Last week we witnessed the worst in mankind: terrorist attacks in Boston. A frantic search for the culprits began right after the bombings, but this time something was different, leading to a fast capture of the involved.

Since this is a highly sensitive topic, I want to start by stating that I am against all types of killings, and I strongly condemn what happened in Boston. I grew up in the 70s, living in a country with military dictatorship, and human rights were not really respected here – actually, they were not at all. One thing that I saw over the years is that you will always find someone with a different point of view. It doesn’t matter if 10, 20 or 10.000.000 people were killed, there is always someone justifying the massacre. We should stop killings all over the world, and my prayers go to those who died, and those who have lost loved ones in Boston.

Going back to this bombing, it was the first time that I saw such a strong impact from technology on a high-profile case. A couple decades ago, finding the culprits was a task that required very extensive interviews with people present to the event, sketching faces and trying to find people in large crowds. You got lucky if you had a few images from local news photographers. This time, the FBI went to the public and asked for images, videos, anything related to the event. It paid off, and everything happened in ways that no one could foresee a few years ago.

In one of my previous posts, I stated that privacy in the digital age is almost gone. I am willing to take a step further, and state that it is gone for good. We can argue if that is good or bad, if we like it or not, but we can’t do anything to stop it anymore, as we saw in this case.

We all became reporters with powerful devices. My cell phone has an 8-megapixel camera, my Nikon D3100 has 16.1 Megapixels, and both are capable of filming in high-definition. They are not top-of-the-line, and any point-and-shoot camera has more than 12 Megapixels. Next, remember that thousands of people present were taking dozens of pictures of everything, something unheard by older people like me – we would use a 36-picture roll of film in a 2-week vacation. Now you combine that with data recorded by surveillance cameras, around the clock. Not one, or two, but hundreds or thousands. Areas like Lower Manhattan have more than 2,900 surveillance cameras.

The amount of information generated and recorded is setting records, month after month. But this information would be useless if it remained locked inside a home, or a camera. Without connectivity and sharing, it would be the same way as in the past. Not anymore, the Internet has changed this too. The FBI formally asked for help to identify the suspects, and received videos, images and tips. According to Wikipedia, the Boston Marathon is the largest event in New England, with over 500,000 spectators. So, if one-third of them took at least 4 pictures, we likely have over half a million high-definition images of the event. The infrastructure that the FBI had to use to receive so many large images, videos, and to go through them to find the suspects is beyond my comprehension.

Big Brother is already here and will stay with us forever.

Moving a bit towards the dark side, the Internet also became the perfect tool for a modern-day witch hunt. Reddit users mistakenly identified an innocent student from Brown University, demonstrating once more that everything can be used for good or evil.

If you believe that you still have some privacy, remember that in a couple of years people will be wearing Google Glasses, Phones will go over 20 megapixels, HD recording will be mainstream, and 4G will have a wide global coverage, bringing enough speed to share all this information everywhere.

I live in São Paulo, a city known for its size. For security reasons, I am installing my surveillance cameras this week, adding a new source to the Big Brother in my neighborhood. Honestly, it took me some time to realize that I can’t do anything to change this, but now I have accepted it, and it is fine. That is the price that I pay to live in a large city, with all the benefits and the problems, and I can always move to the rural areas if I wish a bit more privacy.

It seems that we have moved into a new age, with ubiquitous connectivity, but that is not really true. This is a reality for around 1/3 of the global population, the ones connected. This digital divide is increasing the gap as never before, leaving people not connected decades behind the people that are benefiting from technology. The Internet is much more than just a place to hang and have fun; it is a source of knowledge and efficiency. As a quick example, I did more than 50 hours of high-quality training in the last 3 weeks, mainly at nights and weekends, without living my home. We have to continue to push for more digital inclusion activities and programs, enabling the rest of mankind to evolve along with us.

So, what is your opinion?

Caetano Notari

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When I started this blog, I wanted a place where we could share ideas and get support from each other. One of my readers started a petition in the White House website, and I am hereby supporting her on this effort.

In almost every country in the world, we have a large number of people that do not have access to the Internet; in US more than 20% of the total population is not connected yet. We call it the digital divide, and it is one of the challenges of this century.

Being connected today is much more than just having fun and accessing facebook or twitter. It is a way to find proper online training, like Kahn Academy or free courses offered by top universities. Remote education is available in several countries, with formal degrees and certificates. Almost all jobs searches now are done through the Internet, with recruiters relying heavily not only on the applicant’s C.V., but also on information available online. In countries like Brazil, over 99% of all Tax Returns are done online. Preservation of languages and cultures is done online today.

Additionally, the reduction of the digital divide has a direct impact in a country’s economic growth: a ten percent growth in broadband penetration accelerates economic growth by 1.38 percent.

Supporting the digital inclusion efforts is critical, so I am asking for your support by signing the online petition available at the White House website:  “Provide Opportunities to Close the Digital Divide for all Americans.”.

If you live in USA and are a citizen, take a few seconds to add your signature to the petition and pass the information to your friends. Every vote counts, as 100.000 are necessary to reach the required threshold. If you are not an American, please forward this message to someone that can sign the petition. I really appreciate the support.

Thanks,

Caetano Notari

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United Nations: Internet Access is a human right.

If you want to see something adopted massively in a remarkably short period, you should look into the mobile arena. There are over 6.4 billion subscriptions globally, almost one per inhabitant in the planet, and the numbers keep growing every month. In May 2012, more than 10% of the global Web page-views came from mobile devices. It is growing globally, but how can we speed up the process? 

To answer this question we have to look at the key hurdles that are preventing a faster adoption of the services. They can be broadly split into cost issues, usage issues and interest of the users.

Usage issues are broad, ranging from literacy to capabilities of the devices that are being used. In the developing world, we still have a large base of handsets that include web access, but have a poor combination of small screens and hard to type keyboards. It is slowly changing, with the help from Nokia and cheap Android manufacturers that are driving down the prices. I would like to stress that we do NOT need smartphones to access the Internet: 99% of the Internet access in Kenya is done on mobile phones, 70% in Egypt, 59% in India (*). Nokia and cheap Chinese Android handsets manufactures are driving down the prices, bringing a new wave of smartphones in the users’ hands.

The next barrier is interest. That is quickly going up as more and more governments implement new digital inclusion policies, and maintain their efforts of convincing people to go online.

Now we reach the biggest issue: cost. Mobile data services have a stronger impact in the usage of the operators’ infrastructure than voice services, and are consequently more expensive. Very few carriers have advanced pricing strategies to accommodate the usage of data services by lower income subscribers. The usual plans, a combination of speed and performance with strict usage limits, are designed for higher income people, generally with a post-paid account. Sometimes, it takes a player outside the industry to experiment with radical ideas to reduce the digital divide. And Google is doing that in the Philippines and South Africa.

Google partnered with Globe to offer a radical services: free access to Google Services like Gmail, Google+ and Google Search. By using a specific domain g.co/freezone, users have access to all the services, plus access to the first webpage after the click in a Google Search. If the users try to access another page, they have to pay for it directly to the operator. For these users, being able to access an email is the difference between finding a job or not, even freelance work. They can subscribe to services provided by the governments, like health care, and receive the necessary information by email. Sharing of pictures and videos is done through Google+, and works in devices with these functionalities. Despite the limitations, it is an ingenious way to enable people to access Internet Services. We are so used to the experience of accessing the internet by fast laptops of desktops, with a broadband connection, that we forget the world around us. Solutions based on compromises are capable of matching the expectations of these new digital immigrants. The service is now being tested by 8Ta in South Africa, and we need to see the results in the end of this semester.

Google said that they want to help the next billion users to access the Internet, and they are on the right track. Facebook is trying something similar, and I expect other Internet players to follow suit. They already understood that the next battle for consumer attention will be fought on the mobile phones, and the early movers will have a clear advantage.

And you, what have you seen in your country?

Cheers,

Caetano Notari

(*) 2010 Survey – On Device Research – http://ondeviceresearch.com/blog

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Creativity has always been the driving force for mankind, but transforming ideas into reality was something that only a few could achieve. Raising funds was usually a nightmare: long hours talking on phone, endless meetings and meager results. But now this is changing.

If we look at the Internet statistics today, we can see that over 1/3 of the global population is connected. However unfair it may seem, the higher income social economic groups were the first ones to enter the new world, and after more than 10 years of Internet usage, they are comfortable not only with the medium, but also for using it to carry out financial transactions. Buying online is commonplace in many markets; this year marks the first time that online shopping in Black Friday exceeded 1 billion dollars. So, society was ready for digital fundraising.

If you haven’t heard yet about crowdsourcing, you are missing an crucial piece in today’s online ecosystem. Wikipedia defines Crowdsourcing as a process that involves outsourcing tasks to a distributed group of people, which is usually an undefined public.  Among the countless variations of crowdsourcing, there is one that I will focus on this post: crowdfunding. Crowdfunding is defined, also by Wikipedia, as the funding of your projects by a multitude of people, with various levels of contribution.

Traditional fundraising for projects starts with a comprehensive business case, along with a nice presentation, that has to be done to every single prospect that you want to address: executives, angel investors, venture capitalists. As time is a key constraint, there is only a limited amount of potential investors that you can talk to secure funding for your project.

Kickstarter came to change the landscape. For the first time, you had proper tools to talk to an audience that is several times larger that what you could address before. The process is easy and straightforward, and they allow you to use any tools you want to promote your ideas. You can record your ideas on a nice video, complement it with killer texts, and be very creative on what you offer back to your backers. These offers can be extremely cheap, like mentions for people that donate 1 dollar, up to full solutions, books or whatever you propose. The variety of projects is also encouraging: films, album recording, technical gadgets, industrial machines, art books, art exhibitions, clothing, and many more. The creator receives the money after the funding reached 100%, and in some cases, goes way beyond the original expectations. Pebble is an example; the project raised over 10 million dollars, more than 10,000% (ten thousand percent) of the original request. Amanda Pledge secured almost 1.2 million dollars for her new album, art book and tour. The list is large and very enticing.

So, the main question now becomes: can we replicate this in other countries?  We are now seeing a similar solution in Brazil, Catarse.me, funding projects in arts, music and many other categories. Recently in Kickstarter we had the funding of a new Arduino solution, for a team based in Italy. This model is also applicable to Latin America, but Africa will require a different approach. Banking in most countries is done by mobile phones, micro-payments are the norm, and the digital divide is slowly going away. It will happen for sure, but it will be at a different setup, with different goals and mechanisms.

So, do you know about any similar initiatives happening in your country?
Cheers,

Caetano Notari

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Mankind’s evolution is closely tied to the language development, in various shapes and forms. Nowadays, over 7.000 languages are spoken globally, but the majority will disappear in the next centuries. So, how can we preserve this immense culture? 

Looking at our past, we have seen the importance of the Rosetta Stone. The Egyptians documented centuries of knowledge and culture with remarkable craftsmanship, but the hieroglyphs were impossible to understand. The Rosetta Stone was the missing piece, linking ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, demotic scripts and ancient Greek. For the first time, modern archeologists could understand the inscriptions left on temples and monuments. Documenting written and oral languages is the first step on preserving a culture.

I was surprised to see that one of the largest efforts to preserve our legacy was not led by governmental entities, but instead came from Google. They have launched, with a series of top quality organizations, the Google Endangered Language Project, aiming at the preservation of our heritage.

Societies evolved differently globally, heavily influenced by the local environmental conditions, contacts with other groups, religious aspects and other countless factors. That gave birth to the richness that we see today: Indians still living in the same conditions as centuries ago in the Amazon rainforest; Italians with distinct dialects; aboriginals in Australia. Large countries like USA and Brazil have strong regional influences: language, food, music. In China that is much more accentuated, just see the differences between Mandarin and Cantonese as an example. Some languages are spoken by as few as 4.000 people, like Koro in Northeast India.

Technology works in our benefit here. As I mentioned before, technology reached a cost level that is no longer a significant issue. Computers are deployed in schools, and lower income areas of countries have adapted to allow a shared use of computers and internet: cyber-cafes, or lan houses as they are locally known. Kids and teenagers are using this infrastructure extensively, uploading millions of images per day, videos and texts.

Examples in Brazil are widespread: Youtube is the main place to store videos with local music, played by single artists or small bands; regional folklore, with typical music and dance. From rock to Brazilian Country music, from Samba to Bossa Nova, everything is stored. And thankfully, once it is on the web, it stays forever.

What is striking in Google’s approach is that they are doing it in a well structured way. They are teaching how to set up a proper language documentation project, providing an indexed place to store the videos and relevant documents. I have participated in knowledge documentation projects, and I know how painful is to create structures for easy retrieval of data.

Efforts like this are a strong argument supporting the reduction of the digital divide: connecting people enables a wider influx of content to the Internet, thus a better chance of keeping our cultures live for the next centuries. We need to provide also the proper tools with the connectivity, and I will discuss more about this in a future post.

And you, what do you think?

Cheers,
Caetano Notari

Analyzing the behavior of the younger generations, and how they use the online world, is critical for understanding the long-term trends of any industry. What is happening with the music world is making a lot of executives uneasy.

Very few people that regularly use the Internet do not know the Korean Rapper PSY and his hit song, Oppa Gangnam Style. Or Brazil’s Michel Teló and his hit “If I catch you”.  They have achieved a level of online success, so fast, that has no rivals in the music world. Oppa Gangnam has broken the previous record of likes in Youtube, achieving over 2 million Likes; Guiness World Records has formally recognized the feat. He did what no other Korean pop singers or bands ever did: take the world by storm.

Korean pop bands, or K-pop, have tried several times to break-in into the American market. They had strong support from labels, lots of money invested, and no significant results. Out of the dark comes a rapper and rises meteorically. I remember the first time that I watched the video; it was a link from a meme site. Since it was in the early stages of the viral effect, I watched people in Brazil as they started to catch on with the video. He mastered he combination of creating something unique, fun, but more importantly, he understood what people wanted. If he did it by good luck, or if he actually designed it to have that effect, it doesn’t matter. He achieved it.

The online world is an open door to everybody. You don’t need someone to promote you, you just have to be talented on what you want to do, and understand how to communicate with people. Record labels are slowly noticing it, and getting scared. Why do you need the middlemen in a business that you can drive yourself? Will you have a wider audience, have more fans or make more money if you sign with a traditional label? That is getting harder to justify, and some artists are making a living without the traditional approach.

My brother-in-law is a musician, and the band that he plays at, Pedra Letícia, offers a large part of their songs online, free-of-charge. They print older CDs and give them away at live performances; they interact heavily with their fans in’’ Twitter and Facebook. This strategy is working well as they are getting more and more requests. They make their money by performing live, which gives them a chance to further interact with their fan base. It is a trend that is much more satisfying for musicians, and, unsurprisingly, getting a lot of traction. The last CD is being sold through Facebook, allowing them to retain a larger portion of the revenues.

I would be naïve if I said that everything has changed. If you manage to get an online hit, you will have several recording labels chasing you around to get a contract. That is fine, but for the majority of musicians that will never be the case, and the Internet became their main communication channel with their fans.  Making a living out of music, if you are not a mainstream artist, is very hard. Traveling, hauling large pieces of equipment, getting local promoters to schedule shows, that is the daily life of a band. With the reduction of the digital divide, the potential fan base widens, and the benefits increase too.

Audio recording and video editing, activities that required expensive dedicated equipment a couple of decades ago, can now be done at home or in cheaper studios. High-definition video recording is now integrated in smartphones; audio recording equipment is now available for laptops and desktops.

Kids and teenagers have understood this, and they are experimenting more and more. They understand the importance of getting their feet online, and that is exactly why we need to push for more digital inclusion efforts. Kids in the upper social economic classes are already connected; now it is our turn to extend the benefits to the lower social economic classes. This will help in securing that a country’s culture is recorded, preserved and made available to a wider audience.

So, what is your opinion?

Cheers,

Caetano Notari

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One of the benefits of a solid Internet / Telecommunication infrastructure is the ability to work remotely. More and more companies are incorporating this possibility as a benefit to their employees, and it makes sense.

Up to a few years ago, working from home was an unattainable dream. Without computers, we used typewriters and paper reports that were heavy and could not be easily carried. Telephony was almost a joke in several countries, with extremely high prices for fixed lines and no data connections. And I am not talking about the 1950s, that was a reality up to early 1990s.

Fast-forwarding 20 years, we see that things have drastically changed. The early 2000s were the experimental phase; mobile telephony exploded, and even though data connections were slow, they allowed a connection to email servers. I became a user of remote connections in 2002, especially when I had to work on weekends. It was a dial-up connection, transferring files took a long time, but it saved me at least one hour in commuting. With my mobile phone, I connected to conference calls, and I was both more productive and more satisfied. The scenario was similar in Latin America, parts of Asia and Africa; things were better in the United States and in most developed countries in Europe.

The subsequent 8 years were impressive. Computers moved from slow single-cores to fast multiple-cores. Memory expanded, and broadband was largely deployed. I got a 10Mbps connection at home, fast enough for everything that I need to do today – that will for sure change in 10 years, nothing is fast enough forever.  That speed had a broader impact in my remote working ability: I could not only access e-mail, but I had a fully working setup at home. Before, I could only use the phone to connect to local colleagues, as international calls were extremely expensive. With high speed, I got a fully working remote extension, connected to the company’s PABX and to all global branches. Immediate access to everyone, with decent quality. Speed also allowed full access to all servers, intranet, and above all, corporate applications like SAP. Meetings became productive with the introduction of video calls, along with sharing tools for remote presentations. So, for office workers, a remote desk is something possible.

The benefits for our society are large. Commuting takes at least an hour in major cities, with a good part of the population spending over two hours. That is a stress building time, especially if you are driving. By staying at home at least once a week, we reduce the carbon emissions by over 14%! We have more time to spend with our families, and to do what we want and need: exercises, relax with our kids, read and have some fun that helps us to reduce our stress levels.

Companies are starting to understand these benefits. Less stress has a visible positive impact in productivity and team morale. It is a powerful retention tool, employees will think twice before accepting an offer from a company that does not offer such benefit.

And what about you? Is your company ready or deploying working from home?

Cheers,

Caetano Notari

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Image courtesy of Ambro / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

As I mentioned before, Kahn Academy is one of the leading initiatives in spreading knowledge. Free and available in several languages, it continues to grow in popularity, and now we see several other initiatives like it appearing in different countries.

Some of the best universities in the United States, like Harvard, Yale, Columbia, MIT, Princeton, have already published free courses in their websites. Stanford’s Udacity is a fascinating one, but if you want to find more classes online, check other sources as The Open University, or Apple’s iTunes U.

The idea now is spreading to Latin America. One example is the new e-Aulas USP that has been published and it is currently available to the public. For those of you that are not familiar with the university, Universidade de São Paulo – USP – has been ranked as the best university in Latin America according to Quacquarelli Symonds, a recognized British ranking system. The new web site was launched with over 800 free courses, from Calculus to Education, with promises to increase the number of courses over time.

Universities are an integral part of the ecosystem surrounding them. By providing free training classes, they are giving back to their communities a powerful stimulus, something truly appreciated in periods of economic crisis. And, better yet, it becomes a laboratory to test new ideas on education, with a close and direct feedback.

One quick comment: some people complained that these courses are not valid to include in a C.V., as formal training. It is true, but I don’t understand why people would do extension courses just to get a new item in the C.V. It is far more valuable to acquire new skills and competences that can be leveraged in the professional and personal lives. If you really need to get additional certificates, then go for the investment.

What do you think?

Cheers,

Caetano Notari

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This month we had a notable event, the Social Good Summit in New York. Held during the UN Week, it was brought to us by Mashable, 92^nd Street Y, The United Nations Foundation, Ericsson, the United Nations Development Programme and The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The main idea was remarkably close to this blog: how to use technology in innovative ways to solve some of the world’s most complex and pressing issues.

For three days, a large group of high-profile executives like Ericsson’s Hans Vestberg, United Nations Foundation senior personnel, ambassadors, actors and actresses, activists, and many more, held intense debates on different aspects that technology is helping to improve. Limited access to quality information has been a hindrance to many communities; people did not know basic information that could help them improve their life quality.

Sometimes we forget how broad are the impacts of technology today, how far reaching they are. Usually we think of it for reconnecting with friends, reading emails, news, but for a good part of the global population, it is transforming their lives. A quick glance on the topics discussed gives us a notion of how powerful are the changes:

• Can mobile phones eliminate pediatric AIDS?
• How digital is redefining diplomacy?
• Mobile Revolution: How Your Phone Will Become The Most Dangerous Weapon In The Fight For Social Justice
• Digital Activism: On the Frontlines of the Arab Spring
• The power of crowdsourcing

Technology has already democratized knowledge: Kahn University, millions of instructional videos are available free of charge, you can learn about anything. This has spurred a round of innovation in an unprecedented scale, both in hardware and in software: open source development kits are accessible and available in all countries. Now, highly motivated individual are pushing the boundaries by developing specific solutions for their community’s problems that are never done by large corporations – there is no scale to justify the heavy research and development costs. They have the necessary time and commitment, and are making a real change.

Also, for the first time, our voice is as loud as it can be. A few years ago, a strong speech or a street movement would not be noticed if not reported by major television stations. Now, it is the opposite, digital has bypassed the traditional media and got a powerful reach. From political activism, like the Arab Spring, to music performance, videos are getting viral and cannot be stopped. Artists show up in digital form before becoming mainstream hits, slips from high-level politicians go public in every country. Trying to contain the media, like a politician and a judge did this week in Brazil, is counter-productive and helps to disseminate the information that they were trying to hide.

Increasing digital inclusion is a first step in making this a reality for more and more people. We see that some governments are getting scared and trying to increase control and restrictions. It is up to us to keep the momentum, fostering a higher degree of digital inclusion and fighting for freedom of speech.

Are you part of the group already contributing to change? Do you have good stories in Digital Inclusion?

Cheers,

Caetano Notari

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No one disputes that the Internet became a powerful media.  Once the land of the young and early adopters, it is used now by all generations, and for longer periods of time. Globally, we spend more than 16 hours per month online, with some countries way above the average. US users spend 32 hours connected (2010 data), while in Brazil people spent staggering 69 hours per month (Ibope 2012 data).

So, we are now logging in more than 7 hours per month in Social Media. That is a special relaxing time; we want to connect with our friends, family, and also to interact with our favorite brands. Facebook’s “Like” is simple and effective. It is not only to show other people my preferences; it became an open channel to receive information. An opt-in, something that is extraordinary hard to get on traditional channels. Twitter is even easier; it was built to allow us to track them on real time, every day.

One thing that most brands forget, and I don’t understand why, is that social media gave everybody a very loud voice. Getting Brazil as a reference again, it is estimated that we have close to 500 online friends, on average. One unpleasant experience is immediately shared with all your friends. And really miserable experiences are shared again, retweeted and go viral.

This week one consumer tried to buy from an online store here. With a problem in the delivery, she contacted the “responsible” for customer handling. During the exchange of messages, the customer representative used expletives to describe her… As expected, it went viral in a few hours. The company owners had to come online and do a substantial apology to try to save the company’s image. This was a small business, but something similar happened to a major local cable company. The same trend can be seen around the world, even in the largest businesses that have extensive experience with traditional media:  Chrysler, Kenneth Cole, Go Daddy and many other organizations had their share of disasters.

In most of the cases, we see that inexperienced employees were handling the social media activities. By neglecting the proper attention and resources, executives demonstrate that they lack the understanding of both the reach and impacts of their actions. Once published, posted or commented, the message will stay on the web; it only takes a quick screen capture to guarantee that the message will move on.

Most companies have babyboomers running them. They were born and raised in a different world, with much more control of the communication, different values and level of engagement with their customers. I am a Generation X, and a considerable number of my colleagues still do not understand the new reality. Recognizing that behaviors have changed, customers are more active, and that much more effort should be put in engaging with them is a priority. Taking a step back, looking at it with fresh eyes is something that executives should be doing. Otherwise, they will learn from crises that could have been avoided.

And you, what do you think about it?

Cheers,

Caetano Notari

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