Davos, Switzerland — Jan. 30, 2012 — When
the world’s policymakers descend on Davos, Switzerland, for the World
Economic Forum Annual Meeting, Bill Gates can usually get their
attention.
This year, in between discussing
food sustainability and announcing a US$750 million donation to fight
AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis, Gates turned his attention to a few
students who hope to make a similarly outsized humanitarian mark on the
world.
|
Microsoft’s chairman was on hand Friday, January 27, for the introduction of the inaugural recipients of the Imagine Cup
Grants, a three-year, US$3 million competitive grant program for
student technology and social entrepreneurs. The winners were four
student teams from Ecuador, Croatia, Jordan, and the U.S. who are using
technologies such as Kinect, Windows Phone, and Bing Maps to address
health, accessibility, and education issues. The winning teams will now
take projects that shone at Microsoft’s Imagine Cup competition last
summer to the business world, where they will form companies or
nonprofits with support from Microsoft, including cash, software, and
connections to investors, non-governmental organization (NGO) partners
and business partners.
Earlier this month,
Gates invited students to send him their ideas for improving the lives
of the world’s poorest people, and he posted some of the most inspiring
responses on his website. He said he saw the same level of insight and creativity in the Imagine Cup grant winners he met in Davos.
“Young
people have the ideas, energy and creativity to make the world a better
place,” Gates said. “We need to make sure young people – no matter what
their socio-economic background – have the opportunity to make their
great ideas a reality, whether it’s through startup funding, connections
or mentorship.”
The Imagine Cup grants align
with Microsoft’s focus on providing opportunity for young people, said
Brad Smith, executive vice president of Legal and Corporate Affairs
(LCA) and Microsoft’s general counsel. Smith led a roundtable discussion
with Gates, Imagine Cup grant winners, and luminaries from the
education, nonprofit and business worlds.
The
roundtable was designed to kick start discussions on how to better
address the growing “opportunity divide” for youth worldwide, Smith
said. By shifting its citizenship focus, Microsoft wants to empower
young people to imagine and realize their opportunities in today’s
world.
“As a technology company that has so
long been focused on using technology as a way to empower people, we
have a special opportunity to really forge some new steps to better
equip people with the knowledge, skills and education they need to be
successful,” Smith said.
Microsoft has spent a
decade trying to address the world’s digital divide and giving people
access to technology, Smith said. Now, the company sees an “opportunity
divide” emerging – a gap between those who have the access to skills and
opportunities to be successful, and those who do not.
The
problem is particularly acute for young people, Smith said. The world
is more globally competitive, diverse, and grounded in technology than
ever before. While some young people are thriving, those on the wrong
side of the digital divide lack the skills, education, experience or
connection to employment opportunities that are required to succeed.
|
Microsoft has a number of
programs that try and empower young people to change the world, he
added. Some are driven globally, others locally. They include the
Imagine Cup, which more than 1.4 million students have participated in
since 2003; the DreamSpark program, which provides students and educators with free access to software; and Microsoft Innovation Centers, technology facilities in 42 countries that help young companies grow.
The
Imagine Cup was the prominent example in Davos. All four grant winners
were finalists in the Imagine Cup 2011 Worldwide Finals, a global
technology competition that asks students to tackle some of the world’s
biggest challenges.
The “World Cup for the software geeks” is how Mohammad Azzam described the competition. Azzam, from Jordan’s Team OaSys,
said the Imagine Cup was a perfect opportunity to showcase their
project, Horizon. Horizon is a software and hardware system that allows
people who do not have use of their hands or arms to use a computer.
As winners of an Imagine Cup grant, the team looks forward to bringing Horizon to the world.
“We
have met many people who said, ‘we lost hope of being able to
communicate with the world,’” Azzam said. “To us, it’s not just about
getting the money. To us, it’s about giving people hope and the
opportunity to do the things they think they can’t do anymore and being
able to actually change other people’s lives.”
All
four teams discussed their projects with the panel (and privately with
Gates beforehand). It was clear that the students’ skills extended far
beyond IT.
“I always wanted to be a doctor,
but I changed my mind and started to study computer science,” said
Dominik Tomicevic, of Croatia’s Team KiDNect.
His team developed a Kinect-based physical therapy solution for
children, particularly those with cerebral palsy. “This is a project
combining medicine with computer science.”
Jason Wakizaka said Team LifeLens
of the United States was able to succeed because of their diverse
backgrounds. “Team is such an important concept in the Imagine Cup,” he
said, noting his teammates had studied business development, science,
and computer vision algorithms. “It really took all of us coming
together to discuss a front-to-end solution we had to develop to become a
winning project. “
Team LifeLens is
developing an app to turn a Windows Phone into a weapon against disease.
Their target: malaria, which kills thousands of young children in
sub-Saharan Africa each year. They aim to “arm an army of doctors” with
smartphones to go out into the field and detect malaria quickly and
accurately.
Gates said there was an urgent
need in the field for a tool like LifeLens. “It would be a great thing –
diagnosis is very difficult right now,” he said.
|
Wakizaka
said the team’s next step is to get a much larger sample set to test
and refine their algorithms. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has a
huge library of samples, Gates said. “We should connect about that.”
Meanwhile, Ecuador’s Team FalconDev
came up with an idea called SkillBox, an affordable solution to help
children who are hearing-impaired by translating all audio received from
a teacher in a classroom into sign language. A wireless headset
captures the sound and sends it to the computer, and SkillBox then shows
the corresponding sign for the word or phrase.
Gates noted that Team FalconDev can now turn their idea into reality with help from the Imagine Cup Grant.
“I’m optimistic about the impact that they will have on helping hearing-impaired children get a great education,” he said.
Team
FalconDev’s Gerardo Francisco Pérez Layedra – Paco to his friends – is
also optimistic. “Technology well-used is going to help eliminate all
these barriers,” he said. “When we use technology for good, that’s when
we help the people and help drop all the barriers that exist today.”
Smith
noted that Microsoft has been coming to Davos for more than a decade.
He called the annual meeting an important opportunity for Microsoft to
build and strengthen relationships with heads of state, policymakers,
and some of its biggest customers in the world. The company showcased
its technology at private meetings as well as at its Vision Center,
where guests could check out products such as Kinect, Surface, Skype,
and new versions of Windows Phone.
“Davos is a
great opportunity for people to see what we see every day inside
Microsoft, which is where our products and services are going,” Smith
said. “One of the things that sets us apart from others in the industry
is we are so focused on how our technology can put people first. And
Davos gives us an opportunity not only to share with a very influential
group our vision for using technology to empower people, but it also
gives us an opportunity to learn from a very influential group of people
their best ideas on where we need to continue to go with our products
and services for the future.”
0 comentarii:
Post a Comment