RAQUEL ROMANO: Thank you.
So I recently learned that
the theory that people
are predominately left
brained or right brained
is actually a myth.
I think this was a study
published last year.
And that was a big relief to me.
I'm really glad I'm
using my entire brain.
But for a long
time, ever since I
began having to think about
my career and my major,
and what am I going
to do with college,
what am I going to
do after college?
I started feeling
pretty left brained.
I studied math as an
undergrad at Harvard.
I got interested
in computer science
toward the end of
college, and ended up
getting my Masters and
Ph.D. In computer science.
So I really felt like
this began to define me,
living, eating, and breathing
math and technology.
And then, at some point, I
started having these questions
that other people
have mentioned today.
What's the big picture
of what my work will
be when I'm done
with my education?
What's the impact?
What do I want to be able
to do look at and say
this is what I'm working toward?
This greater goal.
Unfortunately, this happened
during this agonizing two year
stretch during which I was
trying to finish my PhD thesis.
And I was really touched that
this cartoonist understand
me so well to have actually
made an entire cartoon
strip about how you
feel when you have
this huge looming
project ahead of you,
that you can't seem to finish.
And you become completely
obsessed with something else.
And that's how I was.
Whenever I needed a break
from my Ph.D. Thesis,
which was in machine vision,
I was looking all over the web
for any application
of technology
to sort of nonprofit ventures.
And I really felt like, hm,
there's got to be away for this
to have an impact that I can
really put my passion behind.
And, although I continued
with my career and I thought,
yeah, I did finish my
Ph.D. And I did a post-doc,
and ended up coming to Google
and doing a lot of work
on really interesting problems
in machine vision and machine
learning.
Something that, kind
of, kept gnawing at me
and that I kept admiring about
people who had made a career of
is just looking at social
inequality, economic,
wealth inequality, racial
inequality, and people
who were making a difference.
And I kept thinking,
well I admire that.
That means a lot to me.
I would love to be able
to make an impact on that.
But I really like math
and computer science.
That's what I'm good at.
So I'm going to have
to make these two
separate parts of my life.
But this idea, this
inequality, you
see it every day in
different places.
I see it right here, today,
every morning, everywhere.
I just couldn't help
but I think, someday I'd
like to actually make
an impact in that world.
And I'm still
working toward that.
So while at Google,
I was working,
as I said, doing really
interesting problems that I
felt lucky to do in
my area of expertise.
And I've been here a few
years when a colleague I knew,
actually through Google Women
Engineers group in New York,
said that she-- this was in
2010-- that she had just joined
and new team.
She used to work on Maps.
She was very successful
in Google Maps.
Oh, yeah, what's your new team?
Because she was
visiting Mountain View.
It's called Google
Crisis Response.
And we're trying to
form a team of engineers
to look at what happens
after a natural disaster as
far as people finding
information they need on
the internet, if
possible, when possible.
I was like, that's really cool.
I thought, hm,
that's really cool
that we have an engineering
team working on that.
So this picture is actually of
Typhoon Yolanda the last year
hitting the Philippines.
But I kind of kept
tabs on their work.
They were trying to figure
out, what's our mission?
We know our mission, but
how are we going to do this?
And what role does
technology play?
And then later that
year I was actually
in the hospital recovering after
the birth of my third child.
And, it's 2010, August, and
I don't watch TV at home,
because we don't
have it plugged in.
But in the hospital
room I put the TV on.
And there were floods
in Pakistan that summer
that actually covered about
a fifth of the country.
And I was literally in shock
to hear about these women who
were pregnant, and actually
had to stop as they were
on foot, evacuating, and giving
birth somewhere and continuing
to leave.
One of these pictures is
someone who was actually
born during-- a mom
and her baby who
were born during that event.
And what really struck me
about this, partly was just
identifying so strongly,
like, oh my gosh,
I'm here in a hospital
in Silicon Valley.
And we're so alike and yet,
have nothing in common as far as
how our experiences are going.
And it really struck
me that, wow, you know,
vulnerable people are
hit by natural disasters
so much harder than
people who have
privilege and wealth and
the means to handle things.
So that really stuck with me.
And women and children, women
in particular, children,
sick, elderly, and women
who are taking care often
of the sick, and the
young, and the elderly,
are really affected
disproportionately.
So after this, I was
on maternity leave,
and a few other
things kept happening
that kept reminding
me about this team.
So during maternity
leave, I just
suddenly-- I'm a very
indecisive person,
I usually like to weigh the pros
and cons forever-- and I just,
one day, my baby was
only a few months old,
when I was like oh,
I'm switching teams.
I absolutely have
to get on that team
and work on that when I
return from maternity leave.
Usually returning
from maternity leave
is not the best time
to just join a new team
and do something
complete different,
because it's a
little bit stressful.
But I had absolutely no doubt,
which is very unlike me.
So I want to tell
you a little bit
about what my team
does at Google.
The first thing
that I want to say
is that we're still
working toward-- you know,
when I told you something
that really gnaws at me
is this idea of
social inequality.
And I don't think
we're there yet.
But I think there are many
opportunities for technology
to make a difference.
And I often question, like,
is technology just something
that, like everything else,
empowers the privileged
and disempowers the
underprivileged.
But there's another half of me
that thinks, no, it's powerful,
and it's possible.
And we have to keep
working on these problems.
So here's the first
question, are people even
able to use the internet
after natural disasters?
Isn't everything
just dysfunctional?
And that is true sometimes.
That was true, say, last year
after the Philippines Typhoon,
that really very few people
were able to use phones
to do anything, to actually
connect to the internet.
Not to mention that
in a lot of countries,
even if people are
starting to have access
to smart phones they
may not have the ability
to be able to afford data plans.
Or there may not be any
connectivity in their area eve
before a disaster hits.
These are all pretty
important problems.
And actually we have
a team at Google
that's focused completely
on internet access
in parts of the worlds
that don't have access.
And that's really
important work.
On the other hand, we're
a tech company, Google.
And when people do
have access, and they
have a phone that is charged
and the internet is available,
which it turns out can be true
in some situations-- these
are graphs of traffic to
Google from a location
directly after a
natural disaster.
And you can see
in Haiti, clearly
it took a few months to get
back to the previous traffic.
But in other places, like in
Japan after the earthquake,
there was almost
no interruption.
And in those cases,
you really should
be able to find what
you're looking for
and be able to get
information, if that's
one of the only means
of communication.
In addition, as we saw,
these are both pictures
from the Philippines last year
where internet cafes spring up.
There are lots of
telecom companies
who put up portable Internets.
And there are places that
offer charging stations
and let people try to get
online and communicate and find
information.
So what information?
What would you use your phone
for if this were happening
to you, and you had a working
phone, and something happened?
So if you think about
where information
comes from these days,
it comes from a variety
of different sources.
And the burden's
on you to decide
what you're going
to look at, what
you're going to
pay attention to.
And maybe we can take
some of that burden off.
So some of the places
information comes from
is just the people
that you know,
and how you connect with them
on the internet, Twitter,
Facebook, email, et cetera.
So there's a lot
of chatter, there's
a lot of personal
information exchange.
But there's also
a lot of rumors.
And there's a lot of uncertainty
about what to believe
and what's happening.
So we have official
sources of information
that you might think, oh, yeah,
I need to go to those as well.
Let me get the facts.
So something like NOAH, or
the National Weather Service,
for instance in this country.
And yes, you can get facts,
but sometimes those facts
are a little bit generic and
not specific to your situation.
So if you get some information,
like, oh, during a flood
you should seek higher ground.
That's a little bit frustrating
if you're in a flood.
You know that.
So that's not useful.
But we have media.
And, in addition,
I should say that
those official
organization maybe
don't have the most mobile
friendly sites, compared
to what you're used to.
And maybe you can't even
load information from them.
But media, media is really
great at presenting things
to you on your phone.
And so they like to synthesize
information and provide
it maybe localized a little
bit to your situation.
But that can also
be frustrating.
So if you're searching
for information,
because you want to know
what to do during a flood,
you may not want to
hear, like a little story
about how, hm, this is going on.
A story that's meant for
the rest of the world,
for instance, that
interviews a few people
about how they're
dealing with it.
I mean, you're not reading it
to browse it and get informed
and get an overview.
You really need to
solve some problem.
So let's walk through a
little bit what might happen,
and some of the things that
we've built on our team.
So one of the first
things that we realized
technology can do
to help you, is
to get you out of the
situation in the first place.
So on the left you see back
in the day, before internet,
and when it was only
broadcast network
TV, if there was
a tornado coming
through your neighborhood, you
would get a warning like this.
And it would interrupt
"Happy Days" for a while.
And you'd be like,
oh, OK, so that's
something really bad
that's happening.
We should go to the
basement, if you
live in the Midwest
of United States.
Today, from the same
organization, National Weather
Service in this case,
you can get warnings
on your phone, that look like
what you have on the right.
Because you're not watching TV.
You're probably-- your
phone maybe in your pocket.
Or you're on the web.
And if you go to, say a Google
search look for something,
and Google is able to tell
that you're in that location,
you might see this
kind of warning.
Now to get to what you see on
the right takes a lot of time,
and a lot of resources, and
a lot of interesting problem
solving.
First, we've had to
work with organizations
who publish this data.
We're not the ones
who have this data.
We don't want to
control the content.
We just want that
content to be available
so that it can be
consumed, whether it's
by us and this product, or
any other product out there.
Any application should be
able to take this information
and present it to people.
So we worked with governments
who, they're really
resources constrained
as far as technology,
and don't have a whole slew
of developers out there.
But we work with
agencies to help
them publish this
data in formats
that meet certain standards
that have been agreed upon,
so that we can build tools
against those standards
and APIs that can
pull in that data
and present it to
people in useful ways.
The engineering behind it is
really interesting as well.
You don't want to be telling
people something that
happened yesterday.
You don't want to
be telling them
something that's
not very important
and is kind of spam-y,
because they'll turn it off.
And then when something
really important happens
they're not using the service.
So this is a very
interesting project.
It's launching in more
and more countries
as we work closely with each
government and their set
of agencies, and
other intricacies,
and licensing issues.
So you can be more
about it at that URL.
So now let's say you're like,
oh, yeah, something's happening
and I need to leave.
Well people probably
want to use products
that they're familiar with.
You don't want to
just go, hey let
me go learn a
completely new tool,
because I'm totally panicked
and I need to get out of here.
No, you would go to Maps.
But Google Maps,
which is obviously
a pretty popular
mapping application,
are you sure that it's
going to be giving you
up to date information?
It can, for instance, here this
is last month, greater New York
area during a snowstorm.
And I actually have never
seen black anywhere.
It's worse than red, things
aren't moving at all.
But is it telling you-- say
some thing were happening
that, a bridge was gone,
certain areas were impassable.
The data that's there daily
is going to be different.
And the sources of data that
emerge after a disaster are
typically different from
what was there before,
which makes it a very
difficult problem
to build systems that just work
in a disaster, when suddenly
it's like, OK this is
where all our data comes
from for Maps and directions.
And now something totally
different has happened
and this organization is
getting data about that,
and publishing it in this
totally different format.
And you'd like to have that
show up directly in Maps.
So this is an active
area of research
for us, and development,
really interesting.
Also, you may have so
many other constraints
to want to be able
to see the same time.
You have someone in your
family, an elderly person,
that you need to, if
you're going to evacuate,
may need to stop at
hospitals or pharmacies.
Or resources that you'd want
to pick your path for how
to leave and have more
information overlaid.
So these are
interesting problems.
And then you probably
need to find the people
that you love, making contact
with people who are immediately
in your family, and
then more distantly.
And this is also, turned out
after the Haiti earthquake
of 2010, there were
multiple places
where people could go
and search for or enter
that they were
missing loved ones.
And that makes it
really hard for someone,
if you have to go to
seven different places
every single day to
search for the person
that you need to locate.
And so one of our engineers
helped write a specification
for how to store information
about missing people.
And made this open,
and the engineers who
started Google Crisis Response
built an application on top
of it that's open source, called
Person Finder, Google Person
Finder, to be able to have
different organizations
building and set
standards, share data.
So that if I put information
in one place, someone searches
in another place, if
they're sharing data then
you'll be able to see that,
yes your aunt or uncle
has been found and they're fine.
And you can stop searching.
And every time, every
year, new technology
is built on this standard.
It's really interesting.
After Japan, people were
posting signs looking,
have seen this person?
And people were taking
pictures of those signs,
posting them on the
web, and crowd sourcing
the transcriptions and using
the API for Person Finder
to enter them into
the same data store.
After the floods in Uttarakhand
last year, government agencies
were going to relief
camps and writing down
by hand people who were there.
And then those were
being posted on the web,
and transcribed, and entered in.
People were building
apps, mobile apps,
and SMS interfaces to be able
to all exchange this data.
So this was a really
good example--
if you want to learn more about
it go to this URL-- of how
standardizing data and building
open tools on open standards
can improve the experience
of people trying
to find information
after disasters.
So those were just
some example questions
that you might have
after a disaster.
I actually have never been
in that sort of situation.
And I think a lot of us
who work in this space
don't have first
hand experience.
And as a team, we realized this.
And we decided, we really
need to go educate ourselves.
We think we have these
cover solutions and answers.
But do we really know
what people need?
So we worked with
an ethnographer
this summer to go
to New Orleans--
a place that has seen
hurricanes in the past,
will continue to
see them in future--
and do interviews of
people from all sorts
of different demographics.
And this is a really, really
small subset, tiny subset,
of the kinds of questions
that people ask.
In green is questions people
are asking immediately
before a disaster's
about to happen,
if it's a kind of thing
where you have some notice.
In blue, during a disaster, what
kinds of questions people ask.
And in yellow,
immediately after,
what are your most
pressing questions
that you really want answered.
And in red is the questions
you have even long
after it's passed, even when
it's no longer in the news.
But your life is still not OK.
And these questions were
really looking into a,
there's so many we weren't
able to answer yet.
And a lot of it is, well
who has those answers?
Where is that data?
Even if it's available,
even if we can find it,
how can it be
published in a way that
can be incorporated
and sent back
to people in a way it's
useful, that people can just
quickly get that answer and
not a have to spent time
searching through multiple
websites and getting confused
and ultimately just giving up?
Or even assuming that
it's not possible to find
an answer via the internet
on this, for this question.
And on those that we know that,
hey, we do actually have data,
we have partnerships, or we
know people, organizations
that are working to provide
this sort of information,
then there comes interesting
engineering work about how
to actually ingest that
data, and deliver it back.
An interesting UX problems
about when should you deliver,
what sort of
information, and how.
Also very interesting in
here is thinking about not
all information is
good information.
If it's stale, if
someone tells you,
oh, there's a water
shortage, and this
is where you find water.
But it just ran out of
water, and you go there,
and you drag all your children.
That's really bad information
to have given someone.
Knowing the source of the data
so that a person can evaluate
whether you trust
it is important.
And incorporating
people, the crowd,
into helping annotate
that data, and say yeah,
I can vouch that as
of today, right now,
I was able to find ice here.
Or hey, they just ran out,
so don't come here anymore.
People have the ability
to help each other,
even if they don't know
each other, during a crisis.
So we're working on
tools to enable--
how do you blend this, all
this official data, and data
from media, and
data from people,
and give to someone this one
little, pretty concise answer
to what they want to
know, and not drown them.
We're also, some
of our work that
are ethnographer did
in New Orleans was very
interesting in trying to
kind of broadly understand
of how people are
using the internet.
If they are or not, how
they're finding information.
And she did this really
interesting thing
of looking at different axes.
For instance, some people
really want the raw data.
They're like I don't
want you to synthesize it
into some little story,
I just want the facts.
I'll make up my own story.
That was another axis,
story versus data.
Another axis is
what's your reach?
When you learn something
do you tell other people?
Or do you just keep it
to yourself, your family,
and then move on?
Not everyone's going
to Tweet everything.
And not everyone's going to
pick a phone and call people.
But some do and some don't.
And it's very interesting to
think about those that do,
have reach.
Those that do, kind of just
because of the personality
or for whatever reason,
disseminate information.
That's really powerful.
They can reach a lot of people.
People who may not
even be online.
So let's understand what
they're doing during crises.
And in a place like New Orleans
this is very interesting
because people do develop
patterns of behavior,
because this happens every year.
And people need to
talk to each other.
So you might think, oh,
there's a hurricane coming,
you just leave.
what's there to ask?
Well you may not want to
be on a road with gridlock
when you have an elderly person.
And you might lose your job, and
you don't have a credit card,
so you're not going to
be able to just charge
things on hotels.
And the last time you evaluated
it wasn't that severe,
and you did lose your job.
There's so many
other things to do.
And people need to talk to each
other to make these decisions.
And the last axis, word
of mouth versus online.
That's an interesting place
for us to think about.
A lot of people, they're just
not going to be techie people.
They're not going
to use the internet.
But why is that?
Is that because right now
it's not serving their needs?
And if it did
server their needs,
they wouldn't feel like oh,
I'm not a gadget person.
They would say that's
actually a useful way for me
to communicate with
the people that I
want to communicate with, and
get the information that I
need.
So lots of interesting
questions here.
If you want to know more about
our team visit this site.
And looking forward to
seeing this space grow.
There are a lot of
problems to work on.
And I do hope that at some
point we can make a difference,
and that technology can be
used to actually help people,
not only those who are
privileged enough to have
the best phones, and
the best data plans,
and live in the Silicon
Valleys of the world,
but those who don't.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
FEMALE SPEAKER:
Thank you, Raquel.
It's great to hear stories when
you truly are impacting people.
So thank you for that.
So we are going to
break for lunch.
How many people are hungry?
Or do you want to
hear more stories?
We can go on.
We can bring
[INAUDIBLE] back on.
OK, so do you want to do Q&A?
RAQUEL ROMANO: Sure.
FEMALE SPEAKER 1: Yes,
we do have time for Q&A.
AUDIENCE: Hello.
I'm interested in
how you protect
against personal information
when people don't want
to share their whereabouts,
or what have you,
even in a crisis situation.
RAQUEL ROMANO: Good question.
This has come up a lot with
what I talked about Google
Person Finder.
So the way that that
application works
is that everything's public.
You can go in and enter
that you've found someone,
or report yourself, I'm OK.
And someone else can go
in and do the opposite.
The way that we
have dealt with that
is instead of making it a
closed system and requiring-- it
really wouldn't meet
the purpose if we
said no, you have to login in
order to go search for someone.
Not everyone is
going to do that.
You just need to
get the information
as fast as possible.
So we put in a lot
of infrastructure
for spam detection in the back.
Some of it's automatic.
But a lot of it is manual.
So we try to build systems for
people to quickly look through
and flag things
that maybe spam-y.
And unfortunately, even
in times of crisis,
people do think that might be a
good time for a practical joke.
But we're really clear up
front, that this is public
and there are actually
expiration dates
on every record ever entered,
and every post ever entered.
It's part of the protocol,
it's part of the specification.
And that's how
we've dealt with it.
I think it's really
interesting to think
about how those
problems will come up
with many of these other things.
So for instance, you wouldn't
want to require someone
to sign in to Google just to get
an information, absolutely not.
But if they are signed
in, you actually
do want to give them something.
If you know
something about them,
say you know their
circle of close friends,
you might want to
say here, here's
some information about them.
It's a very fine line to walk.
And we're constantly
thinking about that
because this isn't a
money making venture.
But privacy does matter,
and you can do damage.
Thank you for the question.
AUDIENCE: Hi, I'm
Tiffany, and I'm
a fellow for Code for America.
And we're working
with local governments
to make technology better.
And one of the things
that really resonated
with me is how you guys are
partnering with organizations
to get a bunch of data
from disparate places,
and try to filter it into
one clear, simplified message
for community members.
And I'm curious, what is
your strategy for working
with all these organizations?
And how do you deal
with all the obstacles
of so many different
people trying
to filter into one message?
RAQUEL ROMANO: Yeah,
really hard question.
And this was interesting
for me as an engineer
to think that some of
the hardest problems
are actually
organizational and people.
So what is our
strategy for trying
to get data from
different organizations?
We actually have a team
of partnership people
who work extremely hard,
and travel all the time,
to meet one on one
with people who
are working in organizations
that have data that we know
is useful, whether it's in
Columbia, or it's in Mexico,
or it's in East Asia.
Wherever we can find
an opening and have
the time in the capacity
we open that dialogue.
And it's a lot of
explaining to do.
Because before we have
a launched product
that we can say, if
you were to invest
a little bit of
resources into publishing
the same data that you've
spent a lot of time and money
and effort to collect, if you
could publish it this way,
we have to be able to
say what's the gain?
What would happen?
And we can show, oh,
then all your hard work
would be surfaced in this
way, on this mobile phone.
So it's a little bit of
the chicken and egg, where
we typically try to find
people who are already
willing to work with us,
build products off those,
and just as a lot of people
have said before me, iterate.
We have to iterate.
We have to say,
OK did this work?
What didn't work?
What was too specific to this?
What was too general?
Then, when you go
to the next partner,
this is what we're
doing in Australia.
Are you interested?
Oh, you have this data.
They see it at play.
But you need that buy in.
You have to show them.
You can't just show a concept.
They have real
problems to work on.
They don't want to
do something that's
cool and gets them the good
video on some tech show.
No, they have real problems.
So our strategy is really this
launch and iterate process.
But it is a lot of work
and a lot of, really,
commitment to working with
the people technically.
I think that we're
out of time now.
So I'll be here for a few
more minutes, and thank you.
