thanks everyone again my name is chris word reason for the us but i've been
here and burn all four
quite a while years or so pretty much call myself a
but now
anyways so i'm here on behalf of marking on the ladder who is the organiser
of impact travellers
there's a interesting story behind
come i got here of get that in a bit
for as is wanna say
welcome and thanks for coming to listen and thanks again to open all for being
patient and letting us
in to talk to you guys today
because it's not me
i mean because it is mia not marking on the right here the
abstract has changed a little bit
but the
the principle will be the same
i just wanted to
star the
the story today with something about me myself
and then i'll bring used through to how i'm it might appear in and got
involved with impact travellers
and
what is in fact travellers are get a lot more detail and i'll go over
like to come from claudia
project and a bunch of other projects and invite you guys to
actually contribute back
and participate in
a future impact travellers trip
i if any of this is of interest to you
or you find that you think you've to contribute something
my story started about ten years ago
when i was in university back in the states
i am studying a human ecology
which if anyone asks me even still today i don't really know what that is
but it's a multidisciplinary a bachelor's degree four year
and
my first year i was told i needed an internship
so i'd never left us
might interest at the time where it can you need a development
and i had my hobby horse of course was open source of the next and
that sort of thing so i wanted to figure out a way if i could
use
open source principles
and integrate that with to me development
and i happened across a volunteering opportunity in ghana which is west africa
and five figured why not make my first rip out of the us
to west africa
thanks to my parents of course for paying for that
it was it was an amazing experience in and the change my life forever
while i was there
again
you know keeping with that with that idea of community development and open source
i spent a lot of time developing
sorry let me let me first take a step back and say the organisation i
was working with while hasn't gone is women in progress
specifically the project was called global mama's
this is an initiative to help
small business owners actually
or ladies who had ideas to start
a business
support themselves in
maintaining and business and hopefully even getting it
profitable and in many cases turning their business
and selling the products into the global market
my particular role there because of my experience at the time and continues today was
it you related so
i went there and helped with very basic level stuff
this these ladies have huge ambitions but
where are clearly a behind in times they didn't have access to computers nothing like
that
there were first being introduced to internet
and lots of these things so i use talks type to teach them how to
type
five show them in a browsing with firefox and trying to get them hope to
use open-source
tools of that nature and
spend a lot of time with get
showing them how to take pictures and added photos nets or stuff pretty simple
basic stuff
i don't absolute amazing time though my
here two three and four of university i spent in mexico each year going back
for three or four months
first my initial ambition was just to go ones and learn spanish
and while i was there i needed a project so
i found a
an organisation working to
improve the penetration rate of internet
in local villages across mexico
and so what we did was we travelled around first two universities
and installed fibre to connect at the universities to high speed internet and share a
shared internet connection
because there wasn't that much to go around and that's the on the right connecting
fibre and i also spent some time in this little town in the middle of
nowhere and you could bound
helping a local library again that same initiative
i connecting folks the internet a bunch of libraries and public centres
got computers they got hardware and they got connections the internet but they actually
were lacking people to
connect and train
individuals in those communities to use it right it's
so one thing have computers and than others actually make use of them right
so i found one
town back a where i where
there's a local library where they got a bunch of computers i help them connected
and train them again with the basics similar like i was doing and gonna text
typing
how to use the internet
that sort of thing
and also was in mexico i
wrote a
mexican recipe
is recipe book in open source that
after having spent some time what hanukkah
with this beautiful all the to tell me how to cook essentially
and my final project was
actually two
developed a
the first ever maybe the second i'm not sure i couldn't find any
one of rows doing research at the time spanish language to twirl workshop on
a blender three d if you're familiar with it
ut open source
the probably the best out there i think open-source a three d application
and animations we
and
i gave the courses and workshops at the local the next user group as tightly
connected
with the other linux user group and yucatan at the time
and i spent
and a lot of time developing a course for actually a local the local or
university and gave a six week
on accredited course to a bunch of people who are really interested
to warn graphics in didn't have
in the school actually didn't have money to pay for like any of the commercial
product at the time so this was
something that there really interested in this is a larger diversity even at the time
and still is but they couldn't afford
the software so
i brought them this opportunity and
ever since i've been hooked on this idea to travel and once you've done it
it's really easy
to realise how your own experience is even if you feel like
you suck
and you don't know anything your way above
there's a level out there that you're way above you know a large number of
people
in your experiences can really make a difference in people's lives
at least i felt that way
and i still do and a lot of people i was interacting with an still
maintaining context with and so forth and
and they've taken what i what i was able to give to them and
and make something
for themselves with it
now
bring us back to why am here today actually no skipping ahead ten years or
so but not so long ago actually only about three weeks ago
i met a marking a little
and was introduced to impact travellers
the way it happened was
i'm
right now in this mode one i'm looking actually
actively for ideas i have a time i mean are looking for opportunities to actually
realized some of the ideas that i have in terms of starting on business running
some sort of nonprofit or i'm not sure exactly i have a wide range of
them
and so i i've been visiting so some of else no that impact how
on october fifteenth i believe mashup number two
volume number two and when i walk in the door marking was on the stage
just like i am right now
giving a very fast three minute
introduction and overview of is project impact travellers
and
after i heard him
i was in tree i started talking to my figured out that we actually have
a huge number of things in common and i asked them if we could call
operating collaborate because he seemed quite open interested to find additional partners to work on
to develop the idea
impact row which is still very aren't
and
it's you know growing hopefully
over time and if anybody else feels at the end of this presentation
any of this work resonates
please reach an to us and help us continue to build
reach our
our vision
modest in himself
has a similar back story as i do
in the sense that
just very recently he hadn't really ever a left czech republic
and all the sudden he just got this virtually left to spend some time in
serbia
any
while going through culture shock he had this really supportive group of people around him
and he met and started communicating quite closely with a one cambodian
and they started
coming up with some ideas of how
to contain user experience
of travelling but not just
travelling in c new things and meeting new people in all those good things but
really travelling that has meeting you know meaningful travel doing something which has an impact
and you know that relates back to you know what i was talking about my
own interest wanna write travel as well earlier
and that brought him
to the idea of going to cambodia
so
marketing and his friend
started talking about some ideas
and martin convince the few his friends to
trouble with them they're this came up with the plan
and their primary focus was
on
knowledge exchange just sharing
information about
things that we know more about than they do
and in the way that they did that was the workshops very similar to how
i was doing that back to mexico
in ghana
the
the trip itself
was
not
actually envisioned to continue after in did it was a three week
trip travel you know meaningful travel experience
however
during the process they realise that they were actually having an effect on the individuals
and it stock and he and his colleague in partner now
wanted more so
they continue to develop additional ideas even after because they felt like he was quite
a good success
and
the
basic
principle of one is now the primary trip
option for impact rubber's that is
trying to find additional participants for and i'm here trying to handle
is
the same as he
had at that time i'll tell a little bit more about that
but
at that time he wasn't still in is mine said he you know wasn't is
intention but in tell you know after was
actually successful
turn and you know it got a life of its own
and it became impact travel
but anyways
i've mentioned workshop so many times here i think
if
you know
if there's anything
workshops or
a very simple in easy when if you will
for
how you can when you're travelling
actually make a difference
if you find any local community that you
you enjoy you have knowledge about like i did back in mexico for example the
logs
almost every c d in the world has a the next user group if you're
if you're linux users or
whatever your favourite open-source applications are
you can find people there
and just
figure out how you can
give back while you're there give a couple of nights of workshops give
you know
you don't have to create curriculum or anything anymore there's you know upper pretty good
number of tutorials and such you can actually just take from an share that knowledge
directly it's the it's this the specific hands on
up
that you know that element is what so powerful the workshop
to give a bit of context
with marking in cambodia
my understanding
is
it students in cambodia and in this is it students right they have
they have only two hours a week that they can actually use the shared resources
of computers in their university
so
you can imagine as well cambodia doesn't have a very nice history
and they're quite
behind in times most people don't have computers at their whole
so even if you're sitting on a lecture room in your getting all this theory
your level of application of that theory is very low
so these workshops actually gave individuals a strong opportunity to put to practise what they're
learning
some of the workshop so they were doing in cambodia where from introducing ruby on
rails introducing
a test driven development at a job i'll
helping you know just to some business development type workshops
and they also
marketing and i mean they did a whole wide range i think they did like
eight different workshops well there
so really
there is an infinite number of possibilities and if and if you want one the
weight impact
the community while you're travelling that's really good way in tree and if you will
and as i mentioned the cambodian trip indeed
there wasn't directly at that point an intention to continue developing the idea into anything
more than what it was
however the conversation did continue and they realise there's a lot of opportunities
specifically still in cambodia they ended up boiling all the i'd the ideas down to
one
where there's a huge issue of just
reliable information
of a little you know the availability of reliable information about local transport
so we have you'd also here for example
which makes travelling from one side of the cd to the other ridiculously easy
because you know exactly when trams or buses in oregon driver getting to the other
country and so forth
and they just don't have that in fact
they're still using paper and pencil in many cases
and so
there's specifically in the process of developing a project
looking still for volunteers to actually contribute here they have done a lot of the
backend work
already
other struggling to get the data
so any good data scraper is anyone who knows how to get data from
from like
what should be public data open data out of the that the holes where it
lies hidden
programmers you know that sort of person is
we're looking for here
i'm gonna skip that because i don't think we have time maybe we'll get back
to it
just some funny little tidbits about
the experiences in cambodia
i'm just gonna jack jump right in now to give more information about
no the impact travellers itself so
in a nutshell and i'll go over more detail of each of these parts
in the next few slides but in a nutshell
impact traveller trip
based on
the cambodia experience three weeks of
working on a project that has been developed in terms of planned
and requirements for example
where the end objective is to create some sort of
minimum viable product in bp
generally speaking all the projects that are currently in development or you know digital online
web software a type of projects so
that you know that's where we're focused on now however it's not the only options
clearly so
so we have this
project are travelling to a foreign country i'll cover some more information about which places
where working within a minute
but you going somewhere spinning three weeks
monday to friday working on that project
weakens you travel
and the fourth week is all travel as well the weekends all the travel experience
you get to figure out what you want to do based on
a lot of information are gonna be living and working with locals so you have
a much more
down to earth
local experience while you're there
with you will also be travelling a guide we're meant for someone who should be
able to help you
especially if you're not experienced in travelling
deal with culture shock which is almost guaranteed to happen when you travel somewhere
the ch that is
wildly different
in so many ways then you're used to
and also help you
develop yourself in your character during the process and it should for keeping focus
on the project and did you to your goals and so forth
the
you'll have a project team in the in the in the remote country or cd
you know that you're actually developing the project with
and in general the idea is to have at least two
or more individuals who would be
experts or knowledgeable in a particular area that could contribute back
to the project that you're working on so basically in summary
three or four people
a guide going somewhere working on something
that should
ultimately give back to the community where they're travelling to and then in the meantime
travel time
were currently developing projects
in
cambodia as i mention
vietnam in the and x
those errors are those are projects that are actually already there's something form there that
we could jump onto any time and were looking for people to
to join us
and we're developing projects in mexico brazil
thailand an even here in czech republic for
pulling people here to work on projects from abroad
the selection process is
pretty much four participants like a job interview we expect to know a lot about
should we need to know you actually want to do this new willing to put
your heart into it and goal
with an open mind
on the business side again we expect social impact someone
you know some organisation nonprofit even you know for profit doesn't matter doing some project
which actually intends to give some value back to the community itself
after the after the of three four week trip
you come back
and you debrief over dinner sort of retrospective reflect on what well what didn't go
well
watch you know
what you will do in the future if there is anything to do in the
future how can you continue
to make sure that the value that you
put so much effort into its realised in the long term
some of the sum of the sum of the things that sort of drive interest
in you know that we think drive interest in
your participation of this type of
trip would be that you know you get to share your knowledge
with the
community that you're going to about whatever it is that you love or have somewhere
deep in your heart
and
in return you get to learn about what other people love and their culture and
see and experience things that you would have never been able to experience otherwise
discovering
places people
it here is that here or in your hometown
you just you're not exposed to
and is well
there's fruit of course i think i think it's
in
just key
task up seconds is no general them
so
profile i have no idea so tasting the world basically
experience so experiences
goodies
it's heartbreaking to interrupt is
but
times closing so okay i've two minutes
you know two minutes so
so that that's impact rapport program
join us if you have any ideas bubble bobble well
so many so many possibilities are we give a few of them
you does in cambodia
already in motion vietnam a low-cost digital education platform hopefully open-source the extent possible
to help underprivileged children who don't otherwise have access to education
india a million opportunities there
here in czech republic there's a guy i just met recently was building a low
cost infinite range open hardware you go car really fascinating stuff in mexico community own
open source power mobile internet networks to give low cost access to internet two villages
that are spread across
mexico that otherwise
are trapped by the big corporations to
charge way too much for internet access
mexico again and you get an open g s mapping of g m o crop
spread and trying to figure out how to contain that
and
that's it if you're
you wanna join us
impact travellers thing me that you know
if there is one minute of questions
six for real speech we have time for one commission so guys
come on one question
okay i'll ask you who is interested
that's enough
you know
have to have to raise their have assume like this sorry about that you can
ask it again
so
who do you want to participate in
would you don't
okay
so possible
things grace those one