IBM
IBM is taking action. At their recent flagship annual Think Conference, the company announced a new one-of-a-kind initiative to deploy open source technologies in the communities where they’re needed most. The four-year, $25 million Code and Response initiative will take solutions like Project Owl, winner of the Call for Code 2018 global developer challenge, and implement them in disaster-struck regions like Puerto Rico.
In 2018, Call for Code — a global initiative that brings together startup, academic, and enterprise developers to solve some of the biggest societal issues — attracted more than 100,000 developers from 156 nations. These developers answered the call to help prevent, respond to, and recover from natural disasters and submitted more than 2,500 projects using artificial intelligence, cloud, blockchain, Internet of Things, and data.
"Generating ideas through challenges is not enough," said Bob Lord, senior vice president of cognitive applications and developer ecosystems at IBM. With natural disasters affecting almost 160 million people every year, Code and Response is taking ideas from coding challenges like Project Owl and implementing them in the real world.
Project Owl is a system that offers the capability to provide organization, whereabouts, and logistics when a natural disaster strikes. It provides an internet infrastructure that can be set up over a large area and allows first responders and civilians to be able to communicate with each other.
As the first-place winner, the team received $200,000 to further develop and improve their project, as well as long-term support from The Linux Foundation and the opportunity to pitch their project to New Enterprises Associates for evaluation. Today, they’re planning to deploy their technology in its first full-scale field test this March with additional help from Code and Response implementation partners, including the Information Technology Disaster Resource Center.
The first-year success of Call for Code has inspired a renewed excitement for the challenge to continue in 2019. Lord shared some of the plans for the new year as well as how new partnerships are helping expand the Call for Code mission.
The goal for this year’s challenge is to continue inspiring global developers to use the power of AI, blockchain, cloud, and IoT to help the world but with a new focus: health and well-being. Lord said 2019 would build upon the theme of natural disasters but would also "address topics including but not limited to contaminated water issues, ability to get medical supplies to disaster zones, outbreaks of diseases, mental health resources, and more."
In addition to Call for Code, IBM and Clinton Global Initiative University have partnered to execute a series of in-person and online campus ‘codeathons’ this year. The purpose of these events is to give university students the skills and technology needed to better form and execute their ideas. The codeathons will give students the opportunity to turn their plans of tackling some of the world’s most destructive challenges, natural disasters, into tangible action.
"To take a huge leap forward in effective disaster response, we must tap into the global open source ecosystem to generate sustainable solutions we can scale and deploy in the field," said Lord.
And that’s exactly what IBM aims to do with Code and Response: make a tangible difference around the world by providing the resources and know-how needed to build, fortify, test, and implement open source solutions in the communities that really need them.
Registration to compete in Call for Code 2019 opens March 26. Click here to learn more.
Check out what you missed at this year’s Think Conference.
See Also:
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- IBM apologizes after its online jobs page asked applicants if they were ‘yellow’ or ‘mulatto’
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