Carl Seglem story
From Anything Goes Wiki
I intend to help people see the world as others see it.
I believe people want to see the world through others' eyes.
I believe people want to share what they see.
My people lead/manage/organize what people do in emergencies.
My invention lets people share eyes.
Manivu intends to help people respond to emergencies with images of the situation.
I believe Manivu can be made today.
I believe Manivu can be valuable to other people, too.
Manivu intends to help emergency response managers feel like they're there.
Manivu intends to help emergency response managers feel confident in their decisions.
Manivu intends to help emergency response managers feel like they're helping people affected by emergencies even better.
In about 2002, I was called to Washington DC to help in a bank IT office where there was a big problem with a system that was important, late and not working. The bank people I talked to were edgy, almost frantic because they knew there was a big problem and they didn't have any way to know what was really going on so that they could fix it. They were also angry and defensive because there was always someone else who they could blame -- they were blamestorming calls. One of my colleagues had already been drafted into joining hours-long conference calls every day that didn't get anything done except make people angrier and more frustrated. There was some resistance to changing their system by installing our software to get better information, but at some point the pain got bad enough for them to install our software.
I spent years working with people who manage large computer applications, like web sites for big banks. Routine problems get handled routinely, but sometimes there are big problems that span divisions within the company and even involve other companies. These big problems can essentially stop the business and cause great disruption and loss and feel like crises.
The technology people managing the response to these problems are hounded by business people and customers complaining. They often can't tell what's actually happening in their systems. Are the systems actually working for customers at all? Are they slow? Which parts are slow? Are there errors? They have incomplete incomplete information and need to make decisions about what to do -- reboot systems, use back-ups, use a prior version?
I worked for a company that gave technology people visibility into their systems so that they could quickly and confidently know what was really happening their systems and quickly take appropriate action. They could solve problems more quickly and with less stress. And they would buy our software and use it and recommend it.
I believe that the ways of dealing with these big problems are analogous to the ways that real-world emergency managers deal with crises, but the stakes are higher in the real world.
When there's an emergency that crosses city, state or even country borders, there's a team that forms which takes in all the available information and leads/manages/organizes/coordinates what government people and volunteers do to respond to the emergency. This work is incredibly stressful, and decisions must be made quickly with incomplete information. It's as stressful as what military commanders do in combat, and the feeling is similar to what's described as "the fog of war".
The limited information available in "the fog of emergency" includes:
- officially-provided information, e.g. field reports from fire units
- remotely-sensed information, e.g. satellite photos, aerial photos
- Geographic Information Systems, e.g. street and facility maps
This information is often not at the level of individual buildings or blocks, but there are people there who are already posting images and reports of what they see on Flickr and Twitter. But these images, as they're now shared, are not easily understood by emergency response managers. In fact, they can be more confusing or distracting than useful.
When the earthquake in Haiti happened in January 2010, I followed news coverage looking for groups working on understanding and improving emergency response. I found a company that was making systems for emergency response teams, and I was excited. When I looked at screenshots of their software, though, I saw that the information wasn't presented much better or different than Panoramio+Google Maps, Flickr Maps and similar systems. I knew I could envision something better, buildable with commonly available technology.
Inspired by Photosynth, 4DCities, Google Street View and Google Earth, I began to design a system to fulfill my intentions. I also began to exhaustively research the processes and rules that emergency response managers use and work by.
I grew up on an island often struck by typhoons, and I remember the fear of the coming storm, the awe at its wind and rain, the stress of taking shelter away from home, and the hardships of storm damage, power loss, cleanup and recovery.
I would watch the news (if there was power) but would only see what the news people decided would be shown. I wanted to see more to understand better what was going on around the island.
