MALE SPEAKER: Action.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: Good afternoon.
My name is Brian Fitzpatrick.
Most people call me Fitz.
BEN COLLINS-SUSSMAN: My name is Ben.
And we are in a new location today.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: We're in a new location with Google
Develop for Good.
And we've got some more people to talk to you about it.
So let's get our first guest.
Hi, what's your name?
CAROLYN WENDELL: My name's Carolyn Wendell.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: And where do you work at, Carolyn?
CAROLYN WENDELL: I work at Google for Nonprofits.
BEN COLLINS-SUSSMAN: And you'll tell us a little bit
more about this?
CAROLYN WENDELL: Yeah, sure.
[INAUDIBLE]
MALE SPEAKER: We've got to start over.
Can we change their line?
CAROLYN WENDELL: --streamline their internal
operations as well.
And Google for Nonprofits, the way that we really do this is
by providing nonprofits with special tools to help them.
And so we provide them with Google products either free of
charge, or sometimes at reduced cost.
And so for example, one thing that we have is the Google for
Nonprofits program.
And this allows US nonprofits to really apply to a program,
where they have access to exclusive
nonprofit product benefits.
So for example, a nonprofit could use Google Apps free of
charge for up to 3,000 users.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: Wow.
CAROLYN WENDELL: Yeah.
And they get premium Geo Tools as well, such as Google Maps
API Premier, or Google Earth Pro, for free.
We also offer Google AdWords advertising, and some special
YouTube features, as well, for nonprofits.
And that's all through the Google for Nonprofits program.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: So you guys are all out to basically help
nonprofits and save them money.
CAROLYN WENDELL: Yeah, exactly.
And if they want to apply to the Google for Nonprofits
program, it's really easy.
You just have to go to google.com/nonprofits.
If you're a US nonprofit, you can apply there.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: And is that like for 501(c)(3)s?
CAROLYN WENDELL: Exactly, yes.
You have to be a 501(c)(3).
BEN COLLINS-SUSSMAN: So what is the motivation for having a
booth here at our developer conference today?
CAROLYN WENDELL: Oh, well, thank you for asking that.
We're so excited to be here at I/O today, because we all know
that developers want to do good.
And we've had developers come up to us who already have been
engaging with their nonprofits in their local communities.
And really, we're here at I/O just to learn more from
developers about what sort of engagement they'd like to have
with nonprofits.
So if you're out there, and you're interested in talking
to us about how you have helped nonprofits, or maybe
how you might want to get involved more in the future,
we'd love to come up and hear from you.
We also are here because we really want help promoting the
Google for Nonprofits and Google for Nonprofits program,
and helping to educate other nonprofits that you may know
about about our program, and about how Google can help you
and help their cause.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: So if people out there in
internet-land want to know more, where do they go?
CAROLYN WENDELL: Where should they go if they want to know
more about Google for Nonprofits?
Google.com/nonprofits, that's where they want to go.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: That's fabulous.
Thanks so much for your time.
It was great having you on.
BEN COLLINS-SUSSMAN: Wonderful.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: Take care.
Have a great conference.
CAROLYN WENDELL: Thank you, guys.
Bye.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: Bye, bye.
BEN COLLINS-SUSSMAN: Let's grab another person here.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: We have another person here.
All right, who do we have here?
BEN COLLINS-SUSSMAN: Hello.
What is your name?
TANYA BIRCH: My name is Tanya Birch.
And I work on the Google Earth Outreach team.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: And tell me a little bit more
about what is that.
What is Google Earth Outreach?
TANYA BIRCH: Yeah, so Google Earth Outreach is a team
underneath the Geo, underneath Google Earth.
We help nonprofits solve the world's most pressing problems
using Google's mapping technologies, whether it's in
the environmental sector, or humanitarian, or crisis
response, or any kind of sector.
BEN COLLINS-SUSSMAN: Does this involve working with a lot of
governments, then, I assume?
Or making--
Or is it-- ?
TANYA BIRCH: It's more nonprofits
that are on the ground--
similar to what Carolyn was talking about--
that are really implementing solutions for environmental
issues, or humanitarian issues on the ground.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: So what brings you guys
here to Google I/O?
What are you looking for from developers?
TANYA BIRCH: I'm really excited to be here at Google
I/O because we get a lot of nonprofits who are always
coming to us, asking for help creating interesting mapping
visualizations.
And we have a couple things.
We have a Developer Grants program.
We also offer software grants to nonprofits.
But we really, mainly, just want to connect with
developers, because we know so many NGOs that are out there
that need help building their maps.
And so we want to put the two together.
We have a Developer Marketplace for nonprofits to
go and find developers.
It's sort of like a matchmaking service, right?
If you're a developer, and you want to do
something that's for good--
instead of for the man, or whatever-- then you can list
yourself on the Developer Marketplace.
And our URL is earth.google.com/outreach.
BEN COLLINS-SUSSMAN: Do you have any particular examples
or success stories that you can share with us?
TANYA BIRCH: Yeah, I do.
Let's see.
Probably my favorite one is, I was just last week at Rio+20.
And the Surui Amazon indigenous tribe launched
their cultural map.
So this is a tribe in the Amazon Rainforest.
And they're struggling to protect their land from
deforestation.
And also, they want to preserve their culture in a
mapping environment.
They've created this cultural map that's right now only on
big PDF version.
It's beautiful, but it's hanging in their office.
So they created this cultural map, that is now in Google
Earth, that everybody can see.
And they're also using Android smartphones to engage, to
measure the carbon of their trees in their rainforest, and
preserve their forest for future generations.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: And so developers can join in and
help make that happen?
TANYA BIRCH: Organizations like that are looking for
developers, exactly.
BEN COLLINS-SUSSMAN: Sounds like a
great way to get connected.
Wow, fantastic.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: And what's your second favorite?
Name one more.
I'll make you pick your favorite children here.
TANYA BIRCH: It's tough, because there are so many.
But probably my second favorite is WWF and Eyes on
the Forest.
And they just launched a Google Maps
Engine powered map.
It's eyesontheforest.or.id.
And it basically tracks rates of deforestation, historical
rates of deforestation, in Sumatera, and compares it to
animal habitats, like rhinoceros, tiger, orangutan.
And you can see how as the forest, the habitat, shrinks,
the ranges of the animals shrink as well.
So it's eyesontheforest.or.id.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: And have you gotten a lot of interest
here at the I/O from people you've been meeting at the
booth today?
TANYA BIRCH: Yeah, I mean, we have a very, very close
relationship with both developers and both the
nonprofits who we work with.
So it's great to be here, because there's a lot of
excitement.
And we have, actually, a talk tomorrow, "Maps for Good,"
where we're going to have two of the developers who were
awarded Developer Grants last year
speaking about their projects.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: That's fabulous.
So one last time, let's give the URL, so everybody knows
where to go so they can help out.
Because they're going to do this right now.
TANYA BIRCH: It's earth.google.com/outreach.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: Excellent.
BEN COLLINS-SUSSMAN: Thank you so much.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: Thanks so much.
It's great meeting you.
All right.
BEN COLLINS-SUSSMAN: All right, who else is here?
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: OK, number three.
Here we go.
So who do we have here?
CHRISTIAAN ADAMS: Hi, my name's Christiaan Adams.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: And what do you do, Christiaan?
CHRISTIAAN ADAMS: I'm with the Crisis Response team out of
google.org.
And we are here talking to developers about the various
tools that we make available to help get information out in
times of crisis.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: All right, so tell us a little more about
what Crisis Response does.
Exactly how do you guys work?
CHRISTIAAN ADAMS: Sure.
So when a disaster happens--
an earthquake, or a flood, or a tornado, or
something like that--
the people affected, one of their big needs is
information, like, where's my family?
Are they OK?
Where are the shelters?
Do I need to evacuate?
If so, where?
And when people are looking for information, they tend to
come to Google, because we're pretty good at information.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: We have a search engine.
CHRISTIAAN ADAMS: Yeah, we do.
And so we're trying to make the kind of information that
people look for during times of crisis easier to find,
access, and use.
BEN COLLINS-SUSSMAN: Now, you were giving me an example
earlier about New York City, about just sometimes there's a
lack of serving power to get information out.
Can you tell me a little more about that?
CHRISTIAAN ADAMS: Sure.
When Hurricane Irene went up the East Coast last year,
there were evacuation maps that were--
I believe it was a 10 megabyte PDF on somebody's website.
And of course, that server didn't stand up very well to
the millions of people who were trying to access that
information at that time.
So we helped by adding that map information to one of our
tools, which is our Crisis Mapping tool, and combined it
with many other layers, like the radar, and the clouds, and
the evacuation routes, and the flood stages from the USGS,
and a whole bunch of other layers, and made that
available both through our website, and made it easy for
the city to embed on their website, and for news agencies
to embed on their websites.
And because it's running on our data centers, we didn't
have a problem with the large amount of users, the large
spike of users that you get during those times.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: Wow, that's incredible.
CHRISTIAAN ADAMS: Yeah, we're here talking to developers
about all those different tools, and talking about the
open standards and the web-friendly scalable data
formats that we encourage people to publish data in, so
that they can be shared and made accessible
during crisis times.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: So how can developers help out?
What can they do to help?
CHRISTIAAN ADAMS: So we touched on our mapping tools.
They can publish things in formats such as KML, or using
some of Google Tools, such as Fusion Tables, or our new Maps
Engine tools.
And those are all ways to publish map data in a way that
scales well, that can handle the load, and that is
web-friendly.
Our maps work across mobile and desktop seamlessly.
People can access them on the go, because they may not be in
front of their desktop when they're
responding to a disaster.
And we also have things like our Person Finder tool.
So we have an open format there that has helped bring
together the missing persons databases.
And so that if you're looking to see where your family is,
or if they're OK, or you want to let your family know that
you're OK, there's one place you can go in Person Finder to
share that information.
We encourage developers to use that open source tool to
implement that and use the open format there.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: So you guys are talking about bringing
people together in crisis, and saving
families, and saving lives.
I mean, this is really important stuff.
BEN COLLINS-SUSSMAN: But then harvesting developers' power
to provide that information into Google systems.
And it's really fantastic.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: So if I'm a developer out
there, how can I help?
Where do I go?
CHRISTIAAN ADAMS: You can check out our website.
It's google.org/crisisresponse.
You'll see our various tools up there, a whole list of
tools that responders can use, tools for people impacted by
disasters, and links to some of our previous responses.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: That sounds really awesome.
BEN COLLINS-SUSSMAN: All right.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: Another place for everyone to go.
Thanks a lot.
BEN COLLINS-SUSSMAN: Wonderful,
one more person here.
So what is your name?
FIONA LEE: My name's Fiona Lee.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: And what do you work on, Fiona?
FIONA LEE: I work on the Emerging
Markets team in Google.
Basically, we work on places like Latin America,
Sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East, North Africa, India, and
Southeast Asia.
So the developing parts of the world.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: And you're here at I/O for Android for
Good, is that right?
FIONA LEE: That's correct.
Android for Good is a donation program.
The goal is to reuse Android phones by donating them to
nonprofits and to educational institutions, so universities
in emerging markets.
If you have a working Android phone and it is unlocked, you
should drop it off at the Android for Good booth at I/O.
We also collect them from Googlers from
offices around the world.
And we take the phones, we wipe them of personal
information, we test them to make sure
everything's working.
And then we donate them to nonprofits that will use them
in the field, or to educational institutions in
Africa, mostly, to teach Android programming.
BEN COLLINS-SUSSMAN: And how has this program
worked out so far?
Do you have any interesting stories?
FIONA LEE: So we've had two full years.
This is our third year.
We've collected about 450 phones.
And they were valued at probably $400, $500 a piece
when they were donated.
So do the math.
A variety of nonprofits have gotten those phones.
Probably the one that is closest to my heart is one
called V-Day, which is a nonprofit
founded by Eve Ensler.
She's a playwright and activist.
She wrote The Vagina Monologues.
I don't know if you can say that on the air.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: It's the internet.
It's OK.
FIONA LEE: OK, so they use those phones and work with
Panzi Hospital in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
In the DRC, rape is a really huge problem for women.
And so this hospital does a lot of work with women who
have been raped.
And they use the phones and document the stories of the
rape, and to capture the history so that if there
should ever be a time when justice is served, and we have
trials, the perpetrators can be brought to justice.
So that's probably my favorite use of the phone,
the donation program.
The second one is--
and this one has scaled really, really well--
a nonprofit called VETAID that works in Kenya and Tanzania.
They use the phones to basically track animal disease
and vaccination programs.
And they use a data collection tool called EpiCollect.
It's built on top of App Engine.
It's open source.
And they do a lot of work to track droughts.
For example, when Kenya had a really bad drought last year,
they tracked all that because, for people in the Rift Valley,
your animals are your livelihood.
It's been so successful that the Food and Agriculture
Organization, Veterinarians Without Frontiers, the Gates
Foundation are now using this tool to do animal surveillance
and disease monitoring for all of Africa.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: So you're saying, any
Android unlocked phone.
So I've got an old unlocked G1 that's like 50 years old.
Could you guys do anything with that?
FIONA LEE: I would prefer to have more recent phones.
But if they're unlocked and they work, and you have the
charger, hand it over.
And we don't have a website, unfortunately.
This is a 20% project and a labor of love with a lot of
help from other Googlers.
So you can just email me, flee@google.com--
flee@google.com.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: OK, so that's great.
I mean, that sounds really good.
450 phones, and you've just been working like 20% time?
FIONA LEE: Yeah.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: So this is you and some other engineers,
and other folks, or other companies within the company?
FIONA LEE: We have points of contact in all the Google
offices around the world.
And so this is a team effort.
And then we use a local company here to wipe the data,
and to donate it and all that stuff.
So it's all above board.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: All right, so if anyone out there has a
phone that they wanted to give to Android for Good, they can
email flee--
flee@google.com.
And you will make sure that it gets somewhere and does
something good.
Is that right?
FIONA LEE: You got it, yep.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: That's fabulous, excellent.
BEN COLLINS-SUSSMAN: It's fantastic.
Thank you so much.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: Wow, this is amazing.
15 minutes of four incredible projects
that people are doing.
BEN COLLINS-SUSSMAN: If you are a developer, you can make
a real impact on the world, not just make money.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: Not just work for the--
I think Tanya said, work for the man, right?
Like we do.
BEN COLLINS-SUSSMAN: I resemble that remark.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: That's great.
Well, I think now we're going to wrap up.
And we're going to turn things back over to the next session.
We'll see you guys, I think, in another hour or so, when we
have some other interesting people to talk to.
See you then.
Thanks a lot.
BEN COLLINS-SUSSMAN: Bye, bye
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: Bye, bye.