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This is my Twitter user: @javierlabanca
in case you want to ask me anything
that is my mail: javier@itbaf.com
This is day 2 of StartupsRodeo2012 and that is the hashtag we'll be using during the event: #StartupsRodeo2012
That is itBAF’s Twitter account: @itbaf
With Juan Ozcoidi, who is my partner and was in charge of last month's presentation
we started out as a software factory 4 years ago
with clients such as McDonalds, Arcos Dorados, BNP Paribas and Frávega
developing products only, but about 2 years ago we started to work with internet entrepreneurs
because that’s what we like best
What we do is turn their ideas into projects
and then develop and launch the projects.
I’m going to be giving this presentation today, on innovation,
with Germán Utz, who is an entrepreneur working with us
and Pablo Iglesias, another entrepreneur working at itBAF.
What I’m going to do is give a brief introduction
on the tools we can use to innovate in today’s technological projects
Look, this is very interesting
There are more than 2.200 million internet users in the world.
Almost 40% of the world’s population is connected.
This is something we can use in our favor.
It’s not like before, when you launched a business locally and that was it,
now we have the potential to launch products on a global scale
Our planet is totally connected, but it’s not united.
We have a chance to work there, to innovate.
What for? To unite the planet.
We have to make the most of the internet, the smartphones,
and innovate for the people.
There's noisy communication.
We know we have Twitter, we have Facebook, we have LinkedIn
And these social networks are based on timelines of information
where people share tweets, they share states, pics, etc
but this information passes by too fast and can´t be easily processed by our brains
That’s why we have to try and amplify the news that really matter.
Let the noise pass by and amplify that which is really important
We must find the pieces of news that make the difference.
We must innovate in how we use the social networks
Nonsensical communication
Some people have an enormous amount of followers and they tweet stuff like this:
“Yesterday I had lunch out” or “I played football today”
These are things that have no useful meaning at all.
We have the capacity to innovate, we've had it since the very beginning.
And now we have the tools to make it global, too.
The tools to make it happen for real, and live better.
Well, here I couldn’t help the artist in me and I meant to draw a smile…
How?
With global projects.
Making use of all the internet connections in the world.
With sustainable projects that can achieve a lot with very little,
Projects that renew the structures and turn us into cyber-citizens.
This is what makes the difference
We have to realize that apart from being Argentinians
or Brazilians, Americans or British
we are people first,
cyber-citizens with a Twitter account and an email address.
Talking with you right now is as easy as talking with someone in Japan
if they have an internet connection and a language in common such as English.
With what tools?
With collective intelligence, crowdsourcing, crowdfunding,
smartphones, geolocalization, social networks, the cloud, and gamification.
Not only thinking in ourselves, but in the others as well.
I think it’s time we do things taking into account the whole context,
and not only what we personally want.
To create a better world.
Well… this is my tender side… The little heart…
APPLAUSE! And here is where you start clapping and thank me!
That was only a brief intro
And now we’ll see in detail the points touched in each of the previous slides.
Collective Intelligence.
It means to collaborate in order to achieve a common goal.
An example could be Wikipedia, which is the world’s largest encyclopedia
and it’s written by sources from all around the world.
This is a tool we can use to our advantage in order to innovate,
I don’t mean Wikipedia, but collective intelligence, that is.
Crowdfunding.
Some of you told me you don’t know what this means.
It means to finance projects through micro contributions or pledges
These can be artistic projects, technological projects, musical, or any project at all, really.
I don’t know if you’ve heard of the site Kickstarter?
Well, basically, what this site does is let any user create a campaign
such as a campaign to record an album because I’m in a band
so I create a campaign and say:
"Ok, I need USD 3000 and I need them for this:
To pay the art cover designer, the studio that’s going to record the tracks, etc."
and so I start a campaign and say:
"I want to do this and I need people from around the world to contribute with my campaign."
5 dollars, 10 dollars, 20, 30, 50 or any amount in exchange for pledges.
"If you contribute with 10 dollars you can download the songs in mp3 once the album is finished."
"If you contribute with 20, I will also mail you a copy of the original album."
And it also works with other amounts of money, which can be as high as 1000 dollars or more.
So, we have a tool called crowdfunding that lets us get finance for our projects.
Crowdfunding has been gaining momentum for 3 or 4 years now,
and is on the rise here in Argentina as well due to articles published in newspapers
like Clarin or La Nación
We have a crowdfunding platform at itBAF
which is but starting and has around 15 artistic projects published.
Crowdsourcing.
Well... This is kind of similar to crowdfunding.
and it’s being used in Germán and Pablo’s projects which they’ll present after me.
It means to outsource tasks to a distributed group of people.
I need some task done, such as a translation,
or I need people to feed information into my site and in this way add value to it.
An example could be the tips that people leave on Foursquare
or comments on Trip Advisor, on travel and tourism sites, or food apps, etc.
So, by using crowdfunding techniques, we can raise the money we need to develop, launch and market our projects,
and also have people add value to it with crowdsourcing techniques.
Well, the smartphones.
Smartphones let us carry the internet in our pockets.
Anywhere in the world I can map my location,
even without an internet connection, with a GPS enabled device
I can locate a spot anywhere in the world.
Today, it is estimated that in 10 years of smartphones there will be more changes
than in the last 100 years of technology advances.
What is happening?
Human beings are bringing everyday life to the smartphone world.
everything that can be done offline we’ll also be able to do online.
That’s why Google Play and the App Store are so successful.
Because every day they release new apps that let you do new things.
Today, the conditions for entrepreneurs are better than ever.
because we have the tools and the people that can use them
through an internet enabled smartphone, of course.
Geolocalization goes hand in hand with the smartphones.
It reads: to localize an object in space by means of a point.
Latitude and longitude. This is what platforms such as Foursquare or Kekanto do.
They let you check in to a place and leave a tip or share an event.
They let you map the world through technology.
What is there to do at that place?
That is the idea, to map the planet with relevant information.
That’s where things are going to these days.
The social networks.
The social networks let you, apart from wasting your precious time...
yes that’s the word...
they give you access to all kinds of people and organizations around the world.
That is to say, if I have an idea I can share it with any person
maybe on LinkedIn, and that person may turn out to be a president
or a very important businessman
We have the people, we have the cyber-citizen
and we just need to try and reach him or her on the social networks.
Gamification, of which I’ll also say a little now...
not much because there’s not much time, in fact I only have 15 minutes left
Gamification is a tool that’s being used a lot these days
And it means to apply gaming techniques to non-ludic scenarios
It helps make things more entertaining for the user
It can be used for filling in a form, for instance
in a way that makes it easier to fill and more entertaining
Or the unlocking of badges, such as those on Foursquare
where you check in to a place a number of times and turn into an… an “urban explorer” or something similar.
Or GetGlue, which is the example I’ve chosen. It’s a kind of more visual Twitter.
GetGlue is a platform which works similarly to how Twitter worked in the early days
It lets you share what you are doing right now through categories in a more visual way
Watching TV, listening to music, going to bed, etc.
and as you share this information, you get rewards.
These rewards can later be traded for gifts or discounts when renting a movie or going somewhere.
So, gamification is employed to motivate people and make them use the apps more
This is a tool we can use on our projects to engage the user.
The cloud. How can we use it?
We can have access to very complex software and systems without having to own a super computer.
Because the actual processing happens in the cloud, and not on the client side.
YouTube’s video editor is a good example of cloud computing, or Google Drive, iCloud
We have a huge space where to collaborate, where we can store and process information.
We can use this as well.
This is what innovation means: to mix the tools we already have to renew what already exists.
Summing up, this is what the previous slides put together say:
More than 2.200 million internet users in a world that is totally connected but not united, full of noisy and nonsensical communication.
We have the capacity to innovate and the tools to do it and lead better lives.
How?
With global, sustainable projects, that renew the structures and turn us into cyber-citizens,
not just Argentinians, or Colombians or Chileans but global cyber citizens.
With tools such as collective intelligence: eg: Wikipedia; crowdsourcing:
leave tips and information, add value to platforms by outsourcing their tasks;
crowdfunding campaigns to finance our projects,
checking in to social networks, gamification and the cloud.
Not just thinking in ourselves but in the others as well,
to create a better world which I think is what we all want at this point.
Conclusion:
Innovation, today, is using all these tools to better our society.
And my presentation ends with this quote by German scientist Albert Einstein:
"We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."
So, the key is to analyze today’s problems and try to solve them in innovative ways.
Now I’ll be working with Pablo and Germán,
who will explain how by combining all these tools in their projects at itBAF,
we have defined some really cool and innovative features that add value to society.
Pablo will you please come over?
I have a question!
Yes.
Can we clap now, too?
No, that was before! But if you want to…
...I should have written "applause" below "Thank very much" too…