Jason Rosado

For my Social Activism Using Mobile Technology class, Nathan Freitas asked us to devise a future scenario of social activism.  Here is my submission:

My name is Raul Acosta Coutinho Jimenez. I am 64 years old.  I am originally from Salvador Da Bahia, Brasil.

I now live in Havana, Cuba with my wife in a Bed and Breakfast in a recently renovated townhouse that sleeps 6 comfortably with a garden, an in-ground pool and outdoor cinema.

My son also makes his home in this household and he is the reason for our current lifestyle.  When he isn’t home, we offer his room and 2 others in our townhouse to medical tourists arriving from the United States.

Back in 2011, my son Andres developed an iPhone app that sold millions of downloads through the iPhone store.   The app was influential all over the world, and also led to the dramatic opening of the Cuban society and economy for foreigners (and capitalists).

The app was essentially a Sims type video game that in a fun, yet effective, way simulated the experiences of the average Cuban citizen. The app takes advantage of a decision in 2011 that was made by the Cuban government after a series of hurricanes devastated the island.

The Cuban government, urged on by its struggling citizens after the hurricanes, relented to some of the pressures of its American antagonists. As a result, a summit between Presidents Raul Castro and Barack Obama established an exchange of American meteorology and mobile communications technology for access to the benefits of the world reknown doctors in the Cuban healthcare system.  This exchange provided the Cuban government with radar, video and telecommunications technology that blanketed our island in hopes of knowing when the next tropical depression would occur, where it would hit hardest and how to prepare for it.  The exchange also provided the American citizen free and easy access to our island (without consequence) in order to access our public healthcare system.  The necessity for this summit was urged on by the dramatic failure of the US healthcare reform legislation of 2009.  In 2016, there are 60 million without access to healthcare, but now 2 million US citizens come to our island monthly for their healthcare needs.

When the island was devastated by hurricanes in 2011, the iPhone Sims Cuba video game adjusted its game environment to reflect the signs of the times.  As a result, the millions of people who played the Sims Cuba video game for fun, then realized the devastation to the virtual community equaled that of the real community.  As a result, hundred of virtual donations poured through the application from virtual citizens of the world to their virtual Cuban counterparts.  A portion of the proceeds from the app went to a foundation established by the United Nations.  These foundations, flush with cash, provided the average Cuban with the critical resources necessary for a better life.  As a result, the average Cuban felt compelled to push their government representatives for more resources and more open-ness in their society.

And that is how and why I’m here.  My son decided to buy a home for us here, since he spent so much time here for business and diplomacy.  Now that Cuba is more of an open and “capitalist” society, we can manage our Bed and Breakfast business through our own iPhone app.  As they say, “Que Viva Cuba!”  “Long live Cuba!”

For our Mobile Activism class, we were asked to complete our own version of this strategic paradigm. I decided to respond with Givkwik in mind. The phrases in italics reflect the paradigm. The regularly formatted phrases are my responses.

Strategy

Develop a strategy to affect an existing regime. A regime can represent a corporation, government, a specific issue, social prejudice, or any existing state of mind or structure in society that can be targeted for change. A long term strategy is necessary to keep focus on the goal.

Existing regime:
• The process for learning about the millions of charitable organizations in the world is decentralized • The ability to donate to charitable organizations is burdensome, excessively administrative and dissuasive to the donor
• The infrastructure for fundraising small amounts of money from large amounts of people is challenged
- Credit card and other transaction fees are prohibitive for small values
- Charity reach and resources are limited to go after smaller donors

Strategy:
• Utilize mobile technology to address the existing regime
-  Aggregate charity information and make it available on a mobile device
-  Allow small value donations by achieving large scale distribution of client applications to mobile devices that facilitate micro-donations

Opportunities
Opportunities present themselves over time through the effort to affect change on an issue. They can be expected or unexpected. Your effort should be positioned to take advantage of them as they emerge.

• Expansion in cause marketing campaigns
• iTunes/iPhone App Store facilitates micro-payment purchases and has increasingly global reach
• Other platform App Stores looking to mimic Apple’s success
• Global adoption of mobile phones
• Increased use of mobile phones for tasks other than talking/texting
• Increased use of mobile phones for banking and payment tasks

Tactics
Short-term actions implemented to take advantage of opportunities. They can be of varying length and intensity, but must be aligned with your overall strategy. Multiple tactics can be used at once.

• Develop mobile apps that allow for a user to quickly and easily navigate through a variety of charities and initiate a payment/donation
- iPhone
- Blackberry
- Google Android
- SMS
• Work with existing charities to develop applications on their behalf for mobile devices
• Work with Financial Institutions and Credit Card companies to reduce their inter-change rates and transaction fees for donations
• Work with Mobile Hardware vendors and Cell Phone carriers to reduce their Premium SMS fees
• Work with Mobile Hardware vendors and Cell Phone carriers to make micro-donation apps part of the native install on the devices

Another part of our Social Activism Using Mobile Technology homework was to listen to a police scanner for 2 hours and report our results. I chose to listen to the Denver County, Colorado – Police and Fire departments.

Before I listened, I made a point of googling Police Codes to see if it would help me decipher some of the language. I can’t say that I had much luck as the sound quality wasn’t awesome. I imagine some strong part of the initial learning curve is to simply make out what the heck the other person on the end of the walkie-talkie is actual saying.

Anyway, while my ability to decipher was somewhat of a bust, I did manage to hear reports of some pretty juicy (and gruesome) events, such as:

- Car accident – hit debris in the street – 2 blown tires
- Someone keeps calling and threatening to kill them
- Person came home lights on front door open she is in her house, but she would still like police to come by
- Sister and father are arguing, father is drunk. Requires Spanish interpreter
- Possible cold exposure at Liquor Store
- Death threats, took money from her then tried to hit her with his vehicle, followed her to school
- Possible robbery in progress at the Walgreens

These events were not all perpetrated by the same person, so no worries there. But if there is one thing I learned is that Denver is hot right now. I think I’ll stay right here in NYC.

For homework for our Social Activism Using Mobile Technology class, Nathan asked us the following:

Invent your own spoken, typed or visual image code, along with a reason for its use, that could be communicated through a mobile device using texting, image sharing, bluetooth or any other aspect of the mobile device. Document this code, post it to your blog, and share a sample of it via 41411/ITP2800, on Twitter #itp2800 or another mobile medium of your choice.

I feel like much of my texting is based on my location. I know increasing there are mobile applications that broadcast your physical location, but for the most part, I reject those due to privacy/sanity issues. What I wanted to try to create is a series of short abbreviations that specifically address the communications associated with someone being either on their way, running later, or finding someone somewhere.

Here are some codes below, that I’m hoping to use more with friends and family:

I did also come across this website that features a list of commonly used abbreviations for Texting/IM. So the items below are ones that have an asterisk were featured in this list.

OMW = On My Way *
OMW 15 = On my Way, Be there in 15 Mins
RL 30 = Running Late by 30 minutes
WAYN = Where Are You Now? *
MHR = I am here
MHR, WHR = I am here, where are you?
@HM = At Home
@WK = At Work
@SC = At School
OSC = Open Social Calendar tonight, let me know if anything good
CSC = Closed Social Calendar (aka I’m busy) OR
BZ = Busy *
PCM = Please Call Me *
PTM = Please Text Me
DCTU = Driving, can’t text you

Another portion of our homework due Tuesday, September 22, was to submit a one page write up on a cause we’d like to align ourselves with and apply the mobile technology tools we will be learning to assist that particular cause. My write-up is here and it’s about Givkwik, the startup venture I have discussed here a few times.

For the purposes of the class, I’d like to offer my colleagues the idea that we can add the profiles of the causes/charities/non for profits into the Givkwik network as part of the initial launch. If anyone is interest in working on this project, in some way, shape or form, please contact me via email: jason.rosado at givkwik.com

I just finished reading the novel Little Brother by Cory Doctorow as assigned by Nathan Freitas, our professor for Social Activism Using Mobile Technology.

I was equal parts disturbed, terrified and enlightened by this novel. Essentially, a current day (near-futuristic) update on George Orwell’s 1984, “Little Brother” tells the story of Marcus Yallow, who like so many American citizens and Foreign Nationals in the after-math of 9/11 got swept up in the the American Government’s over-reactive responses to terrorist acts upon our soil.

The actual date/time setting of the novel is unclear, but its clearly in a not-too-distant future in San Francisco. Marcus aka W1n5t0n (“Winston”) aka M1k3y (“Mikey”) is a high school student actively engaged in role player games, DIY hacks and gaming “the system.” It’s when he gets caught in the wrong place in the wrong time after a terrorist bombing of the San Francisco Bay Bridge and the BART tunnel connecting San Francisco with Oakland, is where the drama begins.

The story highlights several hacks and concepts actually used in reality. I could see the spirit of Nathan, our professor, in the words of Doctorow. Mr. Freitas has been known to leverage technology to support progressive activism globally. In a bizarro world, perhaps some of us in our class, might end up on some awful Government “list…” (just kidding). Marcus Yallow’s story is one that all of us who even speak modestly against our some times totalitarian-feeling democracy get a little paranoid about – the worse case scenarios when civil rights, the Constitution and The Bill of Rights get thrown out the window in the pursuit of counter-terrorism and freedom.

Some of the accounts of the fictitious terrorist act in the story brought back bad personal memories of the days after 9/11 here in New York City. I certainly hope we never see those days again. The Obama Administration is only slowly peeling back the onion of the Bush Regime, and seeks to keep intact many of the infringements upon our daily privacy (NSA wire-tapping, etc).

The concept of “truth” resonates throughout the book. In a situation such as Marcus’, it is a constant struggle to defend his own view of what occurred, and to clarify what he had been doing and why, in order to not get swept up into the broadest definition of the term “terrorist.” It is also a somewhat obvious attempt to elucidate on the concept that “one’s man’s terrorist, is another man’s freedom fighter.”

“Little Brother” is a good quick read, and will keep you engaged throughout the story.

For our Social Activism using Mobile Technology Class, we were asked to secretly capture some video. Here is a short capture of fellow ITP students discussing social plans while on break (and during fire alarm) at the Stern Business Plan Competition Entrepreneurs Boot Camp…

Surreptitious Video from Jason Rosado on Vimeo.

For my class this semester – Social Activism using Mobile Technology, taught by Nathan Freitas – our first assignment is “Find a mobile app (iPhone, Android, Blackberry or other) that you think is a good representation of Social Activism and post a public review of it”

Since I don’t want to spend ALL of my class time talking about my own social entrepreneurial
venture, I choose to talk a little about Mobile Movement, started by an alum of ITP.

Mobile Movement is a collaboration between UN-HABITAT, Microsoft Research India, and the Environmental Youth Alliance. It seeks to leverage mobile technology to pair up micro-finance angel investors with local entrepreneurs all over the world.

From a review perspective, it looks like this initiative is on track. If I could render a critique from an execution perspective, I’d say there’s still a bit to go on the actual utilization of technology especially as it relates to movement of actual micro-funds. Mobile technology is utilized in its originally intended function: as a communications device, connecting the potential micro-loan recipients with their “angel.” Donations are actually facilitated just by a link back to PayPal. A more holistic approach would be to establish a more end-to-end platform that actually has money moving as a result of utilizing mobile phones.