- [Gopal] Today we're at Geo for Good 2109
here in Sunnyvale, California.
- We bring leading non-profits, scientists,
educators, journalists who are trying to address
some of the world's most challenging issues.
And they're hungry to learn our mapping tools
to help them solve problems.
Historically, we've sort of had two communities.
The scientists and, specifically, geo scientists,
they are very deep and very technical.
Meanwhile, we have our Geo for Good
community of non-profits.
- And we wanted to bring that community together
so that they could share and learn from each other.
And then we could teach the other tools to all of them.
- And that's what's really exciting.
It's the first time we've done that.
It's gonna be really fun to see what happens.
(energetic violin music)
Hello everyone.
Welcome to Geo for Good.
(audience claps)
This is a highlight of our year for our team.
It's extremely motivating to us
to welcome you to our campus from all over the world.
- I'm from Kenya.
- Fairbanks, Alaska.
- Belgium.
- New Zealand.
- Cameroon.
- South Africa.
- Edinburgh, Scotland.
- This is always a week to get some new inspiration
to get my work going.
(percussive music)
- A lot of people are making a lot of connections
that they wouldn't have made otherwise
unless we were able to bring everyone together.
- I'm excited to meet all the software developers
that built Google Earth Engine.
- Everybody in this room is doing unbelievable stuff.
And we give them a lot of opportunity
to tell each other about it.
So there's Plenary Talks.
- What you do when you take BigQuery and GIS
and you put 'em together,
we're bringing very big data infrastructure to GIS
in a way that hasn't been done before.
- There's lightening rounds.
There's deeper sessions.
There's hands-on with the tools that they're building.
- Today, I'm signed up for a TensorFlow workshop
and a neurosegmentation workshop.
- This afternoon, I went to
a forest monitoring and reporting session.
_ And all week we have office hours.
They come to us with a project that's half done
and they're stuck.
And we unblock them.
- It's great for us, as engineers, to talk to our users
and see what they're up to and what we should build.
- Our mission is to detect pest and plant diseases.
So it's been really exciting
to see what Google Earth Engine can do.
- I wanted to share some examples
because stories are important to talk about.
- A lot of people use our tools for storytelling.
They take an abstract idea and make it a lot more tangible
so that other people, they're able to communicate
the kind of work that they're doing.
- I can't wait to learn about
some of the storytelling programs and applications,
the ways that we can integrate our cultural identity
and sacred and significant sites and places
with our own words.
And what's super important for us
is that we can share this with not only our own homelands,
but all around the world.
- We're all invested in the health of our environment.
And so these tools allow people
to take big and abstract ideas
and make them a lot more digestible
so that they can communicate things
that are important for everyone
'cause most of these stories
have to do with their communities
than have to do with the planet at large.
- We are using remote sensing
to estimate the evolution of the forest.
- We use it for environmental monitoring.
- I'm working with rural farmers to give them a story.
- Anyone can create a story in Google Earth.
And Google has the highest resolution,
most fresh, most accurate, most comprehensive
digital replica of the planet.
And we use that to power experiences like in Google Maps.
But now, we're also letting you annotate the earth
and use it to portray issues that matter.
- We're working on things like crisis response.
- Today, we have 14 countries
that are giving us early warnings
such as flood forecast, tornado warnings, earthquakes.
- These events are happening in real time.
And so we can use these tools to save lives.
- Nothing equals knowing that other people
are experiencing the imagery that you've collected
in distant parts of the world.
It's having a sense of connection to people
that may live thousands of miles away from you.
- It's super gratifying if we can empower them,
if we can give them something
that will unlock their ability to do something
they've never been able to do before.
- I don't have coding background,
but when I write just one line
and it shows beautiful map of the world,
it's just so fascinating.
And that kind of keeps me going.
- This is really our opportunity.
My job is really to come here and to listen to you.
- This is you, each one of those points of light
coming from somewhere in the world.
You come here, and we all learn a lot together.
And then you go forth.
And everybody's sort of turbocharged to spread more light.
These are the people who are on the front lines
of real change in the world.
And so the other thing that happens here
is people get inspired.
And I think we pump each other up.
We create hope, and we help create momentum for each other.
- It's been especially fun
to have the two conferences together.
- It's been an excellent summit.
- It's been a really amazing experience.
- It's awesome.
It's great having everybody here.
- Geo for Good has been a great summit in 2019.
I'm really looking forward to the next year
and the next summit.