Bot Smoke

Happy Monday. Tech conferences and announcements worthy of note this week.

India Mobile Congress got started earlier today in New Delhi. The always-interesting Gartner IT Symposium|Expo starts this weekend.

And tomorrow Google’s hardward event is expected to see the announcement of the Pixel 4, Pixel 4 XL, Pixelbook, and new Google Home speakers.

Rumor is the Pixel 4 will include its iteration of a Face ID tech for secure authentication, and support for gesture commands using radar-detection technology.

Story this AM about a congressional committee and the MA attorney general investigating whether millions of bot-generated social media messages about e-cigarettes misled consumers about safety and health issues.

Specifically, the committee is looking for evidence of deceptive or misleading use of social media for targeted marketing and advertising.

Nicotine marketers, you’ve come a long way, baby!

And, the winner of the 2019 Call for Code was announced at a gathering at the UN this weekend. The Barcelona-based Prometeo team built an AI-based platform to monitor and act on firefighter health and safety in real-time and over the long-term. Congrats!

Call for Code Finalists Announced

Last year, IBM joined forces with David Clark Cause to initiate a multi-year global initiative to rally software developers around the world to build practical, effective cloud, AI and other solutions that could help humans in disaster response situations.

The response both years has been tremendous, and the 2018 winner, “Project OWL,” resulted in an IoT and software solution that helps keep first responders and victims connected in a natural disaster.

Earlier today, the top five finalists in the Call for Code 2019 Global Challenge were announced, all of who are currently being evaluated by a distinguished panel of judges. 

Those solutions, and the teams who built them, arrived at some ingenious means by which technology can support disaster preparedness, response, and recovery efforts in this year’s challenge.

You can read about each of the finalists here, and then take the opportunity to vote for this year’s “People’s Choice Winner.”

And the Winner of the Call for Code Is…

When IBM and its partners announced the Call for Code global developer initiative in May, I quickly surmised I was going to be part of a team working on an effort that would be a highlight of my career at Big Blue.

Little did I know the ripple effect that effort would have around the globe.

The rallying cry was an important one: Asking developers everywhere to team up and use their skills and mastery of the latest and greatest technologies to drive positive and long-lasting chance across the world with their code.

Specifically, for the 2018 effort (Call for Code is a multi-year initiative), to create solutions that significantly improve preparedness for natural disasters and relief when they hit in order to safeguard the health and well-being of communities.

The Call officially began in June, and the deadline for contributions was towards the end of September.

Then, last night at the Regency Ballroom in San Francisco, the winner was announced: Project OWL.

Project OWL’s stated disaster preparedness problem was an important one: To help avoid the chaos and uncertainty a disaster can bring, first responders need to make critical decisions with limited evidence and execute with confidence.

Their solution was brilliant: To use a set of APIs and open data sets from a variety of sources (The Weather Company, the American Red Cross, FEMA) to help build an ad-hoc mobile “Clusterduck” network.

The network would be an offline communications infrastructure created by physical, Wi-Fi-enabled devices dispersed in clusters which would help first responders and relief workers to share information about their specific situation, location and needs.

While the Project OWL team was the winner of the $200K grand prize, the other finalists also offered quite compelling solutions, and I would encourage you to read more about them in this blog post.

As for Project OWL, they took their moment in the spotlight last night in San Francisco and have already turned their attention back to improving upon their initial effort, with the goal of focusing on regions where annual weather patterns consistently impact communities negative, including India, China, the Philippines, and parts of the U.S.

They’ll also receive support from the IBM Corporate Service Corps (think of it as IBM’s Peace Corps), and will have the opportunity to pitch OWL to venture capitalist firm NEA for potential funding.

In the end, over 100k developers from 156 nations participated in this year’s challenge, and built some 2,500 disaster preparedness apps, demonstrating once again the power software developers around the globe have to change the world for the better!