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Megan Smith - 21st Century Collaboration and Opportunities

When I walked in the door youtube, my job was to sell advertising, and but when I interviewed no one talked about advertising, they talked about what the company was there to dio, and the company was there to democratize video distribution to give anyone anywhere, a voice to put video up on the web and distributed for everywhere it's everywhere around the world. And at the time, people thought I was crazy to go work for this company. Now u two was a huge success, but in two thousand seven, the internet media was calling youtube google's folly, saying it was one point six, five billion dollars down the tube, and I considered not taking that job, but when I walked in the door and people, everyone said, you know, don't worry about that. We're here to change the world first and foremost, it's ah, the thing that the they talk about youtube, it's a moon shot, we're going to something big, harry, some crazy goal that wouldn't be possible anywhere else. We want to change the world, and that co...

mpany is committed to doing that every day there's action organization called google x, and their primary focus is tio create moonshots, so we've got a short video before I bring up our next speaker this's video about moonshot thinking. The actual moon shot is wonderful, inspirational, politic, beautiful, involved, great technical challenges, genuine heroism. It brought the world together. But think about the polynesian island in the dugout canoe deciding one day they were going to go that way. No one ever been that way before, no one even knew if there was anything that before it was amazing, and it changed the world. People can set their minds to magical, seemingly impossible ideas, and then, through science and technology, bring them to reality, and that then sets other people on fire. That other things that look impossible might be accomplished many years ago, the great british explorer george mallory, who was to die on mt everest, was asked, why did he want a climate? He said, because it is they are everyone else in the world is working on that next ten percent, if you could be the one that delivers that ten times improvement, you have a chance to really change things. If you want cars to run at fifty miles per gallon, find you can retool your car, but if I tell you it has to run on a gallon of gas for five hundred miles, you have to start over. You need a lot of courage in this work, and you need a lot of persistance, even if you don't really one hundred percent believe it's possible like you might think this might be possible have the courage to try that's how the greatest things have happened you don't spend your time being father that you can't tell a port from here to japan because there's a part of you that thinks it's impossible moonshot thinking is choosing to be bothered by way choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy but because they are hard humanity's progress has been a serious of amazing audacious things from the very small and personal up to the great big and grand and we are a species of moon shots and to me that's like really amazing poetic, inspirational thing when you find your passion, your unstoppable you make amazing things happen it's been true throughout history, where kennedy said that we would put a man on the moon it's about the fact that he said we don't know how to do this yet and we're going to do it anyway and that sends chills up everybody's because if that happens, what couldn't wait coming to the stage now she's been it google for ten years nine of them in business development and a year ago she joined google x leading the team the great moonshots ladies and gentlemen, megan smith it's great to be here um I uh I'm excited about creative life and this new format so what I wanted to do just for sure to get to the slide I've I want to show you some images and the way the way that that I want to do that is I'm going to take you through ah a bunch of just photographs and images of things that are happening in the world that I think are incredibly inspiring some of them I'm involved with and some of them I'm not, but the main thing about them is that what's so exciting about the twenty first century it's it's really an age of creative collaboration we already feel that where do you know that here in the valley and around the world you know you you only have to know about things like wordpress in and wikipedia and that just to feel that s o one talk a little bit of what I called network effect and some of examples there, then I'm going to shift a little until where the network is not and talk a little bit about what could happen there on dh then I want to talk a little bit about the people who haven't been included um often at the table and what's changing there and then last I'll jump into a little bit about google accent and what we're doing and I'm one at one of the leaders there on sergei sort of our overall uh, rock star who started expert sebastian. So if I want to go here yeah, um, okay. This is a couple years ago when they google engineers took and hooked up thiss imagery and it was a spinning globe in one of our lobbies toe all the data centers. And you could see google's traffic and it became visible. And so I love showing this picture because it shows you just how networked and how connected the rule world really is. It happens to have colors based on language so red is english. You see spanish with kind of a yellow green and then green over with portuguese and really, wherever, you know, the islands. Ah, little bit of french coming out here, wherever people are there's a network and the greatest change happens on network, of course, commerce and economics change, but also other things. And it was I like to look at, you know, there have been networks before they make a change. So just a shout out to, you know, the silk road and I'm from buffalo, new york size. Give a shout out to the ear canal. Um, a lot of people don't know that you can now drop the grain price for for getting green out out of the midwest by a factor of ten so huge economic impact on united states and getting goods into the into the inside of the u s. But one of things that other house so happens along networks, as we know from watching arab spring and other things, says it networks allow information to become adjacent, and really the internet has allowed so many jason say's before with the earlier networks, people are traveling so it's a little slower, but now it's almost since then adjacency is and so in this case it to me it feels like point of view became adjacent and people were able to act together, of course have been many movements in the past that have happened in a similar way where adjacent point of you have to come together. This is one that have it so quickly because of the impact of digital technologies for people to cross here. This is an image of an incredible marsa took place in colombia it's less well known, but this is a market get march against the farc and it happened it's happened twice and multi cities and it came from one facebook group of half a million people, so just an astounding reaction of people saying let's collaborate together to stop what we don't like happening. In our country and one of things that I love about the millennials and some of the digital natives after them is how they organize using the web. This is from a couple years ago it's it's, a web screen from a new alliance of youth movement summit. So if you could imagine the organizer's of tiananmen square, the organizers of all the different youth protests, movements that have happened, being able to have the best practices conference they actually got together in this case, they got together in new york. They webcast everything they were doing. All of these groups were able to come together. One group, one country wasn't able to leave the country. The rest were system amazing thing. And so you see how not only are people doing specific action, but they're also taking a toll or the level by collaborating together. This is, uh, next image coming up there. Um, this is an idea of adjacency, which is things that data becoming a jason or things that we know wikipedia is a great example that thinks that people know being able to share with others. This is one of my favorites. Examples of progress in places one, the engineers in bangor. I came up with an idea to allow people to share their mapping information and on lee about thirty percent of the world is actually mapped and so if you live in certain places you know have you ever has anybody ever been you're going on a trip and you serve to that place on the maps and there's a line and you know a million people live here but you just see sort of a couple little lines and need that you need more information also for the people who are living there they need more information for ambulances for commerce for other things in that community so this is what the tool allowed the people from lahore pakistan to do across basically six months put themselves on the map and what's interesting to watch is the activity this is with tool called mat maker that's integrated into our geo tools now and you see it with open street maps and all their from them this is the activity that's been going on um we use this one when we started google crisis response for several countries where you could find di aspro people who would help look at the satellite images and quickly have mapping parties seven with sudan in elections teo make sure that the maps will be available for than other people mash up on top of them like go shahidi so just extraordinary effort but people who have been helping each other um this is an interesting adjacency. Do our people familiar with google book search? Yes, nobody goes, though, that so it's, where we've been working to scan all the different books that are out there, worried about information on the web is not the only information there from incredible information in books and television in all kinds of medium. So we wanted to be able to search across the books and and then for those under cooperate, provide information that they exist, little said gambling. And for those out of copyright, you would be able to get the book. This was a very cool database that somebody put up. We could search for words in all of the books that had ever been written that were scant, like, when were you ever able to do that? When was the data of all books in all history? Adjacent and so you can look at trends in humanity. It's just stunning to see this was when the new york times folks it's it's, ingram's that google labs dot com if you want to try it, they were looking for the word women here from eight hundred to two thousand eight in english, and this was sort of lack of the use and then, as the modern women's rights movement came you know, you saw the trendy to say men and women, instead of only the word men for, for all people just really sting, and you can just that's a great tool that play with another jason see, especially when you think about climate change, all the information about our plan, they've been incredible landsat satellites watching our planet and satellite imagery that there a lot provided by government satellites sitting on data tapes, and so the google earth team and this idea called their attendant, was able to take those tapes and making it a live data set, and they've been sucking those out and putting them on it's ah, forestry image from brazil, this's nineteen, seventy five, eighty nine and two thousand one you can see the logging roads, it would be very helpful for these very scientists in this case, the groups in this project are amazon in brazil, carnegie people who are incredible can run algorithms against this data and tell you what's happening from a forced perspective from water perspective with the resource is in our world, so think about is the date of our planet, so you can see how you might better manage how we might better work work with earth, one of my favorite things, this khan academy, and this is an older screenshot for those for a familiar with khan I just love because it's so dead snow he's got it sort of divided up but he just started teaching online um and many people have people taken khan academy classes here a couple of people have fabulous amazing contribution and so to me with this side represents this all world knowledge will be available online in some cases for free in many cases for free on dust in an amazing resource for everybody ondas we see education change this is an idea around talent so these air incredibly talented computer science teachers we happen to do this at google we bring commuter science teachers together see us for high school but these guys are doing great work with kids and so getting them together and having them collaborate on curriculum for a weekend and then cross share the best stuff and then put it up on the web and cross share it back incredibly powerful way to transform education by taking master teachers and putting them together and then putting it back on the web are people familiar with the moocs the massive online of course is definite colors ceo and founder of course sarah she has a wonderful talk on ted that encourage people to watch um this is an example you know when you're normally teaching kind of this bell shaped curve idea well about half the class might completely get mace half might you know we leave a lot of people behind and it's not the best way to be teaching what's interesting is that, as they've been doing more online teaching, allowing flip classroom, where maybe the lecture happens at home and you can work. The problems were collaboratively at school, together with your classmates, you khun? Then when you're watching the lecture, we were aligned to fast forward, you could do quizzes in between systems, so it instead of having these incredible teachers who could be coaching, forcing them to be lecturers and having kids kind of who might not be absorbing it in that way, you know, become bored it's a bad model, we can transform that sage on the stage model into coaching and so it's interesting when you do that, what they've seen is a total transformation and who gets the material? You could intervene for two people, you really can intervene for half the class that's a very exciting change, the other I'm on the board at m I t and and we're incredibly excited about not only the change in lecture hall, but the changing hands on and so hands on still it's, mostly happening physically with people together. This is first robotics, it is a robot contest. This is the high school competitions there, seventy three regionals, thousands of twenty three thousand schools involved and their side but it goes all the way down to kindergarten and so you see with this kid's doing hands on learning and then going and getting instruction of their places and I think we're seeing huge transformation here not only with things like first robotics but also uh the makers of the maker's faire festivals and that the one issue we have of course is this isn't in the classroom and during the day it's all after school in most cases and so probably about one two three maybe four million kids in the us have access to this kind of an experience and we've got sixty million so again if we can free up the teachers out of lecture they can start to do this kind of experience with the kids and we can really transfer form our society with lenny kids be inventive and then this was I still from our son second grade which is what I call sort of thinking about one of the twenty first century skills making projects and being collaborative you know you have classic things you think about school is math language arts science, etcetera but really in addition to the content we need to learn to collaborate we need to learn inclusion we learned to appreciate difference and think about teams we need to have passion um our son our kids have third grade teacher has on the wall in effort there's joy and it's her mingle that they would feel that and that's how we feel in silicon valley um, in fact, I have a funny thing that in the social network movie hollywood got us except the one thing they totally didn't get was they at one point they have marked being motivated by some girl and I don't know many people in silicon valley her know what motivated by a girl, but we're all obsessed techies and we, you know, we wantto, you know, build these things because we're passionate about doing that and so learning passion about what you want to do in your life in this case, academic passion is really important and I think getting more hands on stuff for the kids if key say huge trends the's happened to be superheroes and then people you want to avoid, like was funny once or ah rockhead eccentricity using, you know, adapting kirkland very inexpensive, very, but very, very resonates beautifully with the kids. Um another thing that, uh, that I wanted to bring up that's changing is is kind of connection across the world. This is a group of incredible developers in herat, afghanistan I was able to go to afghanistan with google to work with many of the technologists there d o d hosted us, and we went to harada it's, eighty miles from the ron border and if you think about the global developer community that programmers and there was about eighteen million programmers there's, a culture that unites that group all around, and so these people they were founding, they were just graduated, he founded six new companies. I just think that's, incredibly hopeful as he watched this group in her network together. Um, and they're using the same collaborative tools so very much a silicon valley effort in her rot and that's that that happens everywhere. There's also this movement of like I have nairobi. So you see a movement of sort of these start centres like we have right here south of market all over the world and you see them in almost any city. If you ask someone in buffalo, I know we have one, uh, it's exciting to watch that movement. This is an image from a conference that the google ideas team organized and what they do is try to get people who might not gather. This is a group of former violent extremists, people who were formerly an al qaida, or in l, a gang or in white supremacist movements or in just different movements, some people from every continent who had been involved in real violence and in fact, of the fifty, people I think we estimated maybe there might have been for five hundred years of prison that the people had served in the lifetimes. Um but these people had all transformed their lives, those very valuable to get them together to cross share information about how did they get into this now that they were out, how can they reach back? Many of them were doing programs to reach back to you, to get them not to become propagandized into the different gangs or extremist groups that they had been pulled the two. For whatever reason, and to understand how that had happened, they were also joined. We were joined by twenty survivors, including the woman who lost her legs in the london bombing, the mother of the twentieth bomber of nine eleven bomber. I mean, really incredible people who have been touched by extremism directly. And and so it was an amazing conference, and so I bring this up because it was a physical meeting, but now they're digitally connected, and they continue to work together not only small groups and individuals, but as a larger group, and to bring their own stories for other people as well as collaborative ideas, which could really change things. Um, today there was an announcement around domestic violence and about how devastating domestic violence is, and the statistics that came out were one in three women are subject to domestic violence. Um, this is, uh, movement that happened from the v day group who started this idea of a billion rising if one in three women are hit or raped or abused in some form that's really a billion people it's a very large number of people and so this is an idea to start a global movement and so one of things we're seeing is this transition for women both professionally lots of things but also this idea of stopping the violence on dh subject domestic violence just interesting to watch those changes when crisis happens uh these air some sides from some work we did at google from the global crisis response team um but wanted tio share sort of a thought that whatever it is that you khun dio when there's a crisis of course giving money but also volunteering but also volunteering where their skills and what we happen to be good at is people are coming to our site so putting up a landing pitch and getting geo information and others the geoeye satellite flew over haiti right after the earthquake and so we were able to grab the files that allows us to really provide critical imagery. This is across time you two responders allowing us tio shahidi to operate with the geo and maps of partners with ap eyes our network team was able to quickly make a slide deck for the state department for some other people responding about where the trunk lines are the atlantic station here in port au prince had been destroyed and so they ran around and that the network's gone so they ran around our networks are warehouses and just collected about two hundred fifty thousand dollars worth of stuff that from calling the very science piece there and we knew exactly what they need it got that to us, eddie, who flew it there so that's a really good thing for us to do because we're good at that. And so if you think whatever organization you're in with the really good thing for your organization or yourself to dio what's the specific skill that you can bring and it really began bringing than our back and it was helpful cause then other people can do their think, um so I don't know if there's cousins because I'm going to flip and I'm open to questions at any point if you if that people are funny but I'm going to flip into the next area, which is I was showing where the network is, but I wanted to really be acknowledging of where the network is not and it's really astonishing when you see the globe spinning in our lobby and you see spin around and hear his africa and here it's not time of day because look at europe, you know, in all the different languages like a rainbow of colors of languages but really people haven't gotten the network to the nine hundred million astonishing into talented people are not in the global conversation, right? And so the lines where there does where there's connectivity are is big. The conversation says big but it's really, really isolated, so I wanted to share this map because this is two thousand five and as of two thousand five this cable because it's a pink color it's it's planned so it's not even there there's in the continent in two thousand five that has no cable it's it's like astonishing. I'm not sure what people have been doing in development, but a and then along here, if you look at these cables, they just sort of ignore most countries. This one couldn't completely ignores everybody so that's pretty depressing because if you are talented and you live here you either you have kind of four choices one have a smaller business, you know, do something very hyper local joined the government, join a multinational or leave and so there's tons of brain drain has gone from this area as well as people doing great things that they could do at a bigger scale if they have proper network. The exciting thing is that the telecoms and the mobile phone is really changing the dynamic a lot it's still a data in a text word attacks than a voice world mostly say you see amazing carriers, not all countries have opened what many have, so you see sixty, seventy, eighty percent mobile penetration and you see high end phones and small funds of those but in many countries were still suffering from this kind of satellite dish idea, which is most of the data network if you live in these countries is coming from a very expensive piper, not from regular pipes, but the good news is that's changing. This is a much more current maps that you see just cables have come down on each side now they're connecting in people across wire. Certain countries like iran are way ahead kenya's way ahead very, very exciting. So personally, I feel like one of the greatest things we're going to see as change in the world is going to be what we're going to see from our african colleagues as they really come into the conversation and really start to innovate together with us. Kenya and japan are the best mobile paint south korea are the best mobile payments market I don't know what percentage of kenya is on on and pacer but it's definitely more than half of the mobile phone carriers are doing, uh, money transfer um this's an interesting thing this is truckers were using texting to report bribes and delays so also in many emerging markets there's a lot of concern about corruption and yet the developers there in the community there could take this back and just opened up the transparency and things that they innovate and invent to change that which is exciting this is an example of just issue heating which I mentioned before incredible social innovation they this is the mapping technique for reporting all kinds of crisis any time there's a crisis in the world these has launched an instance and people start reporting it allows you to report from text on your mobile phone call in or more higher and solutions but incredible group whose continues to innovate and they've got several new products people should look at um I just want to point out this you know, we're south of market in san francisco and you know on the edge of the police or the hardest silicon valley but I got to go toe homeboys in nairobi and it felt like I was here so there's companies that are there in these places this is an incredible multimedia company they'd also do deejay training, they have radio stations, wonderful companies are emerging and then on the ngo sector there's a real transition this is an ngo that was started by these three people this is rye barcott he was a student at north carolina unc tabatha salim these guys were in kibera slum in nairobi he was saying to be a marine his mom isn't anthropologists they kind of channeled her and he asked his officer commanding officer if he could go for one month before boot camp to compare and live in a ten by ten shack and what he observed while he was there was that all the aid workers were coming into compare and doing work and going in he sort of call it suvs came in at night they were all that and they came in and it was good work but he kept meaning people like these guys who had great ideas but they really didn't have an access for making their idea happened there were no angel investors where they were to start working on their ideas tabatha was a registered nurse out ofwork salim had a very small youth soccer program and what reid did was he thought, well, I want to invest in them so when he went home he raised the money from students and alumni and he created this organization north carolina carolina for cabrera and so is springing money in students energy to whatever it was that they wanted teo and they were the entrepreneurs and so tabatha clinic is now the largest it's and now cdc funded clinic in the region's amazing has millions like tons of programs hanging off of it for youth programs and other things it's a per it's like a perfect solution on dh salim's youth soccer program has thousands of students, and they also go into digital things there. So, it's, just if you think about transforming aid not as a missionary thing, where you think of the idea and you kind of bring it with the money and instead you kind of become open for business, like venture capital and like angel investing and try to find great entrepreneurs there and the networks going to allow this to happen, and I think that's going to be very exciting. Um, this is ah project that I love nicholas negroponte, who did the do people know the one laptop per child hundred dollars laptop project? So, um, they have, I think, ten million laptops, uruguay, many countries actually have them deployed so that's going along and he's moved his attention to the fifty to one hundred million children who don't have a teacher, and is there a way to intervene for them so we can't get teachers to them? Could we give them a tablet and have the kids learn to read on their own and then begin to sort of join us? And so they've taken these android tablets? This is dr marianne wolf she's, an incredible tufts university faculty member in literacy, in brain research, and so the kids they gave the tablet the on ly intervention they did was to have won one adult learn how to plug him into the solar panel so that wouldn't be the limiting factor. They have one village that has access to water one village where the kids have to allot walk a long way to get water if they wanted to see the difference and they just gave them the tablets and they left and every two weeks someone goes on sneaker net they have no network there on dh swaps this him cards and uh no one knows how to read within miles of these villages so it's been amazing? I think they're about eleven months in the kid's within minutes turned on the devices they used fifty aps by the first week on average and they just started and I've seen some video recently there really sight reading? They haven't figured out decoding yet, but they're reading in the way that you might read a contra character so they're reading the words they're seeing that but they haven't sounded so that moment, marianne said it's that moment and helen keller's life right before she figures out water and they're very excited for this. One of my favorite things nicholas mentioned was the kid's hacked in because the researchers were using the camera to take pictures of the kids, but they got in and now the kids are using the campus e they wanted the camera for themselves that very exciting I just oppose them with the kids he won the science for the google science for last year uh britney from florida these two guys there from swaziland I want these guys to win the science fair and I think that this kind of thinking is going to allow that to happen the network and all of us on the network and all of the knowledge on the network in the data on the network connected to them so they join and become collaborative with us is really something that can happen you know in the next decade or two it's incredibly exciting um ok so I'm going to go to my third topic area but you have to tell me you feel because it's over there yes let's say if there are any questions in here and then I'll check online okay I wantto go into that example you just talked about a little bit because essentially you're talking about overcoming an insurmountable problem with technology a completely isolated a literate area of the world and a team took a crazy approach it they dropped in a boxful of laptops can busy tablets tablets right so I knew how to plug a man and that's just let preloaded some some applications on it no connectivity uh people had to walk in to swap out sim cards and provide additional applications over time and the local culture of children taught themselves are learning how to read with no teachers just some preloaded applications and it would be better if there were teachers teaching but in this place where we're totally absent from teachers what's the intervention what are you going to do? It's the what's the first step you can take and you know the saying is perfect is the enemy of good and here's let's do something let's get these kids something and try and help get them started as opposed to you know, I think we're a big creative community and we think a lot that whatever project we have to put into the world has to be perfect and this shows how much you khun dio by just identified a problem and going after and beginning and guinea in the the opportunity is start is the most important stuff right and in some ways social a line called minimum viable product so in some ways like you're saying like, do you have to have this perfect thing that you know, teaches well we don't know and nobody marianne incredible fact remember, you know, she hasn't people haven't event, but we have had sesame street, a mother goose and a lot of stuff that with all the aps that we would put on our kid's phone or our kids tablet um if they were in this case probably a little more for a pre school kid because we're bringing his online for literacy at that age group but he also might take some older kids stuff electric company except remember you know all the words and letters and thinks all of that media there's a lot of that we have to have it so let's load it up on the syphon let's watch and see what they use and what works better and so sort of a way of of kind of respect it's like a respectful liberation said it's, thinking that the network might help you design their co designers in this and it's better than zero ah and it's not perfect but they can help us figure out together collaboratively what's going to work and and in fact what might work for different kids right? And the two examples this one and the previous one are both examples of if you give a man a fish he eats for a day if you teach a man a fish he teach a man to fish he eats for a lifetime on I guess your previous example about incorporating you know, men and women as language is probably what I should be using but it's all about enablement and having active participation from the people that you're connecting with around the world. I think it's a you know an amazing value that we keep going back teo the presentations expecting the person to be your teammate yes like maybe you're equal in certain ways but your team it they're going to bring stuff you're going to bring stuff you're going to do things together it's not like this hire a local thing that has been going on but it doesn't need to continue and you sort of glossed over this at the end of the story there and I read some articles about the laptops went out and the cameras word were disabled they were they were not the children themselves were not able to use in this case of these tablets they were using them think I think scat capture I don't know all the details but nichols said they were capturing I think burst images every so often of what was going on but the kids were they hacked and tried to get these were kids who previously had no literacy skills had never seen an electric electric device in their lives and they hacked android within six months like respecting everyone's intelligence is a huge takeaway yes totally in fact I think one of the little bit on which funny is he is the first time he turned it on and he takes the thing and it's turning on he says I am a lion you know he was previously a shy kid you know like when they look back at videos and and he was maybe not the main kid he becomes one of them you know more in the mix kids that's all the very cool uh and also just back tio you know the paper example from the second grade of just learning to value each other learning, learning difference learning has there that's a big part of this idea of creative collaboration, which clinton talks about this century being about? It says right back to what tony was saying in the previous one where society is changing its less top down it's more horizontal, respectful collaboration connecting I think kenya has a question from I did it was it was very follow up to what you were just talking about and it's from liz gebhardt who says how do you take learnings from one community growth enabled program like this one and use them as best practices to help other programs be even more successful? Are there these commonalities that could be shared among different teams in different in different goes in different countries? Very much so sometimes I think of them as bright spots I'm always looking, I work very much in the beginning of things and try to get them ramped, and once there they're settled scale people you're crazy that created really, but I'm always looking for the bright spots like this like holy cow back could really work and maybe it's not perfect now and marians, you know, it seems like they're not exactly there they're close and they're going to learn what the creek amiss but yeah then some iteration of this should be rolled out to many, many, many children around the world I was part of not related google but I was part of study something called the malala fund permit for malala yousafzai who was shot by the taliban and her father's edie and said that they similar to the caroline for cabrera um they would lead us and what we should do in swat in pakistan and getting kids to school and I was talking to cia dean about this he's like oh my god there's so many kids and swat who have a teacher once a week and if they had this you know that would change their lives and also from a security perspective having alternative points of view even locally not other people's point of view from out side but having that adjacency that people near you have different points of view on the beginnings of whether it's youtube like video sharing or post blood post or twitter whatever anonymous anonima not anonymous hearing that from each other would really change the destiny of people who might be isolated from information and might be hearing only one side of something on our quiet kind of victims of the lack of information and maybe they become enemy combatants but they actually were victims it's so interesting change okay question so I'm going to shift gear see the canal and uh is similarly, the reason I bring up the year canal is because many social change movements happened along. Mary kay, no. And in fact, the abolition movement and the women's rights movement, early women's rights movement are really centered and many places along the canal. Elizabeth caddy stands houses, you know, from here to the back of the studio for one of the locks. And so I was going to jump in this, but I'll go here first. In eighteen forty eight, she and lucretia mott and several other people from a small tea that they had organized something called the organized the first women's rights convention. And I want to share this because, um, it's a fundamental document in our country, but we never learn about it, which is interesting to me. So the declaration of sentiments has anybody here ever heard of it? Yeah. Yes. Ok. Want to, um so I I counted up there with, like, emancipation proclamation and those kinds of documents decoration. Independence went, elizabeth did was she? She took thomas jefferson's words. We hold these truths to be self evident. But she added that all men and women are created equal. Let the facts be submitted to a candid world, and she outlined the's sentiments, which we're all about the lack of women's rights in many different spheres, lack of access to certain kinds of jobs, lack of access to if you were divorced, your total were gone being dead in the eye of law, etcetera. So interestingly, sign two thirds by women one third by men, including frederick douglass um, who we just dedicated a statue to him in washington? I think early this week amazing american leader, um, I bring this up because, uh, this is still going on and a lot of countries it's still going on around the world, and I'll come back to visibility and stuff, but I want to say that in two thousand thirteen, we're making a lot of progress. Um, cheryl has sent a great trip great job with lean into just ramp the conversation in our country about how we're going to get to use all the town in our country, get women to the table and also get some more freedom to men to have more flexible experience is also the maker seriously, people know the makers dotcom amazing, a documented work with pbs and a well of the modern women's rights movement. Documentaries are online, you can stream them, but also beginning to tell the back story of many of the women that we know, but you don't know the backstory um and just really great work and I popped some of this stuff some of the stories that are up there katherine switzer first woman to officially run the boston marathon many people don't know but the race director when they noticed that catherine was running and should should go watch her video it's really compelling when she was running that the press truck saw her and they go oh my god there's a women so they pull up in their filming there asking your questions and suddenly the race director who's on the truck notices jumps off the truck and tries to rip her numbers off and said, what the hell get the hell out of my race but this is like not that long ago I think it's like sixty eight, sixty nine seventy um astonishing and it's in the photos from the time life collection of the photos that changed the world from the twenty century but this is so I feel like we stand on the shoulders of these amazing people who broke through and there's elizabeth with the declaration earlier so we're making progress but we still you know, many of these things air still true I'm not only in our country but also in other countries and when there's been interesting work around conscious bias and we really have moved forward we're not consciously doing buys things, but we have an awful lot of unconscious bias that we just go to and when you don't have information you fill in, you fill in the gaps one of things that we're doing it google's we're really trying to educate ourselves in the last year on bias and understanding what? What what are we doing? And phone screens and interviews and performance reviews of what? What are the things that we think that air causing us to organize ourselves and not lift our women as high as we want them to be as well as under represented minorities? Just as a society what's the baggage we had inherent from history that we could try to actively take a moon shot design ourselves out of, um when the ones I don't think I put it in here, but it's just an example that we learned there's about ten, that we've been studying, but ambient bias when you walk in a room what's on the walls sometimes gives you a signal of whether you belong. And so the stanford folks and a couple others did some interesting research where they brought students in to see if they would be interested in computer science, but they put different things on the wall and they had a result meaningful result of the women joined or didn't join based on what was on the wall if it was very, very sort of traditional male versus more neutral, really interesting findings but one of the things so biases when the anger's there but also invisibility, it is one of things I won't talk to you about, especially here is sick of valley. I think that under represented minorities and women are largely invisible technical women. So, you know, the question sort of is, why is that true? And I have a couple of theories, and I would welcome anybody's inside here, this is one that I came across. Gina davis was studying children's television, she was watching tv with her kids, and she noticed that they're just as an actress. She felt there were a lot more male characters, and she went to usc and they actually measured which you love. And so they found it is three to one men or boys, two girls on screen for our kids, and in fact, eighty percent of jobs were held by male characters. Many of the girls get royalty roles s o jamie's point is, you can't be what you can't see, and so there were almost no characters who are women who held a job in science or computer science or any of our fields, and in fact, that many in law and not many in business and so we were accidentally biasing are three, four, five six year olds. Even before the data that we have about the seventh graders dropping out of math it's actually earlier and we're teaching our boys that the girls don't do this and the girls that they don't do this work so I think this is an incredible area we've been working with gina to try to bring software tools like the youtube analysis tools to not have to have grad students sitting count with very specific exacting spreadsheets but actually have the tools that we have it could could compare science and technology help us measure bias help us see this and get out of this um even as simple thing this is a pottery barn catalog that was looking at so they both have dressers they both have butterflies they both have books but the boy gets the microphone to go it's just everywhere. Um this is about historic a start visibility and do people recognize any of the people in these photos? Anybody? Yes, now there was an entire astronaut corps of women, you know, astronauts or some of the most celebrated americans. And so with the policy, you know, the program there was a core they just never got to fly because the bias they we don't know about them grace hopper created uh you know, the first compilers one of them foundational founders of in the computer science field heddy lamar it was one of the co inventors a cd you made these air the women at bletchley park who cracked the enigma codes for world war two the bletchley team was ten thousand more than half women so rosy the mathematician is here and then these air the eniac programmers in right it during one or two university of pennsylvania signed up was part of the whole calculation of ballistic tables etcetera and there were one hundred women who were hired who are computers that is their job like lawyer are our contact and so these are some of the computers and when the eniac of the first digital computer nanak was completed to do this by by machine they went and got six of them and the hardware guys handed them the wiring diagrams and said, you guys figure out how to do this so the first digital programmers in our country are these six women luckily a friend of mine interviewed four of the six of them before they died and she's working on a documentary which we announced that google I o but they did the first sort routine the first teachers of computer science you don't know about them there amazing and effect a gene part bartek is one of them hired grace hopper so you know just is amazing and then of course ada lovelace people may not know her she's eighteen forty three she was teamed up with charles babbage who made the first mechanical computer and she was translating some documents for somebody a paper that was written by someone from italy and she added entire section which was the first writing to ever have this idea if something that could be programmable so larry head has put her on the cover of the google and a report this year on a shout out to the founder of our industry so amazing woman so part of what we also have to dio is to write this history it was lucky to meet kareem abdul jabbar at the first robotics contest because there was a basketball thing and they invited him but he had this amazing but called what color is your world the lost history of african american inventors and there's so many stories out there you know the blood bank inventor there's so many inventors but we only have been taught by our textbooks through bias of one member of each of the groups will have one woman, one african american, one asian american and and have sort of really not told our own history well which makes it hard for a kiss to feel like they can do these things when in fact through all of history maybe they weren't the majority but they were there they were maybe in the ten percent but they existed and they did profound work that moved s oak valley forward into where we are today and our world where we are today so another important sort of point I think we need to take and then for amplifying the bright spots here's two great ones um harvey mudd college and also somewhere to abc went from fifteen percent women income your science toe over forty there forty four percent even have forty three percent women in the class and they what they did was they studied they asked the girls why aren't you doing this? And they felt they thought computer science didn't have impact they didn't see the impact they didn't feel confident and they thought it had a lot of stereotypes like they were they didn't want to hang out with those people they thought it was lonely and boring and they really worked and they changed all the curriculum and they pulled the kids in and the kids are thriving very exciting and the mckinsey's research about just general absent ation in companies just showing the financial performance of gender diverse and racially diverse cells in a catalyst study are just better performing company um and something we've been doing it google is google I o u nutritionally the tech events google I o r the app dubbers conference by herself about these conferences air very dominated by the men on the stage and so we've been really trying to get women more visible and we ran a session called seven take up tech makers in a microphone with ted style lightning talks from rock star techies so it's another strategy which is let's make even if the percentage that are lower the absolute number of women are good and they're doing astonishing thing so let's make them visible and we also launch makers at google so some your girls for people and just incredible also for those who are not already in here resource is online, you know co dot our code academy girls who code black rose who could khan academy scratch blackley first leg a leg you know the list goes on of maker's faire etcetera of ways that you can come join this field that's there um and then eliminated the last point it's also a friend of my natalie gave us solve for x talk about, um, war tech versus piece tech and she felt that as we start to move from working on more war based things to more peace based things, that it would actually attract different people to the field which I thought was an insightful thing she actually felt it was a mass protest that many women were not in the field as opposed to something that wasn't drawing them that they didn't want to work on these projects, so maybe as we transform what we're working on, we'll pull more people um this is just ellen ellen this particular, then I'm going to talk a little bit about blacks on this slide, which is from the laptop project, the earlier one, these little girls might primarily worked on this, and she gave me this picture. She said the little girl's created a laptop clinic because a couple things broke and they're fixing things, but in their world view no one in a clinic, what no men worked in clinics, they didn't let the boys help them. So, like it's, all, I also heard a similar story of some kindergartners in iceland, and the prime minister president came to visit them, and it was a woman, and and so they talked, and then this boy raised his hand and said, could a boy be the president or a prime minister? So, you know, point of view and this media visibility this stuff, it's all what you know and what you see, because humans air so talented and can do anything think from anywhere so that's part of this work, um, I'll jump in a good black sentiment, but let me and see if there's e stay with this there's no there's such amazing feedback coming in from the internet and our chat rooms and on twitter on all of that, um, and there's a number of things I want to ask you, but I'll start with mark in san jose who says can you talk more about traditionally middle school or high school girls aren't themselves much into technology and coding on what can we do culturally to change this listed out a number of amazing organizations but from from kind of a flip to change it yeah yeah cause I think there's two really interesting things to do just based on bright spots that I've heard of that I think you just amplify so one of them is we need to get these experiences into the core curriculum so everyone just has to do them because if everybody has to do them, it won't be that voice of this girl that we all do this in fact, one of our engineers just came back from vietnam and he found that from second grade there coding ah and he was doing some research to see how widespread was many schools is trying to figure out is this nationwide is thisa region but from second grade and in fact he was in eleventh grade ah class the kids were doing a problem where he brought the problem back and he asked another engineer at google hey this prom should we use this in aa in interviews, he said go that's a great problem, he said what level level one meaning if you pass this question you will probably get a job at google s oh that's a good bar like you will get a job and you know in facebook and these you're going to pass the bar half of the class got the question right? You know, in the eleventh grade so that's exciting and so vietnam's figuring that and they don't have huge education budgets they've just figured out how to do that so we need to we need to understand more about that and get moving so I think embedded in the classroom will make that change the second thing that's really interesting is the finding from harvey mudd was that the young women and I think also young men some young men some young men were more drawn by a puzzle by the math it stuff but many people are drawn by why in fact we have two boys on and one of them alex if you give him he'll want to do the math first louis he wants to know why I like it we're gonna learn about telescopes. I got to tell him about calais on inquisition and all the stuff that happened and then we're into like lenses, but with alex you could serve it leads right? So different kids they're gonna have different entry points and it turns out that a lot of girls want to know why what's the impact what's going to make the world better why am I learning this? And then if mathis the answer they'll do the math and said that's an incredible finding one of the little anecdotes of that was from team came in who? The segway inventor amazing medical device incredible inventor who found it first robotics the first years that they ran the first leg a league they had a table and the kids had to make this kind of lego mindstorms type robot teams and there were points to be scored go knock this over, lift this thing carry this there do this and then he walked in and it was like ninety eight percent boys and so he's like how do I change this? How to change this and you know, sometimes you get the key insight for no reason unrelated somebody got a fun idea to make a theme and so maybe this year will be about helping seniors next year will be about food safety next year of you about going to space whatever and so then all of a sudden the games were still there score the points but with seniors were helping them lift their groceries were helping them communicate and if you put the signal if they can do video conference because you helped them, you've got a dog, you've got social thing probably so half girl showed up, it just changed itself and so that's a pretty key insight um the girls just came that way and also I think with the harvey mudd breakthrough doing work like that impact work if they found that not only is it a bounce class of pretty much half women and men but there are more men also and a lot of people are taking us a minor and if you think about cuba computer science it's a language it's something all of us should know a little bit it should be something that we learned an elementary school so I think that that would be the greatest way to solve that all right before before we move on it's just have a comment and a question so a comment from ruth kalinka who says I was feeling burned out after seven p m for her on friday but it kept critic live on in the background wow megan smith just got me sucked right back in especially loving the coverage of visibility and I'm seeing that over and over in here so one more question from maggie in l a do you ever get pushback from the men that you work with with being so strong such a strong advocate of women's rights? Maddy says she feels that she's often perceived as strident or shrill when speaking up about these things in the workplace it's it's a it's a really good comment the way I I started you know there's sertys overall lead for google acts and I do some of it astro chris has the card but block has glass and so we have ah, a regular meeting where the whole team we dubai weekly meeting and one day I had heard so by with example of an idea for her I had heard about katherine switzer, the boston marathon runner in a couple of their stories and I thought it's wrong that these bad as people you know are not in our team and so I just said, I'm going to just tell these stories so I think sometimes so I told that story you told a story about a google er you know, for example, I know a story from our developer relations team of very talented engineer in a tech conference she gets up, she explained some ap I she did it a you know, awesome presentation first question up to the microphone are you single really like it's the twenty first century? Did you really just ask that? But if you so what we're doing is make your team conscious of these crazy things then our near history and current history and then ad asked them to join you and getting great people in the team show them statistics of how important racially diverse, gendered, reverse geo diverse teams are socioeconomic diversity, so I think people needed be convinced that it matters because it really actually does matter patents that have men and women on them are more cited it's just you do better work if you have more ideas and more different diversity in and so I think sometimes it's perceived a shrill cheryl has a lot of insights in her book you know women as they rise become less popular people don't like them they call them bossy you know and it's something we have to work that's why I brought up the bias stuff because we don't know they were like a little bit in we have some insights we can teach yourself something's really to study ourselves and debug this you know and really debug our our society because it's really silly to waste talent and it really matters and so I encourage her to keep going and try different approaches we'll thank you it starts with awareness right? Yeah. Thank you. Uh ok so we have a lot to live up to because the new york times is calling us the google lab of while district um so just quickly to get a feel for us it's you know we're really started be like um although we're google ex is a little more hardware then software more of google is traditional suffers they see a lot more in this kind of crazy lab stuff um definitely like from the video our goal is to do moonshot technologies ten x not one acts not iterating but really try to do something different. We're not a research lab were really trying tio choose projects with sometimes called venture academia could you take something out of the lab you know and really product ties it like the self driving car like google I brought google glass appear um you know, to show you and this is just the beginning like think model a model t you know and it's it's a bluetooth headset but it's bringing the ability to be out in the world but have internet access with yourself so playing with those um so one of things we've been talking about moonshots the tech moonshot is there's a huge problem in the world you have some crazy idea for radical solution that some kind of technology is coming online that you could use and that's what way call moon shot herself racks and then you guys have seen some of the people who live here have seen some of the cars driving around with trovan driven but half a million miles so far autonomous we're learning a lot it's a pretty exciting project it leverages computer science leverages mapping and leverages sensor so from a tech breakthrough there's a lot of stuff that's available to us now tim maybe we can get the car to drive itself which is doing to solve traffic to solve saving lives to solve fuel uhm this is from a video that's online of ah blind man driving the car will vitamin riding in on his experience in his perspective some images from google glass this is just photography this's doing hang out you know being able to be live with your friends in all kinds of situations there's a wonderful teacher who just takes it I think he was just concerned and riding a bike through you know the accelerators and the kids were with him directions information and that this is a google now like you know sort of alerts so lots of partners just starting to come online who knows where this is going but really exciting project uh so we try to think it's more like willy wonka like we're trying to do things that would be really helpful there was a project loon the gist that got announced around balloon based internet in new zealand rich people check that out we really to an acquisition of makani power wonderful company here in the east bay that we had invested in before they just really doing kite based windmills so where you can't you need to go higher if you want more wind power so good things there um we called peter pan petra pan with phds inventors entrepreneurs thrown together in the mix er think ten x this is something we take from improv when we're working together how can you build on people it's ideas to third yes and but also spend a little time create critiquing one third yes, but prototype like crazy thes they're sort of the glass prototypes you see them until they get you know into isabel's beautiful design um here she is sort of putting some of the fun but idea to prototype to project to then business product I've reward people this is a reward that we give every quarter for whoever did the most audacious work uh and this is something that my friend that astro teller who's, the cabinet moon shot sort of like our ceo across this well, it's, a great inventor um created and it's it's way called solve for x and it's a forum for technology to try to amplify moonshot thinking lots of proposals air up on self rex dot com um and so it's really sort of taking this idea and and we partner with ted and x prize and others who've also uploaded moonshot proposals and individuals what could you solve in the world? And so I guess I'll end with what's your x, which is I was very lucky to be taught acoustics by professor bow's this figure guy and he was amazing and one of things he would do is every so often you say these really profound things in between some kind of maxwell's equations and he would want to things that he said is find your passion if you find your passion, you khun b unstoppable so what's your ex in the world almost like if you could imagine instead of going to college what your major is like what's your problem, what do you solving for and and have us thinking about that and thinking respectfully about each other and how valuable we all are to each other? Because I'm I'm a card carrying optimist, and I really believe that we can really solve the greatest challenges of the twenty first century if we collaborate in the ways that the network allows and the way that the talent of all of us would really allow thanks credible on really inspiring, and I think what what I really liked about your talk uh, is you spent just as much time talking about the individual from carolina who started the organization in africa as you did about the stuff that google's working on, and in terms of changing the world, those aren't radically different things. It's, just radically different capabilities have the greatest computer scientists in the world and google, and you've got a passionate person who cares about solving a problem in africa, but at the end of the day, you're both trying to do the same thing which has improved the world, however that's defined in a radically better way, he defined the world as a local level in one community and he figured out what he could do for it and got that key insight exactly and then you guys are doing is applying the brains and the capabilities that you have to solving, you know, self driving cars which enable, you know a blind guy tio get around much more easily a radically different way to think about mobile computing by it by wearing google glass and I think that's something we've heard over and over again throughout the silicon vet secrets of silicon valley's by finding and applying your passion and living by your values, you can have a dramatically larger impact than just a job or a profession very much so you think I was with my friend adrian who did the folded inventions in eternal, which is clever citizen science and he's a carnegie mellon professor and he works at google x two and he said this saying for carnegie mellon is the heart is in your heart our heart is in the work or something like that like the idea that heart and engineering hearted science and tech that's really cool and m I t we have five mind and hands men's it monos and I just feel like at core is kind of implied like service, service and collaboration through technology which back actually to that social that report I think were driven by what we could change in the world and what we do and how we can contribute in silicon valley and so conversely like people in places you know and I think you're you're seeing that mentality really be adopted by the millennials it's a generation that thinks radically different than every previous generation and they're incredibly motivated by uh positive social change by making a contribution by by working hard collectively to solve big problems I like they're your slide about the organizing groups they took it to this best practices and one of things I love about the millennials indigenously especially millennials their parents are the baby boomers and so there's a connection of because they're connected they federal really fast with each other they federer it with different generations to get re sources they include them but also they their parents were the vietnam part protesters and the people who made women's rights so many changes that earlier and their grand parents are the greatest generation right? So so there's there what the millennials are doing is really bringing the best of all of us across the generations and using the network so effectively because they're born with it it's not new, you know especially even the younger ones they're like what do you talk about? This has always been here, right? Um no yeah, but it hasn't but for them it has right and so they just think differently yeah, I think more collaboratively and they think flatter they think more federated you do this I'll do this you do this you do this we're done right any so kenya has your hand shooting up s o so again mark in san jose says I'm very interested in megan's career path I want to be her could you speak like my dad one time my resume had adventure on the bottom my dad's like that's the most important word on your resume I could see you for adventure I can see that life for you travelers who work with great people could you talk a little bit more about how you got to where you are today? Um yeah. You know, I grew up with a very cool uh they were quite hippies, but therefore thinking parents my mom started the fight club for western new york uh and did many cool things in our community. My dad started the recycling center and they were really sort of very active. And so I had role models of people who were making change in the world that was helpful to me um and sometimes outside the world and sometimes within changing from within they get all the bike routes in buffalo, et cetera very local uh and so then I was lucky to get to go to m I t I did a lot of science fair stuff as a kid, a lot of stuff in green energy, it was like the carter reagan time, and we're trying to solve that because that a lot of that funding got shut down. I went to them I t media lab and that's how he ended up doing much more like this technology world went to apple computer and tokyo, and I encourage everybody work in other countries. It's one of the best experiences you can have because the learning curve of the business world, but also the learning curve of the culture you're in well, really help u s oh, really recommend that? And then it came to silicon valley, worked in an early internet company. We were making things like this it's called journal magic, but it was this big affect. The ceo of motorola, who was one of our partner, sent us an actual brick in the mail because it was so big. But interestingly, andy rubin who's, the founder of android, and tony fidel, who created the ipod and the beat led to the iphone, were both there and the guys who wrote most the mac. A lot of the mac andy hertzfeld ability consider cofounders there with mark paret anyways, so I've gotten to work with incredible inventors, even if in the cab that case general magic, we were too early. We learned a lot um and uh and we kept iterating and many people pyramid e r spun out to create ebay a lot of people kept going so sometimes that's another silicon valley thing um tony was here and he saw a friend he had worked with one time I talked to an executive and they said that japanese executive he said, I don't think a silicon valley is different companies it's just one company in different divisions because we all move around and we enter it and we come together and some project doesn't work but in the next form it does and maybe it's not time yet and then it is so that's the path today taken and always working with amazing people I think we have time for one more question hi, I'm maxim thought I loved your comment about visibility and I loved the way that you braided frederick douglass and a women's rights movement because I think the notion of confirmation bias is so important what I loved about what you were talking about technology I teach a class which is going to be renamed because of president obama's speech, the arc of philanthropy from cynical for calls to sell much a stone wall and so to disagree with your colleague there I do think that we've always had generationally the ability of people to collaborate and want to create social change and be passionate about it they had different technologies, right? And so, for example, just tio build on something that you said a little bit earlier. And actual comment on this, you know, was it was because elizabeth cady stanton got denied director vote in the abolitionist convention because they will get that. Yes, it would happen. This story's an amazing she and the christian mob had separately gone to the u k correct their husbands and the families were there, and they were on the floor for the ablutions conference, and they kick the women out when they sent them to the gallery. So they met. So that began the women's rights on. It was because of that the federal douglas father that was outrageous that they couldn't and that's why he's one of the signature, they were all great friends and one of my greatest things back to jason see there's a. There was some of the old news articles came online and some of the google news, and you could look through their archives and you could search their names. And you could see old new york times articles, other artists of them, and then articles often were written now there's a hard core story. Sometimes they were but often it's just this happened at lunch, you know, and tiffany would read incredible things from frederick douglass and susan b anthony later and others who were all great friends and collaborated together aa lot like progressive movements to still and so to your point they didn't have our technologies, which I think if you think about heroic engineering we have some heroic engineering technologies that we're going to be able to make massive change looking at bright spots but they did astonishing work with the technologies that they had which included networks like theory canal and on other networks on the underground railroad and I think you're paralleling that is so important for what you're doing here and still good silicon valley because exactly the same sort of social movements and how they collaborated whether it was against slavery or whether it was for women's rights or whether it was for lgbt rights is very me much the women millennials as you're saying are collaborating in a completely different technology about whatever it is whether it's the arab spring ins on so forth and I think the ability to amplify those connections sort of empowers across generations so many different people right and they can work together and in some ways they think you know way there are some things we need to protest and uh and I very much honor that having grown up in a family with with the rabble rousers but I also watched the millennials and the digital natives after them leverage the access that they have because they're digitally connected, and so sometimes I think their protests is in the form of of economic or social or political entrepreneurship, that was what others were doing, but they might not have an access to get into the system in the way that I think we're able to do now and more open to also think not only here technology the evolution that happened in the nineties of open source and open standards and ap eyes, but also the idea of transparency in general, what is a human evolution moment? And you see it in the truth and reconciliation commission in south africa and those movements around the world, in the general transparency ideas that are occurring and how we're trying to understand privacy altogether and where are the boundaries that don't work and where the battery is at work and what could be open and what can't is very exciting? And I think that the millennials that digital eves play beautifully into that and test that all the time and integrate and solve things, so I'm multi generationally, really inspiring way tio close an amazing presentation big round of applause