Ideagen Intersection
in trying to make sure that the big problems that we have in the world are being solved for, something that we can all contribute to. One human right should be accessible internet for all in the world. Technology can serve as a bridge to close gaps, for example, social, economic gaps, gender gaps, education gaps. Technology can contribute to opportunities, economic growth, better quality of life. But most importantly, it will improve the life of millions, not just a few but millions. That is really what technology is all about.
George:
Incredible. How is the industry looking at the future to develop solutions to today's challenges?
Camila:
So let me give you an idea, or an example actually. One project that Google is working on isas you might now, the driverless cars. The reason why the driverless cars were born were because a human flaw that we have is that there's a lot of accidents on the road. There's a lot of people that die every single day because of problems that happen in the roads. So wen you start from a very big problem that is something that's happening worldwide and you wanna make a solution and then you apply technology to it, and you create something like a driverless car that will allow us to utilize machines to decrease those chances of people being injured or being harmed or dead because of accidents that we have in our roads. That's one example. Another example could be the way that were deploying internet in massive ways to the entire world to make sure that people have access to education, that people have access to information. Information should be a global right for everyone. And the more we can do that, the more we can close the gap in terms of how people use their resources, the more we can become a better world.
Katie:
Fantastic. Where do you see some of the greatest areas of impact of the tech industry?
Camila:
Well I do think there's three main ones that will be definitely the ones that I see personally going technology much more aggressive. One is education, and education for all. How do we make sure that technology is enhancing the way people understand the world and make it unique to everyone. That is something that we're overinterested in making sure that everyone is having the right type of tools in place to educate themselves. Second one is access to the information. A more informed world will help us understand how do we make sure that our societies evolve. So I do believe that access to information for all should be another area of great impact. And then the third one is using technology to close gaps, and many gaps, I'm not just talking about economic gaps, but also social, gender gaps, and many others that are being generated by sometimes the lack of information. So I do believe that those 3 areas are gonna be key in the next years. Its something that also goes with the values and what we're trying to achieve as a company and also myself as an individual.
George:
Camila, that is just incredibly important, your unique vantage point, that is. As we look at what IdeaGen does, and the work you're doing both at Google and Proud2BeGood, our clear focus is on cross-sector collaboration and innovation. And so, within that context, why do you feel cross-sector collaboration and innovation are so vital to helping to solve many of the world's most vexing issues, and perhaps to go further, how are you infusing collaboration and innovation into your daily mission to successfully achieve those goals?
Camila:
That's a very fair point. I think cross-collaboration allows us all to think towards the same challenge and come up with a combined solution that is infused with diversity at its core. If we think about it, there's many companies, many foundations, any NGO's trying to do the right thing, trying to solve a problem. What happens if we all come together and we try to solve the same problem but having the same type of goal in mind? And instead of having different people trying to do something different, what if we all collaborated to the same thing? So by cross-collaboration we're including different points of views, methodologies, ways of thinking, focus resources and what it will help us is also to ake it scalable and much more actionable. If we all join forces, then it will probably resonate more in the world than if we try to do individual tasks.
From my personal experience, when I was in IdeaGen summit last year, many tech companies were talking about the importance of diversity and how each different company had a different problem to solve for it. And my question to IdeaGen and for everyone in the room was how can we do it but in a combined way? How can we all collaborate to try to achieve the same goal but with all of our resources, with all of our ideas in place to make something that is a little bit more scalable and has a bigger foundation? So I do believe there's a lot of synergy that we can take advantage if we cross-collaborate to solve the biggest problems in the world.
How am I doing it? Well I was in Latin America, for example, leading the women's group. We operate 100 percent based on volunteers' time and work. So we have the right mindset in place, we have the right willingness, but we have not been able to find the skill. We were a couple of volunteers trying to do it all. So that's when we reached out and we asked for help and we started collaborating with different NGO's, with different universities, with different business groups, to make sure that the skill was in place and that we were taking into consideration different point of views to make this as usable and feasible for everyone that we were trying to touch with the programs that we were developing. So that's one example that I can come up with, but definitely there's areas for all of us to think proactively on how do we reach out for help and how we collaborate with different companies or different entities that are trying to do the same that we do.
Ideagen Intersection
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Interview with Camila Borda Kaul, cont.