M A G A Z I N E
SECONDMUSE COLL ABOR ATION
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N E T W O R K- C E N T E R E D I N N O VAT I O N
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INNOVATION
N E W YO R K ’ S N E X T TO P M A K E R S
STORY TE LLING FRONTIE R S
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# B LUE RE VOLUTION
I hope a lot of great innovators from around the world with ideas to accelerate the shift to a more circular and sustainable world will apply for this year’s LAUNCH Nordic Challenge. V I G G A S V EN S S O N , L AU N CH N O R D I C I N N OVATO R LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR CLOSING THE LOOP CHALLENGE
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econdMuse is in the business of helping solve the world’s most complex challenges by understanding them and applying fitting, innovative approaches. In this issue, you’ll see some of the thinking behind our work and some of the projects that we produce to actualize network-centered innovation.
So far in 2016, our work has taken us to Argentina, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, Ethiopia, Germany, Haiti, Indonesia, Italy, Serbia, Sweden, Tanzania, Timur Leste, Tonga, Tunisia, Uganda, the rainforests in Costa Rica and the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. In the past six months alone, more than 16,000 people engaged in our innovation programs and we worked on 23 projects across continents. We accomplished all of this and more hand-in-hand with our collaborators and partners, who are instrumental in everything we do. We are honored to share the stories of this work with you.
THANK YOU! THE SECONDMUSE EDITORIAL TEAM
CONTENTS N E T WO R K- C EN T ER ED I N N OVATI O N 20 L AUNCH
The way we innovate changes the world for good
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Two LAUNCH innovators team up to help surfing “go green” INTERNET FREEDOM
Needfinding: Authenticity & empathy in communities
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WHEN WE #HACKFORCHANGE T O G E T H E R : M A S S C O L L A B O R AT I O N
1 6 N AT I O N A L D AY O F C I V I C HACKING IN SACR AMENTO We meet Maya Wallace
25 H Y PER LO C A L I N CU BATI O N 32
N E W YO R K ’ S N E X T TO P M A K E R S
4 1 T H E C O M M U N I T Y T H A T WORKSHOPS TOGETHER How makers exchange expertise
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42 STORYTELLING FRONTIERS
BLUE REVOLUTION
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Virtual Reality & drones
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Q & A : W I T H A N D Y D AY
360Ëš immersion in Tonga and Timor
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The Blue Economy Challenge
W O R L D O C E A N S D AY 2 0 1 6
Farming abalone & kelp in California
SECONDMUSE WINTE R RE TRE AT, ME XICO 2 016
EDITORIAL TEAM Executive Editor DAVAR ARDAL AN
Content Editor MAT T SCOT T
Designer NIKKI MCL AY
Editorial Contributors CHAD BADIYAN CARRIE FREEMAN STUART GILL JEFF HAMAOUI TODD KHOZEIN K ATE Y ME TZ ROTH NE I SAN MA SSARR AT ROX ANN S TAFFO RD KENDR A YOSHINAGA
FOLLOW US Twitter: @SecondMuse and @L AUNCHorg Facebook: www.facebook.com/secondmuse and www.facebook.com/launchorg Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/company/secondmuse C O N TA C T Davar Ardalan Director of Storytelling and Engagement at SecondMuse and L AUNCH Davar.Ardalan@SecondMuse.com @idavar
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WHEN WE #HACKFORCHANGE TOGETHER M A S S CO LL A B O R ATI O N
I think it’s amazing that you can get 10,000 people across the country to come out the same day and actually spend a Saturday, or in some cases a whole weekend, of their spare time working on civic, community problems. LO G A N P OWELL , U. S . CEN SUS B U R E AU, O N TH E N ATI O N A L DAY OF CIVIC HACKING IN JUNE 2016
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AN EXAMPLE:
econdMuse is deeply committed to understanding and solving the world’s most complex challenges. Fundamental to this is diversity of thought. The very nature of complex problems is that they are multifaceted, meaning that there are many angles to the problem. Why is there climate change? Why do we have entrenched and structural inner city poverty? There is not one clear answer, and if someone gives one simple answer, they are oversimplifying it.
THE NATIONAL DAY OF CIVIC HACKING
On Saturday, June 4th, thousands of citizens across the United States came together to build better communities on the 2016 National Day of Civic Hacking. With more than 100 events hosted nationwide and 24 million people reached by the official hashtag #HackForChange on social media, the impact of the event was undeniable.
Time and time again, throughout the history of human civilization, we have seen unconventional approaches lend fresh insight, inspiration and solutions to difficult problems. The tried and true experts in a field have a very important role to fill; it’s just no longer an exclusive role. Corporations, governments, communities and philanthropic organizations working together have the promise to make tremendous progress in understanding and solving some of the world’s biggest problems.
The event was a collaboration between operational partners Code for America, SecondMuse and the U.S. Small Business Administration as well as supporters on the local, state and federal levels, including the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. At SecondMuse, on the National Day and every other day, we believe that the key to human prosperity is universal participation, in the form of mass collaboration.
“Team stardust made it to the stage in Pasadena, CA to pitch a solution to keep astronauts healthy on mars #SpaceApps” - @spaceappspas April 24, 2016 Twitter. L E F T Emily Sky, co-founder of tech platform Oppeos, captures the excitement at Space Apps Pasadena. 9
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WHAT IS MA SS COLL ABOR ATION?
that face society and communities. Governments often have some of the data, information and tools to help solve problems, but often lack all the answers, ideas and resources to address challenges. Additionally, by engaging citizens in using data and tools that government has made publicly available, new insights are being generated and public contributions are providing additional collective value.
All mass collaboration starts with well-defined problems. We work with highly technical experts to distill into accessible language the root of the problem they face. From there, mass collaboration brings together hundreds or thousands of people to work on addressing problems by working in small teams and prototyping solutions. It is a special type of network-centered innovation where communities emerge to give of their talents to address a range of challenges. With that said, they are bringing their own perspectives and skill sets to solution development. While technology allows dispersed people around the globe to virtually address the same problems, much of the hands-on collaboration happens at local, physical events. As a result, you may have hundreds of unique solutions developed addressing the same problem.
One of our first mass collaboration efforts was Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK) in June 2010, a mass collaboration of more than 6,000 innovators in more than 30 countries working collectively toward specific social impact outcomes. SecondMuse was the initiative’s operational lead, handling the strategic planning, design and implementation of the project on a daily basis until the community reached a level of maturity to lead itself. RHoK participants have created projects that tackle challenges ranging from international development to civic activism and co-created an entire ecosystem of “tech for social good� events, a format and guiding principles upon which countless similar projects have been built. In its first year, the event was a collaboration between Google, Microsoft, NASA, Yahoo! and The World Bank.
A designed and coordinated global hackathon is one of the most well-known forms of mass collaboration. Alternately, events like Earth Hour, a worldwide grassroots lightsoff event, could also be classified as mass collaboration. Mass collaboration initiatives have provided U.S. federal governments and local municipalities opportunities to engage citizens to help develop solutions to challenges
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“While Microsoft has a tenured global crisis management team focused on accelerating the impact technology can have, it’s fantastic to see a complementary effort like Random Hacks of Kindness performing this kind of sustainable development work while at the same time connecting developer communities with subject experts around the world.” - Curt Kolcun, Microsoft Vice President speaking about Random Hacks of Kindness in June 2010 at the U.S. Department of State.
Random Hacks of Kindness goes to the heart of what we believe at Google, that the creative and cooperative use of technology can help make the world a better place, collective intelligence is strength, and if you supply free food, developers will come.
Given that this was our first real-time global event, we weren’t quite sure what to expect. The results, however, exceeded all our expectations. Each location designed solutions ready for immediate implementation for disaster risk management and, in many cases, we saw teams of strangers collaborating. What came from the first RHoK was an emergent global community hacking for humanity.
V I N T C E R F, T H E G O O G L E C H I E F I N T E R N E T E VA N G ELI S T O F TEN C A LLED TH E “ FATH ER O F TH E I NTER N E T ” AT TH E U. S . S TATE DEPARTMENT JUNE 2010
E XECUTING A MA SS COLL ABOR ATION STR ATEGY
There are a number of elements that are key to executing a mass collaboration strategy - a coordinating organization, an outreach plan, challenge themes and statements, a storytelling element and a way for promising solutions to further be developed, implemented and shared. What is key
ABOVE Scenes from participants around the globe.
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is piecing together those elements to effectively craft and follow through on a strategy. This involves the following steps: • • • •
Understanding your problem Following a process Finding freedom within a framework Building your community
The goal of this work is shared prosperity for all involved. Citizens attain progress through partnership when using the resources available to them and combining these four steps. In addition to individual citizens and the private sector, government organizations have also benefitted by embracing mass collaboration. Take a real challenge and have the experts give enough context so that a really smart person from a totally different context can understand it. Language can oftentimes be a barrier to innovation. Making the language more easily understandable is making it more accessible, opening the door to fresh thinking that might not be considered otherwise. TH E M A S S CO LL A BO R ATI O N L A N DSC A PE ON THE FEDERAL AND LOCAL LEVELS
Mass collaboration has made way for tremendous insights, inspiration and ideas for those government agencies that have invested in exploring its use. Simultaneously, it has nurtured global communities of problem solvers committed to tackling issues conventionally delegated to government entities.
However, what you will get is: • a mass infusion of potential approaches to your problems, • a mass infusion of insights about whether you’re asking the right questions, and • a mass community of committed and smart solvers that are thinking about the same problems that you are charged with solving. HOW MA SS COLL ABOR ATION PAYS OFF
Through our work with the Space Apps Challenge and the National Day of Civic Hacking, we have broadened our understanding of how mass collaboration enhances our work. As written in our report, The Masses Are Critical, mass collaboration may serve a variety of functions: • • • • • • • • • •
Engaging citizens Incentivizing the use of government data Increasing transparency Increasing efficiency Sourcing ideas widely Engaging private sector innovation processes Increasing ownership of outcomes Improving awareness of issues Saving money Harnessing cognitive surplus
Government agencies have traditionally been limited to harnessing the expertise and creativity of their employees and the organizations they hire. This is limiting for a number of reasons. Not only are the limits monetary, but more importantly, the limits are contextual. The people inside any organization are subject to some degree of group think. That’s one reason why governments hire outside organizations to come and give them fresh perspectives.
In the case of the National Day of Civic Hacking, we witnessed many of these benefits in the first year of the event alone. With its inception in 2013, the first National Day pushed the envelope to become the largest mass collaboration of its kind in history at the time. More than 11,000 citizens representing government, businesses, nonprofits and individuals participated in more than 95 civic hacking events in 83 cities across the United States. The effort engaged approximately 150,000 person-hours dedicated to civic tech work over the weekend alone and stimulated interest in engage in similar endeavors beyond the day as well. Using self-reported wage rates, these hours were valued at approximately $11 million.
Mass collaboration provides fresh perspectives at a scale far beyond what most government agencies have ever had access to. Imagine having access to 15,000 perspectives looking at problems your team is trying to solve over the course of a weekend. You probably won’t get a finished product, process or policy that will replace the work that your team of five, 10, 100 or 1000 people will develop over the course of a year.
“Although we put in a lot of planning and enthusiasm beforehand, the event itself was gorgeously self-organizing. People came together in teams of young and old, male and female, friend and stranger, technical and artistic in ways that surprised and encouraged everyone. We had tons of fun and the whole thing felt like a great success.” - Corey Kohn, organizer of her own local National Day of Civic Hacking 2013 “Boulder Civic Hackfest” in Colorado.
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The International Space Apps Challenge has had a resounding impact as well. One of the world’s largest global hackathons, it enables public engagement with NASA’s open data to develop answers to some of the most pressing challenges on earth and in space. For the 2016 event, more than 15,000 global citizens in 161 cities and 61 countries engaged directly with NASA to design more than 1,200 innovative solutions and prototypes to global challenges in software development, citizen science, hardware and data visualization.
weekend and being the end of the innovation due to lack of incubation. As Logan Powell of U.S. Census Bureau put it on National Day of Civic Hacking 2016, hackathons notoriously generate a buzz which ebbs and flows; his goal is for the momentum to grow in order to create the connective tissue between innovators and investors to incubate more solutions. As Renee Wynn, NASA’s Chief Information Officer, points out, Space Apps serves as only the beginning for so many innovative solutions for the advancement of science and technology. AMPLIFYING COLLECTIVE ACTION
“This was Laura’s first hackathon so she was pretty excited. She loved getting to work on her project, having others join in and staying up late. It was fun to build our team, to see people excited by what we were doing.” - Michael Doyle, who won the 2016 People’s Choice award at Space Apps NYC along with his daughter Laura for ISSIE.
THROUGH STORYTELLING
For 2016’s Space Apps and National Day mass collaboration efforts, a storytelling element was crucial to ensuring an impact beyond the physical spaces occupied by the thousands of participants. Through the use of social storytelling and hashtags (#SpaceApps and #HackForChange), we begin to connect the dots around and between the thousands of collaborators.
The innovation at Space Apps is well-documented on the Space Apps website and, looking at the winners of 2016 awards for Best Use of Hardware, Best Mission Concept, Most Inspirational, Galactic Impact, People’s Choice and Best Use of Data, the benefit to our global community undoubtedly goes far beyond the day itself. This year, organizers from the U.S. Census Bureau and NASA were among those who underscored the long-term value of a mass collaboration. Hackathons traditionally have had a stigma of taking place on a day or over the course of a
Pop-up social media video interviews, Facebook Live interviews, Google Hangout on Air, blogs and real-time engagement with collaborators, community activists and government officials have allowed us to connect mass collaboration with a global audience of current and future innovation actors and advocates. Conversations appearing on the same thread help bring citizens and communities 14
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ABOVE LEFT
together under one hashtag. The #SpaceApps hashtag we produced reached 25 million people during Space Apps weekend in April 2016, and for the National Day of Civic Hacking more than 21 million people were reached via social media on June 4, 2016 alone.
SpaceApps event taking place in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. ABOVE RIGHT Egypt’s FabLab and Space Apps Cairo in April 2016.
THE BIGGER PICTURE
In a world where a citizen’s vote is her primary access to influence a democracy, a constituency becomes a crowd the government needs to convince. This implies a one way carefully curated relationship, including very expensive campaigns and elections. But if we believe the constituency of a democracy — its citizens — is filled with brilliant, inspiring, courageous creatives that care about creating a better future, we should harness this energy. This energy will only be harnessed if we can figure out a different type of relationship between a government and the people it serves. Figuring out this new relationship is difficult and tricky and won’t happen overnight. With that said, we’re already seeing many experiments of its type. It will require course corrections after wrong paths are inevitably chosen, but that’s what democracy does, it grows and changes as the needs and opportunities of the age change. The technology that has allowed the world to become smaller and has allowed individual voices to rise in influence has the power to unlock the tremendous untapped potential of citizens globally. 15
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N AT I O N A L D AY O F C I V I C HACKING IN SACR AMENTO The Promise Zone Initiative is part of President Barack Obama’s plan to expand access to opportunity in high poverty communities across the country, by partnering with local communities and businesses to reach goals that are important to them, like creating jobs, increasing economic activity, expanding educational opportunities, increasing access to quality, affordable housing and improving public safety. For this year’s National Day of Civic Hacking, we asked civic technologists to create data visualizations that tell the story of Promise Zones and economic development in other cities.
Just two days later, the Obama Administration announced the final round of Promise Zone designations. This announcement, according to a White House press release, “builds on the Administration’s commitment to work collaboratively with communities to realize their priorities,” a commitment perfectly aligned with the National Day of Civic Hacking. In honor of the National Day of Civic Hacking, the White House shared a quote that sums up the vital importance of civic engagement and the work Maya and others continue to do: “The most important office in a democracy is the office of citizen.”
At the Urban Hive in Sacramento, California, dozens of civic hackers collaborated on data challenges around food insecurity and improving quality of life in the Sacramento Promise Zone. Maya Wallace of Code for Sacramento says the Sacramento Promise Zone has not benefited as much in the economic recovery post-recession and data innovation can help revitalize the community. “Data visualizations will help community partners, decision makers and residents understand how to make strategic investments for greater impact,” says Wallace.
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I’m excited today that there are going to be so many people that are new to coding just stepping out, having fun and learning to be creative and using technology as a tool. K I M B E R LY B R YA N T, F O U N D E R O F B L AC K G I R L S C O D E AT S PACE A PP S 2016 I N PA SA D EN A
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ABOVE In November 2015, NASA Astronaut Cady Coleman was joined by three LAUNCH innovators for a live conversation via Periscope on materials innovation.
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Surprising & disruptive minds at #LAUNCHNordic. Let’s stay in touch and build a digital community around sustainability innovation together.“ - @Astro_Cady Nov 5, 2015 Twitter
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D O I N G T H I N G S D I F F E R E N T LY T H R O U G H N E T W O R K- C E N T R E D I N N OVAT I O N :
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e have a saying at SecondMuse that innovation can come from anywhere and anyone. In a world full of creative ideas, we build networks to fuel problem-solving innovation in order to address the global challenges humanity faces. Fundamentally, this ties in with what we believe about the present state and future of innovation: that it is network-centered.
ON SEVERAL GLOBAL LAUNCH CHALLENGES:
Closing the loop: To build a more sustainable world, we want new types of materials that will make products better suited for multiple lifecycles, disassembly, repair, and recycling. With this challenge we’re looking to change how we reuse, recover, recycle and reduce the materials in our everyday products.
NE T WORK- CE NTE RE D INNOVATION IS CHANGING THE WORLD
Food: Over- and undernutrition are widespread, interlinked, global challenges. We’re looking to tackle these challenges by promoting health through improved nutrition by sourcing, supporting and scaling innovative solutions.
LAUNCH is a network-centered innovation platform founded in 2010 by NASA, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the U.S. Department of State, Nike and SecondMuse. Through LAUNCH, we take a system level view of a global challenge, looking across causal factors to identify opportunities for innovation to play a role in improving outcomes.
Smarter chemistry: The next generation of chemistry is focused on resource efficiency and safer design. With this challenge we’re looking to launch innovations to unlock transformational change in the way chemicals are developed, used, tracked and disposed of in the manufacturing process.
We use a network-centered innovation approach to understand, identify, develop and propel key innovations to unlock transformational change. We create a worldwide coalition of the committed focused on actively pursuing opportunities for change.
NE T WORK- CE NTE RE D INNOVATION IS THE NE W INNOVATION FRONTIER
In its five year history, LAUNCH has identified and accelerated nearly 80 innovators who have developed solutions to address sustainability challenges in areas of water, health, energy, waste and materials. It has generated more than $40 million of direct investment, and hundreds of millions of dollars of market creation. In 2014, it was showcased at the G8 Summit and recognized as one of the US government’s most successful innovation programs. In 2015, it was recognized by the U.S. Small Business Administration.
We can build the capacity of others to create innovation actors.. We aren’t simply focusing on developing compelling products, services, strategies and approaches around a given system. We are also working to build the capacity of those system actors within the network. We see an opportunity to help organizations, institutions and individuals grow their own problem-solving capabilities, thus becoming innovation actors themselves.
LEFT LAUNCH Innovator Lisa Dyson, CEO of Kiverdi, with co-founder John Reed. 21
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When many different types of organizations in society (co companies, cities, etc.) share a vision of a substantial change to this change, network-centered innovation is a great tool their different capabilities) engaged and motivated to contri but equally as much on the capabilities of the network t HAK AN NORDK VIS T, HE AD OF SU
LAUNCH innovators and council members, 2012.
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ompanies, governmental organizations, NGOs, investment and where their collective forces and engagement could lead l to support and build change with the whole network (and ibute to this change. The focus is not only on the innovation to enable the wished change through their capabilities. S TA I N A B I LIT Y I N N OVATI O N , I K E A
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We know innovation can come from anywhere and anyone. Beneficiaries (traditionally defined stakeholders) are seen as equal to governments, corporations, NGOs and other organizations. This is a powerful shift; everyday people aren’t solely there for us to speak to for inspiration, but they are actors that will be living the solution on a day to day basis more so than anyone else. We take the “sourcing” approach to community engagement (welcoming and encouraging community contributions) and invite these important network actors into “scaling” ideas (involving networks in growing innovation). As a result, it is paramount that we find the right ways for engagement throughout the innovation process. We do this by exploring what piloting looks like from a community-led perspective, which is key to sustainability. We hold-up learning as a central part of the process. When mistakes or setbacks happen, we examine them and see them as further springboards for innovation. Learning is happening all the time and we work to be aware of how and when to share that learning with various members of the innovation ecosystem. That creates an environment where we truly have collective ownership of the outcomes and individual actors of the network have the ability to incorporate those learnings in real-time. In network-centered innovation, the network IS a critical innovation. The network, a collective of people empowered to drive transformational change, is a pipeline through which multiple innovations, ideas and partnerships are formed. NE T WORK- CE NTE RE D INNOVATION IS E M P OWE R I N G PRO B LE M S O LV E R S I N A NUMBER OF WAYS
Think Different: Networks allow you to think more broadly and leverage a much wider set of insights and ideas. People, given a choice, don’t want to hurt the environment and do want to build wealth and opportunity in the communities they are in. The task at hand often involves understanding the impacts of your work, the choices you have and the solutions that are available to you to do well and do good. Do Different: Insight is not enough; to really change things you need to tap into new partners like never before to actually do things differently. When involved in a more human manner, people with different financial, organizational and individual resources can help to solve a problem in a way you would never have imagined on your own.
World Changing Work: Once you get people identifying challenges, needs and ideas together, they start to align to a higher purpose. This purpose is world changing stuff that motivates them in a completely different way; the more they can see a path to actually changing things together, the more people want to work together. Innovation Drives Change: Working in networks to support innovations contributes a whole set of really important functions to your network culture. Focusing on innovation means our networks are action focused (not discussion focused). In transaction practice, each innovation the network works on sheds light on the competencies and infrastructure required to make substantial change. Sometimes that’s about how we work with innovations, how we work in our institutions and how we work with new partners. As such, working in networks changes us as much as the innovators we support by shedding light on the things that are broken in the system. If you build your networks right, you can reduce risks and costs by finding the ideas and leveraging the resources, the partners and the momentum to change the world. NE T WORK- CE NTE RE D INNOVATION IS E NG AG ING , ILLUMINATING AND MOTIVATING
In the same way that innovation-finding services and options already exist, so too diverse networks already exist. Network innovation is all about using innovation to illuminate and activate networks towards collective action. The magic is in the combination of functions (diverse network and innovation finding) and the drive towards collective intentional action. The value in network-centered innovation is not just about getting better innovation results. It’s about what it does to us as human beings through the process-unlocking insights we would never have had. For LAUNCH, our collaborators in this process of engagement, illumination and motivation have included 77 LAUNCH innovators and powerful change agents including Cady Coleman, a NASA astronaut and LAUNCH council member who has been involved in Green Chemistry and helped facilitate a dialogue in late 2015 on materials innovation.
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S US TA I N A B L E S U R FI N G H OW T WO L AUN CH INN OVATO R S TEAMED UP TO MAKE SURFING SUS TA IN A B LE ABOVE LAUNCH Innovators building the world’s first biodegradable handplanes.
W hat happens when two innovators collaborate? They can 3D print the world’s first bio-based handplane, the only piece of equipment used by bodysurfers, besides a wetsuit. That’s what Ecovative, from System Challenge: Fabric of 2013, and Connora Technologies, from Green Chemistry cycle of 2014 , are doing. Those companies, along with Enjoy Handplanes, Entropy Resins and Patagonia, have teamed up to create the world’s first biodegradable handplanes, small fin-like boards that attach to the hands to help body surfers gain speed and ride the waves with skill and ease.
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AUTHENTI CIT Y A ND EMPATH Y IN N E T WO R K- C EN T ER ED I N N OVAT I O N :
INTERNET FREEDOM AND NEEDFINDING
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he ability to communicate without the free of harm through the Internet is a human right. Yet numerous governments and institutions worldwide still find ways to censor and surveil people. In a world where burning books and jailing poets was once commonplace, as digital technologies become more prevalent, Internet freedom is the new frontier to ensure the safe exchange of information and ideas globally. In support of this human right, there is an international community developing technologies and programing to secure Internet freedom for people globally.
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It’s using a design approach and design methodology to approach a very important democratic problem. THE CORE77 JUDGING COMMITTEE COMMENTS ON THE NEEDFINDING FRAMEWORK
In SecondMuse’s Internet freedom work with Radio Free Asia’s Open Technology Fund (OTF), we saw an opportunity to work with a network of trainers, designers, policymakers, funders and NGOs to bridge the gap between technologists and communities where Internet freedom tools were most needed. These Internet freedom technologies have long been intended to serve individuals and communities by supporting the free exchange of information and ideas. The ability
for such technologies to achieve this purpose is often hampered by a lack of understanding about the people they are intended to serve. Our work has supported Internet freedom projects that seek to solve the technical challenges of anonymity, privacy, security and information access for communities around the world. With a large gap between the outcomes of these projects and the actual needs of users “on the
A B O V E A roleplaying exercise for Internet Freedom. 27
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ground”, we worked with OTF to create a process for developing an understanding of the needs of at-risk user communities around the world. This Needfinding Framework has been employed with multiple communities globally including LGBT human rights activists in Uganda, the Tibetan exile community in Dharamsala, India, and a group of digital activists based in Vietnam. The framework was honored with a 2016 Core77 Design Award in the category of Strategy and Research and is being used by developers, funders, NGOs and trainers to help empower the Internet freedom community as a whole.
Developing and then scaling an idea within a network means you have the ability to look at it from multiple perspectives. This enables us to make sure we aren’t neglecting key attributes we need to design and that we aren’t overlooking learnings along the way to ensure the success of the idea. Similar to mechanical engineering, prototyping is key for the exploration of an idea and for a network to be able to understand that idea’s full potential-- including what is missing from the larger ecosystem. CLOSING REFLECTIONS ON NE T WORK- CE NTE RE D I N N OVATI O N
NET WORK- CENTERED INN OVATI O N I S A SOU RCE O F E FFEC TIVE IDE ATI O N
Traditionally we think about how specific innovations solve specific problems. In this framing, innovation is all about the individual and the big idea they have for the world.
A genuine curiosity and desire to truly understand a problem, opportunity or population leads to great ideas and organic growth of a network of collaborators. Sincerity is pivotal when working on issues like economic development, access to education for girls and disaster response. This is because what we are working on affects the lives and well-being of people. Authenticity is also an important component to this process. It is difficult to come up with ideas and approaches without a feeling of safety and support or when lacking voices that are important to the design and sustainability of solutions.
Many of the challenges we work on at SecondMuse are, by definition, complex; they don’t require one solution but a multiplicity of solution types, actions and behavior changes from across the market in order to make something actually happen. It is among this complexity that the singular innovation becomes less important. The value of the network and its ability to solve, flex and overcome an emergent and simultaneous set of challenges does become clear. The network itself becomes the lens through which you develop the insights and leverage different types of resources and ideas to develop a singular innovation and many more to follow.
We developed a process that assisted developers and members of the Internet freedom ecosystem to integrate more voices. This has begun a shift from designing for people to designing alongside them. This type of shift also allows us to get to the root of a problem so that we are thinking about how to create a solution that is usable and, more importantly, useful-- meaning that the existence of this solution matters and is grounded in real needs. If a solution is usable and useful, it will be a lever for the change the network and broader community want to see in the world.
At SecondMuse, with Internet freedom and beyond, we help our partners really think about their networks. We provide them with the tools and the techniques to meaningfully engage with new partners, new ideas and new resources and, most importantly, provide the experiences to transform networks into communities.
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D A I LY T H R E AT S Those in the LGBT community in Uganda face threats to their well-being on a daily basis. These threats come from within the community, from family and friends who are homophobic, and to a lesser extent from the state — by whom they are marginalized and from whom they remain unprotected. Typical threats range from the physical – such as torture, arrest, and “corrective” rape – to the emotional and psychosocial, including blackmail, termination of employment, eviction from home, loss of opportunity and even family banishment. Those threatened are often left with little recourse because the state has failed to acknowledge and investigate attacks on or threats to LGBT people in Uganda (SMUG, 2016). Through the Needfinding exercise with LGBT activists and human rights defenders, it was evident that many of the threats require not just technological solutions but physical protection as well. Throughout this report, the concerns and strategies regarding physical safety are covered as they inform decision-making and therefore have an impact on the communication safety of the LGBT community in Uganda.
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BEHIND THE SCENES
LEFT SecondMuse’s Neisan Massarrat moderates a panel on Young Entrepreneurs for Low Carbon Innovation at COP21, the Paris Climate Change Conference, November 2015.
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H Y PER LO C A L IN CUBATI O N:
NEW YORKS NEXT TOP MAKERS
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ew York City is a city like no other. Whether you know it as the “Big Apple” or the “City That Never Sleeps”, there’s no denying the rich history and uniqueness of NYC and its people. One key facet of the city’s storied narrative is its roots in the manufacturing sector, a sector that, a few years ago, was in dire need of an upgrade. That’s where New York’s Next Top Makers, a collaboration with New York City Economic Development Corporation and FutureWorks NYC, comes in. When we started with this program just a few years ago, most of the incubator and accelerator programs that existed were focused on software startups or other industries entirely. There were a few early adopters like Bolt out of Boston, HAX in Shenzhen and Highway1 in San Francisco, but the landscape was limited, particularly in NYC. We’ve since seen a variety of spaces and programs that are focused on and working with manufacturing and hardware companies make their way to NYC. Most of these programs offer intensive support and funding in exchange for equity. Even still, we do things differently. Our motivations are not about making money, but supporting the ecosystem and companies that may not be investment-ready or worthy but will grow and add value over time. Often, we work with pre-incubator stage companies before they’ve raised any sort of capital and we don’t take any equity in exchange for our support. Our goal is not to make sure each company we work with raises funds or exits. Rather, we strive to empower each company to connect to and further the manufacturing ecosystem of NYC.
LEFT New York-based company littleBits hosts an event in association with Next Top Makers.
We believe the collaborations that are fostered in this ecosystem enable the innovators to create more robust products and build better companies, which in turn contribute to growing the local manufacturing industry. We are in a unique position, running a city program, to focus on companies that contribute to and make NYC a hub for advanced manufacturing and the ecosystem around it.
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When SecondMuse started work on Next Top Makers two and a half years ago, we were just starting to explore manufacturing and hardware. Despite our national and global communities from Spaces Apps and National Day of Civic Hacking, we had a fairly limited network on the ground in New York City. We did, however, have a history of building and growing programs at the frontier of innovation with a learning-first attitude.
consider Next Top Makers to showcase at major industry events such as MakerFaire NYC and SXSW. Building the Network: In 2016, we launched the third year of the program (the second under SecondMuse’s guidance) building out our mentorship circle to include more than 50 mentors from across the city. We focused on a mix of young, energetic, boundary-pushing mentors and more seasoned traditional experts as well. Mentors ranged from skilled designers to coders to lawyers to marketers to serial entrepreneurs. They came from leading NYC-based companies in the hardware space such as Kickstarter, littleBits, Adafruit, Pensa and more. One thing we learned is that we need more entrepreneurs as mentors. Even though they are busy, their ability to understand the needs and challenges of the Next Top Makers startups is invaluable.
Getting Started: We started with a ‘Discovery’ phase in the spring of 2014 where we hit the streets of NYC--visiting spaces, talking to Makers, manufacturers, city officials and other important influencers to understand what existed at that time in NYC and what were the biggest pain points for makers. One of our big questions was ‘who are the Makers of NYC and is the term Maker even appropriate?’ What we found is that people are making all sorts of incredible things in the city, leveraging a rich history in textiles, fashion, art and more recently a boom in tech. We also found that Makers wanting to take their products to market needed support and that the community was very receptive to working together.
Additionally, we added another class of six Fellow companies who received one-on-one and cohort support. We introduced Super Mentors to the mix! Through a dual matching process, each startup was matched with a Super Mentor to follow them through the entirety of the program. Introductions and guidance from Super Mentors Chris Quintero of Bolt Incubator and Sumeet Shah of Brand Foundry Ventures was invaluable for the entire cohort and Super Mentor Rajeev Jeyakumar, founder of Skillbridge and now at TopTal, picked up an extra team when their Super Mentor dropped out. The value of the energy and expertise from the VC, hardware startup and entrepreneur perspectives enrichened the journey not just for the Fellows they worked with but the entire cohort.
Hitting the Ground Running: Over the course of two months we had engaged more than 50 people and organizations in the re-design of the Next Top Makers program. These initial conversations formed the bedrock of the community. Two of the major challenges we tackled in the first year were bringing people from distinct backgrounds (engineering, business, art, software, design) into the same room and building a community around the Next Top Makers program. In the first year, we tested a partnership with Imagination in Space to design a fiveborough pop up tour to take the program out to the boroughs and highlight the people and places of making in NYC. These events were celebratory and fun. They infused communities with new energy and connected people from distinct sectors and different neighborhoods. While this was going on, we were working closely with six manufacturing and hardware startups, helping them to establish and grow their businesses while learning the challenges of building these businesses in the city from them. We provided support through a growing network of mentors, service providers and spaces. Additionally, we created opportunities for any of the 42 applicants who we
Based on feedback from a community design session, we also introduced a community workshop series to create more opportunities for aspiring hardware and product entrepreneurs to get to know the Fellows, gain insights for building their business and access the program’s growing network of mentors. Throughout the course of the five-part workshop series, more than 336 people attended and more than half self-reported as women or minorities. Diversity in making matters. A variety of skills and perspectives are required to create a useful product and build a successful business around it. The workshop series targeted and successfully brought a variety of perspectives, products and voices into the Next Top Maker Community.
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I feel really good about where we are now and the relationships that we’ve built... It’s clear in what we achieved that the program was a success. CHELSEA BROWNRIDGE AND TODD SCHECHTER OF DOG PARKER
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build their products or companies, we gather and disseminate expertise unique to NYC around making and manufacturing products out of NYC. The landscape is changing so rapidly with daily technological advances that those who understand it best are usually those just a few steps in front of you. The Next Top Makers program finds those people who are just a few steps ahead of where different members of the community would like to be and puts them together in targeted, meaningful ways.
At the end of year three, the Next Top Makers program has evolved, prototyped and found ways to continue to grow the community and offer valuable opportunities for people to engage. In total, our community now exists of former Fellows, current Fellows, mentors, partners, workshop participants, applicants, the city and our program sponsors each with a unique value to add and value to gain from participation in the program.
Together, this community has grown from a handful of disparate connections to one of more than 1,500 people and organizations who are currently making or contributing to physical product companies being made in NYC.
We have worked closely with Makers and entrepreneurs to create spaces and platforms such as the community workshop series where the community can come, contribute and learn from those who have gone before them. This is a distinguishing element, as rather than having one route a company must move through, we provide a series of resources which the companies can ‘pick
Our approach is based in the belief that knowledge comes from everywhere. Literally.
Rather than coming in and telling people how to
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and place’ to build their own incubation circuit that powers their success. Startups that engage with our program leave with deep relationships that follow them outside the program if they so choose. MAKING THE MOST OF THE MAKER COMMUNITY
In 2016, the White House highlighted two companies that have influenced and had representation in Next Top Makers -- littleBits and Adafruit -- as they launched the Nation of Makers initiative. What we loved most about this is that these two companies were incredible, inspirations to the broader Maker community not just in NYC but globally. On top of that, they were started and run by women! We held our only pop up event for the
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2016 program last fall at the littleBits retail space in Soho. At the time, they were testing and using the space to engage directly with customers and learn what having an in-store presence looks like. This approach to learning by doing was indicative of why this community and the Next Top Makers program were so special, a group of companies and people driven by curiosity, not willing to sit back and wait for someone else to come up with a solution, and leading with a desire to understand. In our minds, this is the difference it takes to change the world, build successful companies and keep pushing the boundaries of what any of us ever thought possible. Adafruit and littleBits have changed and in many ways have made making and technology more accessible. We look forward to how they continue to lead the Next Top Makers community into the future.
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he 2015-2016 Next Top Makers Fellows also provided a number of examples of businesses that, in such a short time, have blossomed within Next Top Makers and the broader New York City manufacturing community.
D O G PA R K ER
BLINK BLINK
STRONGARM
blink blink’s electronic kits made their way into Time, Fortune and MSN. blink blink attracted fans for dozens of workshops across NYC and were invited to present at the NASA International Space Apps Challenge in Pasadena as well as the NASA Datanauts kick off at NASA headquarters in Washington, DC. They shipped kits to cities across the world and filled orders for the nonprofit STEM organization Black Girls Who Code and Manhattan’s favorite toy store, Kidding Around.
StrongArm’s equipment for industrial athletes is featured in CNN Money, CNBC’s Nightly Business Report, Crain’s New York and Technically Brooklyn. StrongArm moved from Harlem’s Zahn Center to New Lab at the Brooklyn Navy Yard after orchestrating a strategic partnership with 3M. This year, the team shipped more than 2,000 products, won the prestigious A’Design Award and is trialing ergoskeletons with American Airlines, FedEx and Barclays Center.
The media featured Dog Parker’s pay-by-the-minute dog houses 30+ times, including coverage by Wall Street Journal, Good Day New York and Bustle. Dog Parker took first place in the Frontier Tech Startup Showdown, second in Bklyn Library’s PowerUp! Business Planning Competition and third at the National Hardware Cup (just behind 20142015 Fellow Botfactory). They’ve secured investment from a roster of angels and early-stage VCs and joined Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator. Dog Parker already launched a Brooklyn pilot by teaming up with neighborhood restaurants, cafes and grocery stores. And, most importantly for local manufacturing, they contracted Queens’ Boyce Technologies to produce the first 100 houses
WWW.BLINKBLINK.CC
W W W. S T R O N G A R M T EC H .CO M
WWW.DOGPARKER.COM
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6
THIMBLE
BON BOUTON
W E A R .WO R K S
Thimble’s smart toys sparked conversation in Engadget, PSFK and The Creators Project. The team raised $300,000 on Kickstarter from 1,776 backers, showing the consumer desire for DIY toys paired with online tutorials. Thimble used these funds to hire four engineers in June and are delivering to backers in August.
Bon Bouton’s smart clothing sensor can measure everything from breathing rate to body temperature to stress levels. They were recently accepted to the Monozukuri bootcamp in Kyoto to further their prototype and submitted for a $225,000 federal grant to develop smart shoes for diabetic patients with two NYC hospitals.
Wear.Works evolved its Beyond Sight haptic sensor from an idea to a functional MVP. They’re working to create a platform that uses vibrations to safely guide the visually impaired (7.5 million people in the US alone) through cities and new neighborhoods. Wear.Works is capturing interest from the National Federation for the Blind as well as USSOCOM and eyeing up a handful of accelerators.
W W W.THIMBLE . IO
WWW.BONBOUTON.CO
WWW.WEAR.WORKS
THE FUTURE OF MAKING IN NYC AND BEYOND
A
s the third year of Next Top Makers draws to a close, we have had the opportunity to pause and reflect on all that we and the community have learned.
city. Who knew where to find the perfect sheet metal supplier? Well, they did. We’ve seen how pointing out and talking about a need encourages answers and solutions.
We learned what it means to partner to deliver programming through an incredible relationship with Imagination in Space and the NYCEDC. We’ve found answers from unexpected places such as set designers and builders who are making and creating throughout the
In 2014, distinct groups of engineers, designers, coders and funders were having conversations with others like themselves. We’ve seen these groups blend and grow. We also saw how an absence of space and programming targeting hardware and product entrepreneurs has started to fill with
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new incubator programs popping up throughout the city and new spaces being created and coming online regularly. While the program has wrapped (for this year), the learning we bring with us is incredibly valuable across SecondMuse programming. We are excited to see what the future holds for the Next Top Makers program, the companies involved and the New York City hardware and product ecosystems overall.
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I loved the program, I’m glad we did it. I want to get out of Buffalo and come to NYC. I saw the program as an opportunity to join the network of everything going on in NYC. OSCAR PEDROSO OF THIMBLE
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THE COMMUNIT Y T H AT W O R K S H O P S T O G E T H E R :
HOW MAKERS EXCHANGE EXPERTISE
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n early 2016, SecondMuse, through the New York’s Next Top Makers program, teamed up with some of New York City’s finest innovators for the firstever Next Top Makers Workshop Series. The free five-part series, made possible by the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC), helped product entrepreneurs elevate their startups with insight into the pillars of creating great products and building businesses around them. To do this, the workshops tackled a diverse range of topics. For information from each of the workshops, including videos, visit the Next Top Makers blog.
u
1 BUSINESS BASICS
Crafting a vision statement, positioning your product and raising funds 2 U N D E R S T A N D I N G U S E R S
Creating products that matter in people’s lives
3 LEGAL WORKSHOP
Creating company structure and equity plans, developing trademarks and patents
4 DE SIG NING FOR MANUFAC TURING
Understanding the production process from bill of materials to negotiating with manufacturers
5 M A R K E T I N G & S T O R Y T E L L I N G
A deep dive into the world’s most successful brand stories and the roadmap for you to get there
WATCH : V I E W A S A M PL E WO R K S H O P O N V I M EO
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Marine biologist Maya Knowles showcases the #BlueRevolution hashtag while snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef.
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STORYTELLING FRONTIERS V I R T U A L R E A L I T Y, 3 6 0˚ & D R O N E S
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WHY TAP INTO SOCIAL SPACE S?
t SecondMuse we’ve been sharing the stories of innovation happening across the world and we’ve done so primarily on social media. Thanks to Chris Messina who invented the hashtag in August 2007, the campaigns we’ve produced at SecondMuse have included #HackForChange, #SpaceApps, #BlueRevolution, #RethinkingResponse and #NextTopMakers among others. These campaigns alone have reached some 60 million people on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Linkedin just in the past few months.
In the past decade, social media has given voice to millions. According to the Pew Research Center’s 2015 study on mobile messaging and social media, 62% of the U.S. adult population are on Facebook alone. In fact, globally, there are more active Facebook users than the entire population of China. Facebook Live broadcasts are now helping communities share stories, geo-tag live events based on regional interest, host real-time conversations with people and solicit feedback in ways unthinkable in traditional media.
Storytelling taps into the potential of compelling narrative. Through storytelling, we can connect the dots by telling the stories of our work, our innovators, our partners, and our clients. Stories allow us to close the loop in the sustainability and social impact space.
Pinterest —26% of the U.S. adult population Instagram —24% of the U.S. adult population LinkedIn —22% of the U.S. adult population
In today’s day and age, media plays a pivotal role in engaging citizens, policymakers, innovators and scientists alike around shared interests. The transparency and accountability of these new channels of storytelling requires that we amplify the voice of citizens. These channels require a bolder focus on impactful stories through the eyes and ears of the public. The stories told have the power to generate hope and a belief that, when we come together, change is possible.
Twitter — 20% of the U.S. adult population With so many people on social media, there’s an opportunity to engage with them and invite them to be part of global sustainability and social impact conversations. OPE N DATA FUE L S A ‘ NE WSROOM OF IDEAS’
In addition, emerging technologies like virtual reality (VR) can offer a transformative approach to community engagement. These technologies provide a new way of engaging our global public and measuring social change in the process.
A 2015 Open Data Institute report notes that 12 of the 41 national platforms for accessing open data by 2013 were owned by developing countries. These stories of social innovation are happening at an overwhelming speed. Why is it that most people don’t know about these stories and this explosion of real-time data and collective community engagement? It is because no one is connecting the dots. The proliferation of open data presents rich opportunities to elevate unheard voices and tell stories that would have been impossible to tell just a few years ago.
With more potential to have a viral impact through social media, we can scale impact by cultivating engagement with influencers and innovators working with our projects. With increased understanding of our work, we open more opportunities to engage and apply our approaches, thus having a greater impact.
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STORYTELLING AS CIVIC TECH: LOGGING ROADS IN THE CONGO BASIN RAINFOREST
will monitor environmental abuses in remote areas. Back in February 2014, participants from four indigenous communities and 12 countries including Chile, the U.S. and Israel spent five days in the city of Tarapoto-- known as the cloud forest of northern Peru. This unprecedented hackathon took place in coordination with Digital Democracy, an organization that works with marginalized communities around the world on technological solutions to local environmental challenges. Emily Jacobi of Digital Democracy says this process is improving how local communities gather evidence of oil spills, deforestation and illegal mining.
In the Congo Basin, geography students, activists, scientists, community members and local environmental officials are using crowdsourcing to monitor forests. Logging roads are a major indicator of deforestation in the Congo Basin and their reach has been difficult to visualize - obscuring the rapid rise in deforestation. Leo Bottrill is the Founder and project leader at Moabi, an organization that collaboratively monitors natural resource use in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Through Moabi’s leadership, citizen mappers have made more than 5,500 edits to a crowdsourced map of logging roads on OpenStreetMap, an open-source geographic database. Bottrill says the people he works with can improve the oversight of environmental activity and help governments enforce the rule of law through crowdsourcing. Eventually, Bottrill hopes to complete a temporal map of Congo Basin logging roads.
E XPANDING E MPATHY WITH VIRTUAL REALITY
You might have been one of the 1 million New York Times subscribers who received a Google cardboard box in the mail last year – and perhaps you saw the first ever virtual reality journalism story. The Displaced is a story about three children from Syria, South Sudan and Ukraine uprooted by war. Virtual reality as a new educational, immersive storytelling tool will change communications. Our engagement with stories will be about moving around inside a story, engaging with characters with spacial audio that directs us to different angles within a story.
H ACK TH E R A I N FO R E S T: COMBINING NEW TECHNOLOGYWITH INDIGENOUS WISDOM Deep in the Peruvian Amazon, indigenous communities are also holding governments and companies accountable for illegal logging and oil contaminations. The team at Hack the Rainforest is bringing together environmental monitors, software developers, and designers to create a prototype for a mobile data collection app that
Furthermore, VR and 360 captures have the potential to transform the way relief organizations and NGOs capture global stories. The United Nations, for example, is experimenting with virtual reality as a powerful new tool for storytelling on climate change and the global refugees crisis.
RIGHT SpaceApps innovators experimenting with Virtual Reality
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3 6 0Ëš I M M E R S I O N I N TONGA AND TIMOR Q&A WITH
A N DY DAY
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eet one of the storytellers who helped SecondMuse expand our efforts into new frontiers. While shooting in Tonga and Timor, Andy Day used a combination of drone footage, 360Ëš video, and traditional footage to tell a multidimensional story, contrasting the beauty of the landscape with the dual challenges of obesity and malnutrition. Day says the industry has changed immensely during his six years as a content producer, and trying to keep up with that change is one of his favorite parts of the job.
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1) You used drone storytelling as an effective tool in our story on Tonga and Timor. What new dimension do drones add to the way we tell stories?
4) Your 360˚ captures allows us to be immersed in a
The use of drones has allowed independent filmmakers to easily and quickly give viewers a sense of scale and context. It allows you to tell your story with a grandeur and gravity previously reserved only for big budget Hollywood blockbusters. They help to provide a cinematic experience for the viewer and drastically increase production value. What used to be a $10,000 shot has now diminished to no more than the initial drone investment and the filmmaker’s time.
the audience can creatively control which angle of the
2) Tell us more about the type of drone you use and how you produce the footage?
It’s definitely one of the most exciting technologies at the
school yard with children during the lunch break. You also took us to a marketplace. In these captures camera they’re interested in. What was your experience using 360˚ photography? 360˚ video and photography was a great tool while travelling. It’s in its infancy, but people are already finding extremely powerful uses for it. Vice are doing video articles in 360˚, concerts are being broadcasted in 360, and VR is going to rely on widespread adoption of 360˚ techniques. moment, and we look forward to exploring it more.
The drone we used was a DJI Phantom 3. We chose this drone for its combination of portability and power. It shoots up to 4k footage and allows us to get stunning imagery with enough room to move in post-production, just in case we didn’t frame the shot perfectly out in the field. The drone gave us all of these benefits whilst also fitting into a backpack small enough to take with us as carry-on luggage!
5) How might 360˚ video change our roles as storytellers? 360˚ video provides a unique challenge for filmmakers in the fact that you’re unable to force your viewers into any one angle or shot. Previously filmmakers would tell a story by physically choosing what shot or angle the viewer was privy to. With this new technology, we’re going to have
3) Any tips on how best to integrate drone footage into a visual story?
to find new ways of making sure we tell the story we set
Sparingly. As drones become more readily available, productions begin to become oversaturated with aerial footage. Footage from a drone can be so spectacular that it’s almost like cheating, so save the shots for scenes where impact is needed or context is crucial.
personalise their viewing experience at the same time.
out to tell, while still allowing the viewer to interact and
Andy Day worked with SecondMuse as a producer for KeepLeft, a communications firm in Melbourne, Australia. 47
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BLUE REVOLUTION
REENGINEERING A Q UA C U LT U R E THE BLUE REVOLUTION
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n early 2016, the Blue Economy Challenge partners launched a call for ideas that would revolutionize the relationship between seafood and ocean health. We wanted help disrupting the aquaculture industry with new sustainable products and systems. We asked innovators worldwide to send in their ideas, and they delivered. By the time the application period closed in June, we received 220 applications in total, with 41 countries represented. Teams from a diverse range of sectors contributed to the challenge, from academia and industry to NGOs and individual entrepreneurs. And the ideas they sent in are fantastic! We’re in the process of reviewing all of the applications – following are some examples of the diverse range of ideas we’ve seen so far...
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Rethinking Feed for Aquaculture. Some ideas do not rely on wild-caught fish to produce feed, for example, using food or agricultural waste to grow feedstock, using micro - and macroalgae for feed or sourcing protein from alternative sources to create new feeds. CHALLENGE 2 (20% OF SUBMISSIONS)
Developing New Ocean Products. Ideas ranged from finding new uses for species hybridization and breeding to expanding small-scale farms of some less-commonly farmed aquatic plants and animals, creating more disease-resilient species through hybridization and breeding. CHALLENGE 3 (50% OF SUBMISSIONS)
Sustainable Design for Aquaculture. We’re seeing ideas for new types of feeding systems, more energy-efficient tanks, multi-species farm designs, open data for farmers to use and more. Over the course of the challenge, we met a host of inspiring people whose work connects them to the ocean. We snorkeled in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef with marine biologist Maya Knowles, who told us about the threat of coral bleaching. We talked to chefs at iconic seafood restaurants Nautilus and Thala, who developed special menus for World Oceans Day. In Monterey Bay, Calif., we harvested and cooked abalone from a sustainable sea farm, taking it literally from ocean to table. We talked to innovators from across the U.S. at the 2016 Ocean Sciences meeting in New Orleans, La. These people are not just helping improve the ocean’s health. They’re learning about it, mapping it, teaching others about it, finding new ways to use its resources and developing tools for a more sustainable future. It’s been an honor to share these stories. And we can’t wait to see the solutions that come out of the Blue Economy Challenge – those stories have yet to be written.
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What’s next? The applications will go through a rigorous judging process with panels of peer reviewers from diverse organizations (including academia, non-profit, industry, government and finance) and backgrounds (innovation, aquaculture, marine sciences, business management and more). 10 to 15 finalists will be selected to deliver virtual pitch sessions. Finally, the winners will be announced by the end of September 2016. The Blue Economy Challenge has been a partnership between SecondMuse, InnovationXchange, the World Wildlife Fund, Conservation X Labs and NineSigma. Thanks to everyone who joined the #BlueRevolution for sustainable aquaculture and ocean health. We hope this journey has been an inspiring one!
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FARMING ABALONE AND KELP IN CALIFORNIA: WORLD OCE ANS DAY 2016
O
n World Oceans Day 2016, SecondMuse reported from Monterey Bay, California where we focused on aquaculture. That’s because almost 50% of the fish we consume is farmed and more and more people around the world are working to make sure it’s sustainable.
Cogley of the award winning restaurant Aubergine. Cogley told us he serves this sustainably harvested abalone every night, “We will pop the abalone out, clean the liver (which we save for the sauce) and put together a dish that includes local seaweed and the abalone sous vide, pounded and cooked.” Cogley garnished his dish with sustainable seaweed and served it with a side of tea, a sauce made from the abalone liver and seaweed.
Aquaculture has great potential to contribute to food security, nutrition, livelihoods and economic growth. But if the industry’s growth is at the expense of ocean health and conservation, then developing countries will not harvest long term social and economic benefits.
As the aquaculture industry expands, it’s more important than ever to ensure that farming in the ocean is sustainable. That’s why in February 2016, the Australian Government, the World Wildlife Fund, Conservation X Labs and SecondMuse launched the Blue Economy Challenge, a call for sustainable innovations in aquaculture to contribute to global food security.
We visited the Monterey Abalone Company, a sustainable sea farm literally under the commercial wharf in Monterey Bay. Giant cages of abalone (marine snails) hang 10-15 feet under the wharf as little rockfish and occasional sea otters buzz around. There, farmers raise California red abalone, feeding them kelp they harvest from the ocean. At $24 a pound, they sell 80% of the abalone directly to high-profile restaurants in the area.
We know that technological innovation alone will not make our oceans healthier. We need a culture shift towards environmentally friendly sources of protein. Our goal is to broaden the number of products from our oceans so that the world’s growing population will continue to have reliable and sustainable sources of food.
Just a fifteen minute drive from this sea farm, we also visited Carmel and met up with Executive Chef Justin
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BLUE REVOLUTION
In support of the Blue Economy Challenge, we’re doing things slightly differently. We’re partnering with the World Wildlife Fund and other partners to help amplify the challenge. We’ve used social media and reached 2 million people on Twitter and 50,000 people by geotagging on Facebook. This isn’t business as usual for the Australian aid program. S TEPH A N I E K I M B ER O F TH E I N N OVATI O N XCH A N G E O N O N E WAY H ER O RG A N IZ ATI O N H A S EM B R ACED I N N OVATI O N
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ABOVE The SecondMuse team at their winter retreat in Merida, Mexico.
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BEHIND THE SCENES
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What Does It Mean to Us to be Stronger Together? THE VOICES OF SECONDMUSE
“To me, being stronger together means supporting one another in our roles as colleagues, mothers, daughters, sisters, friends, and so much more. I think it’s really important for women to be able to show their whole selves when coming to the workplace and not have to pretend to be someone else just to fit to our society’s norms of what it means to be a working professional.” – Natalia Arjomand
“Aside from the obvious strength in numbers, working together makes me a stronger, better individual - more inspired, determined and likely to contribute something of value. Together I am more able to lend and sustain my own strength because I also gain it in the process.”
“We are stronger together when we listen to each other, give one another the space to be heard, and use our collective power to amplify the voices that have historically been silenced.” - Kendra Yoshinaga
– Heidi Hamlow
“Standing strong together is working with others for the wellbeing of society, motivated by a love for humanity and a recognition that humanity constitutes a single social body. It is the process of creating shared understandings that result in individual initiative and collective action. It is considering not just the effect of what we are doing, but also the effect of how we are doing it.” – Chad Badiyan
“Standing strong together is celebrating the whole and holding the tensions inherent in our differences. It’s embracing our diversity and fully living into my unique greatness. It’s having compassion for others and being unafraid of making our needs a priority. “ – Monica Price Cohen
“Stronger together means that we (families, communities, companies, societies) are stronger when there is equality between men and women. How equality is manifested may look different in different situations. It does mean though, that we respect, support, encourage and look out for each other as equals. This is true for women standing together as well as men standing together with women.” – Carrie Freeman
Gender equality is fundamental to any meaningful social progress. Standing together means recognizing each other’s capacities and strengths, and working together to provide opportunity to as many people as possible, placing special emphasis on opportunity for women. Opportunity to obtain an education, to work, to a decent life and to lead. Women have a moral courage, intuition and capacity to lead that the world desperately needs today. – Neisan Massarrat
“Can you imagine an athlete that neglects to work out half of her body? Gender inequality is as bad for men as it is for women and the attainment of gender equality is as much our responsibility as it is that of women. If we get that right we’ll stand stronger together.”
“Being stronger together means more empathy and less ego, more collaboration and less competition, more inclusivity and less insecurity.”
“What being stronger together means to me is that there is safety in taking risks in pushing boundaries to create a better world. We’re stronger together because when we fail or ‘it’ doesn’t go as planned, together we pick up the pieces and try again. Together, we find a better way to move ourselves forward, at times, taking steps backward in order to better see the way forward.” - Katey Metzroth
– Davar Ardalan
- Todd Khozein
“Strength through diversity. Together, our diverse team represents different skills, experiences, perspectives and cultures that help us work with people from across the world and across value chains to solve some of the most complex social, environmental and business challenges.”
“For me, it is about being surrounded in every aspect of my personal and professional life by people committed to doing amazing, positive things in a way that is open, generous and full of rich experiences and value.” – Jeff Hamaoui
– Jeremy Kamo
“It means elevating each other – acting on each others behalf – believing that all of our actions, even the mundane, are like a chain reaction. When we are stronger we don’t have a seat at the table, we own the table, and our sons and daughters are raised at the table with unquestionable acceptance and equality.” – Lena Delchad
“Listen for what needs to be heard that hasn’t been heard, allow fresh perspectives to shape processes and outcomes”
“Being stronger together means valuing diversity hand-in-hand with unity to ultimately open doors to a future where we all win.”
– Elyssa Dole
– Matt Scott
“The more arms that are linked together, the stronger and tighter and more unbreakable the bonds are.” – Rupesh Shah
@SECONDMUSE