy: I'd say this is genetically baked into you. Leigh: No pun intended. I thought it was really interesting, too: you're a lawyer. Did you pursue a law degree in support of your social activism? Gillian: Yes. I decided to get a law degree because I wanted additional credibility and depth, in terms of doing policy‑oriented work. I didn't intend to practice, although I did enjoy the short period of time in which I practiced, both at the administrative level, representing disability applicants, and then also working with special‑education cases and discrimination cases, before I got involved in a big undercover investigation on the Russian Mafia and their involvement in trafficking women for forced prostitution. And that undercover investigation utilized hidden‑camera technologies. We posed as foreign buyers interested in purchasing women. And that was my real introduction to video advocacy, as I now call it. But the law degree was always intended to help give me a little bit more credibility, a little bit more depth. And I didn't ‑ I couldn't anticipate at the time that it would be as useful as it is, of course, in the context of running an organization like Witness, where, you'd think, most of my legal training would come into play in the context of human‑rights law, when, in fact, most of what I really deal with on a daily basis, through the three pro‑bono law firms that support our work, has to do with intellectual‑property and trademark protection. Lucy: That's what I was going to ask you about: digital rights management. But that's probably a discussion for another time. Larry: Yeah. Leigh: So, Gillian, when you think about your career as a social entrepreneur, what's really been the toughest thing that you've had to do? Gillian: The biggest challenge is recognizing that the only thing that will be constant is change, particularly in an organization like Witness, where you're focused on integrating new technologies into social‑change work. You have to stay adaptable and evolutionary, which means you're never standing still. So, while I've been running witness for almost ten years now, I can honestly say that the organization looks, feels, and acts very differently from quarter to quarter. When I started, it was just me; and, at this stage, for fiscal '08, we're going to have a budget of $4.2‑million and a staff of 30. So that's a very different operation than it is to run something that's just two or three people. I think the other thing is that, if you're working as an entrepreneur in a social context, you're constantly in the midst of a so‑called stretch assignment: you're learning as you move through the process. And what's so important is being sure that you're really thoughtful about reaching out to get the advice and guidance and support that you need along the way, and that you build a system and an infrastructure of support surrounding you, because it may not always exist within the organization itself, but there are people that have done it before and you're not always needing to reinvent the wheel. Lucy: Well, and speaking of advice: if you were sitting in a room with some young people, what advice would you give them about entrepreneurship? Gillian: Well, again, I look at it through the perspective of social enterprise. So, for me, the most important advice I could give anybody is to stay committed to evolution; and that means that you have to live as a learner. I think that Gandhi once said that we should live like we are going to die tomorrow but learn like we will live forever. And I really believe that's the case: if we aren't open to learning, and if we don't spend as much time listening as we spend speaking, we can't do anything well. So I think that's the most important thing: to stay adaptable, to stay evolutionary ‑ and to build leadership. Somebody who really is a leader is ultimately somebody who takes all the blame and none of the credit. And that's a hard thing to map your mind around; and, at times, it is a bit of a thankless task, because there's just as many nuts and bolts as there are opportunities for big‑picture strategic visioning to take place. But it's really important to stay humble and to stay open and to stay learning. And, as you mature, over time, you realize that, the more you know, really the less you know, I think. Lucy: That's really true. I have to say Gandhi is ‑ I love his quote: "Be the change you want to see in the world." Gillian: Yeah; well, that's also about really living your values. I think it's so easy to compartmentalize our values and to try to articulate them through the check we write at Christmastime or the bottle we put in the recycling bin. But the reality is that living your values is a full‑time occupation, and it really requires us to challenge ourselves all the time to think and wonder: you know, "Was the thought that just passed through my mind racist?", "Was the dynamic that I just participated in unfair?", "Am I carbon neutral?" I mean all of this is about integrity and about values and about being a productive member of the planet. Lucy: So, speaking of characteristics: when you think about yourself, what personal characteristics do you think have given you advantages in being an entrepreneur? Gillian: Well, I think I have a lot of assets in that department, which have served me really well. One is stick‑to‑it‑iveness: I am dogged and determined, and I will find a way; and that's absolutely necessary. You have to have passion driving your commitment; and I believe, if you're passionate, you can achieve whatever it is that you set out to. It's also important to have solid organizational skills. A lot of entrepreneurs are visionary but aren't fortunate enough to get the skills of discipline and the organization and detail orientation that is required to pull off an enterprise. So, for those people, I think, it's so important to recognize that and surround themselves with people that do complement them well in that way. I think the other issue, of course, is the strategic thinking. And, there, it's making sure not just that you give yourself space and opportunity to think strategically, but also that you create environments in which strategy can evolve through collective conversation. Too often, people at all levels of an organization are not involved in creating and participating and designing a strategy for an organization. And that's what builds ownership, and I think that's what builds better long‑term solutions... Larry Nelson: Gillian, with a background like you ‑ you've had this organization, now, for ten years; you now have a budget of $4.2‑million; you have 31 employees. Here's a question: how do you bring about balance to your personal and your professional lives? Gillian: Well, the quickest way to get some balance is to have some children. And I have two of those: I have a girl, named Tess, who's just about to turn five, and a boy, named Finley, who will be three shortly. And that really, really necessitates a balance, because I will not miss their childhoods. So it enabled me to really walk the walk and talk the talk when it comes to balance. You know, I have certain lines that I draw, in terms of the number of nights a month that I will be away from my children, and a commitment regarding the number of hours I want to be with them at the beginning and the end of each day. So that's really important. The other thing that is so important to me, which I'm really grateful to have been able to bring back into my life, is exercise. And I think everybody finds balance in different ways: some people, through spiritual practice; others, through meditation; and, for me, exercise and, at this stage, running is really critical. So I do run five to six days a week, for roughly 45 minutes; and that's a way to really stay balanced and attuned. Lucy: Well, Gillian, you've really achieved a lot. We haven't even really mentioned it on this interview; but you are an author. You're clearly a passionate activist. You're a lawyer. And, also, you're a techlaureate, from the Tech Museum, which is very impressive as well. You've achieved so much. Oh: and a mom, with great kids. What's next for you? Gillian: Well, interestingly, I'm not somebody who's ever had a clearly designed career path in mind. I'm fortunate that I've been able to work throughout my life in the things that are absolutely engrossing to me and that really make me feel passionate. So I don't have a next step in mind. One of the things that I am increasingly concerned about and do want to direct my attention to, in the context here at Witness and conceivably beyond that, is really the issue of the climate, which is collapsing around us. And I think, first of all, that we are sleeping on the job, in terms of recognizing how serious the issues are, and, second of all, that there is this arbitrary divide between the field of human rights and the environmental movement. And, in fact, if we don't work cohesively together to analyze the intersections between climate collapse and human rights, we're really going to be in trouble. Just by way of example: there will be, and already are, millions of environmental refugees as sea levels rise. Take a look at Bangladesh: much of Bangladesh will be underwater, millions of people forced from their homes. There is already, all over the world today, wars over resource extraction, whether it be wars for oil ‑ of course Iraq comes to mind there ‑ or gold or other natural minerals, which displace hundreds of thousands of people in countries and force them to confront unspeakable violence. There will be the massive spread of vectorial disease. We're already seeing that in disease mutations which function in higher‑temperature environments. So I really see that as a place for a lot more focus and energy; and I'm passionate about seeing what I can do, at Witness and beyond, in that area. Larry: Gillian, I have a feeling that you're going to see it, film it, and change it. Lucy: We really want to thank you for everything you're doing for our world and at Witness. We really appreciate the time that you have taken to talk to us. Gillian: Thank you so much for having me. Lucy: I just want to remind everybody that the podcasts are hosted at the NCWIT website, www.ncwit.org, and also w3w3.com. Larry: That's it. Gillian: And you can go to www.witness.org to learn more about the work. Lucy: Wonderful. Thank you very much. Larry: One more link. Leigh: Thank you, Gillian. Lucy: Bye‑bye. Gillian: O.K. Thank you. Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Gillian CaldwellInterview Summary: Gillian Caldwell is the Executive Director of WITNESS, which uses the power of video to open the eyes of the world to human rights abuses. A film-maker and an attorney, she has always believed in the power of images to change people's minds. Release Date: August 9, 2007Interview Subject: Gillian CaldwellInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 20:50