- Hey, everybody.
Here we are at South by Southwest
and I'm with a couple of new friends.
I'm really excited about this,
and this is Sunil
and this is Jonathan.
- Hey.
- You know, and South by Southwest is where,
you know, everybody does this cutting edge
break out the newest, greatest thing,
you know, and if you're in homeless services
there hasn't been a newest, greatest thing
in a long time.
Maybe 100,000 homes
which came out a couple of years ago
is about this cutting edge
but it had really nothing to do with technology.
So, what's really cool
is Jonathan is homeless here in Austin
and he's a hotspot.
- I'm a hotspot.
- He's a hotspot.
- I am 4G wireless hotspot.
- So, what's needed, this is a different model
of, as you know, if you're following me
you know I support the street papers
because, you know, street papers aren't really
going to get someone out of homelessness
but it gives a positive interaction
between the general public and one of our
homeless friends,
and that's priceless.
Ever since that I read this blog post
somebody tweeted me and said
"You gotta see this."
I was like, holy cow,
and I've been thinking in my brain,
what else can we do?
How else can we do this stuff?
My friend here, Alan Graham,
from Mobile Loaves and Fishes
is doing street treats
where they are giving out ice cream and stuff,
but this is technology,
and as you know,
most of my work is connecting homeless people
with social media literacy and everything else.
So, Sunil, this is another cool thing too,
because most of the cost stuff
is driven by brand.
This is from an agency,
not a pro bono doing something.
- Right.
- They developed this.
Tell me about it.
- Yeah, so basically,
the agency was looking at South by Southwest,
which is an event we attend every year.
We're excited by it.
And you know, we've seen a lot of what
agencies tend to do here,
which is promotional,
which is good and I don't criticize that at all,
but we thought it was an opportunity for us
to dive a little bit more into homelessness
as an issue and when we did we realized
that hey, street newspapers are one of the,
you know, this really positive program that just
seems to be under pressure because
ultimately it's print media,
and most people just don't buy a newspaper
when they own an iPad or something.
- That's right, that's right.
- So we figured let's try to modernize that
because as you said it's not necessarily about
the money raised, although that helps,
it's as much about the social aspect
of the street newspaper too.
So then we're lucky to have guys like Jonathon
who are very social and hopefully
we'll have some video of him actually
talking to people.
But people love Jonathon, and he basically comes out,
talks to people and offers them
a pay what they want 4G access
while they're at the conference.
- So, normally your day would be what?
- Normally my day starts off with me at,
I go to my NA meetings, and I've been doing that
for 18 months and then when I'm done at my meetings
I just hang out with positive people
and try to do positive things.
- Get your life back on track.
- Get my life back on track.
- So now what do you think about doing this?
- This has been great, this has been
a wonderful experience.
What I really love about this
is that I can go anywhere in the city with this thing,
and it's gonna work, and that's what I like.
And that's what people are looking at.
There are spots in the city where you can go
and you can't even get wireless service.
With this, it's mobile, so it's like,
put it in my pocket, I'm standing way,
20 miles from where I was, a half an hour ago,
and I still have service.
That's awesome.
- What Jonathon hasn't mentioned
is the wall behind us is actually a bar and restaurant
that Jonathon has chosen to be next to
so he can sell service to people inside the bar
and restaurant.
- Awesome, that's a good bargaining plan.
That's one of the things I was thinking about,
everybody's pretty much walking around
so you have to figure out,
that's pretty smart thinking man.
- I was thinking like, well I know 6th Street is busy,
and I was like, well I know this bar,
and everyone was going across the street
to the Alamo Drive House, I said,
what if I post myself close by there,
and that way I can catch the people
coming in and out, coming in and out.
And it's been working out great.
People are actually stopping long enough
to even listen to what's going on,
what is the whole storyline and everything
which is great.
The last couple days has been all rainy.
Today's been bright and sunny
and I'm actually able to sit down and talk to people about
my homelessness and about
the program that we're helping out.
And we're getting more people interested in it.
And I'm sure that the more we put our word out there,
the more word that gets out there,
the more hits you're gonna have on this spot.
And people are gonna be really interested in this
because like I say, it's a very tiny device,
it's lightweight, you can put it in your shirt pocket,
throw it in your pants pocket.
- Now you own a MiFi.
(laughs)
If you really haven't grasped it yet,
and there's a website I think it even has geolocation.
- Yeah, it's hotspots.org.
- So you can find these guys, you come up,
and you can text a number with their name on it
and get something back on their story,
there's a Paypal donation to not only give to Jonathon
directly, but also the shelter where you're
sleeping at at night,
which as you know I also support,
you gotta support the people that are doing the housing jobs
and house services.
So, thank you. - Thank you.
- Thank you. - Thank Jonathon.
- This is amazing, and again, you might think
this is controversial and a little too cutting edge,
great, well I challenge you to think of something better.
- That's it, that's it, yeah.
- Instead of cutting it down, augment it.
Figure out how to make it better
and in your community and how we can empower
our homeless friends to do something that has
great engagement with the general public
and gets people off the streets.
So this is amazing.
- This is great. - Thank you Jonathon.
Thank you guys. - Thank you.