Hi, my name’s Gabe and I am over-caffeinated. Why am I over-caffeinated you might ask? Because I’m working with OpenSignal and TechHive to collect some standardized data across the U.S. of A. Part of that data collection is finding out how well different carriers work in all the places you might use your phone, including inside buildings.

And what better place to pop inside to run some tests for a minute than your local coffee shop? I just started collecting data a few days ago, but so far, it’s taken me to at least ten different Starbucks locations in San Francisco (as you may have suspected, they all look the same, with the fascinating exception of the large-unstealable-item-that-the-restroom-key-is-attached-to).

I’m taking along eight phones, four iphones and four android devices, each with service from one of the four major US carriers.

I’ve already found out that standing around downtown with a bunch of phones in a portfolio will invariably be met with generous and not-so-generous offers of cash. I’m guessing that if you’ve ever had a phone lost or stolen, this is probably how it found its next home. I won’t single out a specific city for this, because it has happened literally in every downtown stop of every city so far. I’ve also come across a few shop owners who wanted to be reassured that I was not there to do some kind of strangely conspicous surveillance. I can only wonder about what is there to be surveilled.

At each testing location I’m using a modified OpenSignal app to collect all the data we can about things like signal strength, tower location, and upload and download speeds.

Aside from the fact that I find this raw data totally fascinating, it’s important for OpenSignal to have a baseline for the kind of data we’re crowdsourcing as well. Because I’m using the same devices in each area and tightly restricting any other variables, we can get the kind of unbiased scientific information that can be used to check the crowdsourced information as well as truly quantify claims like “best nationwide network” and “best 4G coverage” that marketing departments tend to toss around. We’ll also be comparing it to similar data collected in previous years to see what has changed.

In the coming weeks I will be in about 18 more cities, and many, many more coffee shops. As much as I appreciate the amazingly consistent Starbucks atmosphere, I appreciate a bit of variation. This week I’ll be in San Diego, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Phoenix. Are there local cafes you like? Tell me, dear reader, where I should go.

You can also see where I am by following me on Facebook (OpenSignal Gabe), FourSquare (OpenSignal) where I’ll be checking in periodically.

(X-posted from my own article on TechHive)

I think Laura Agustín’s post about Nicholas Kristof’s Half the Sky documentary (trailer below) is an interesting read. Read it here: “Kristof’s Paternalistic Smarm: the Soft Side of Imperialism redux”

I also had a hard time watching the PBS documentary. Aside from my general uneasiness when men talk to women about “how hard it must be for you,” media is a tricky thing. On one hand I think it’s a good thing that anyone (Kristof or Agustín) is telling that story, as skewed as the perspective may be. On the other hand… all the things she wrote about. 

The key is promoting discussion, which posts like this prove it accomplished, in some small way. What I really wish is that writers like Kristof were more explicit in their framing of the debate and that consumers of media would see documentaries as jumping boards for larger conversations, as opposed to passive media to be consumed and filed away as unbending truth.

There are bigger issues at play about how we (the west, white people, media spectators, the internet) can participate in helping the people who want to be helped (from poverty, sex work, disease, low wages, you-name-it) without falling into centuries of our own unpleasant cultural muck in the process. In Epstein’s “The Invisible Cure,” she talks about the gross misuse of AIDS funding spent in eastern Africa creating western style hospitals, overhead, travel, and buying state of the art equipment - when the best care was given in homes and small scale centers with budget-limited control measures. It’s a similar problem faced with trafficking. How to help without some kind of culture translation? And who’s translation to trust?

Gabe Scelta is the Innovation Director at Ethicodes and Research Associate at the Ethiopian Global Initiative. A fellow at the Emerge Venture Lab, Gabe’s deep knowledge of the technology industry keeps Ethicodes pushing the frontiers of the fair trade industry. He holds a master’s degree from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies and a bachelor’s degree from Boston University. He lives in New York City.

Related articles

• ‘Half The Sky’: Meg Ryan, America Ferrera & Olivia Wilde Tell Pain, Hope Of Exploited Women (huffingtonpost.com)
• ‘Half the Sky:’ Series on exploited women looks to empower (csmonitor.com)
• Voices to the Voiceless: Confronting Sex-Trafficking and Other Gender-based Issues Worldwide by M. Pitter (inparenthesesmag.com)

This is part two of “Pizza, Beer & Stock Options Don’t Cut It Anymore: Technologists and Social Entrepreneurs” - part I is here. 

In my role with Ethicodes I’m designing a mobile game-type app for ethical and sustainable consumption. In my professional life, I’ve been a designer and programmer for web and mobile. That means I have the unique experience of having been on both the management / programmer table. The work I do for Ethicodes can’t be done alone, and I’ll admit, there are (many) elements of programming that are better left to the specialists. In my juggling of these two worlds, I’ve come across the paradox of social enterprise technology. Most often it comes down to money, understanding and respect. Here’s some advice from both sides of the table.

Part II: Tips for Developers

• No Eye Rolling. Sometimes opportunity is about showing up. We understand everyone from your grandmother to your boss is asking you to fix something. But please be open to the possibilities and try to leave the jaded personality at home. It takes a certain type of person to be a programmer—some say it is a cynic’s exterior over an incurable optimist inside—after all, it is your job to constantly find ways to break your own code, with the expectation that there is a way to make it logically perfect eventually. I suspect the social entrepreneur is the exact opposite—incurably optimistic on the outside (we can fix the world!), with a constant cynicism on the inside (because the world needs fixing badly).
• Consultation Fees. An interview is not a consultation. Everyone understands you are in high demand, and your time is valuable (at least they do if they read the above). However a 1/3 of a total standard consulting fee should be business and overhead related. That means $50 of your $150 fee is there to account for this initial meeting, as well as computer upkeep, and the time it takes to invoice clients. I recently had a very talented developer request a consultation fee before even discussing their skills. They were off the list immediately, but a little further research revealed their skillset wasn’t the greatest—which could have been a costly mistake for me. On the other hand, if they had agreed to an initial discussion, they would have gotten the opportunity to convince me otherwise.
• Understand business etiquette. As a programmer you have a lot of wiggle room as far as business attire goes. In fact, I frequently feel like the older the t-shirt I wear, the more I am assumed to be a talented programmer. Very few people expect you to show up in a suit (and if the above is true, it might actually work against you). So when I say business etiquette, I am not primarily talking about attire (though sweatpants might not be the best idea). Despite what you learned from your brilliant CS professor, some basic social and conversational skills are necessary. Texting and muttering during a meeting are not looked upon favorably by anyone. Inability to manage your own schedule and terse, incongruous and borderline rude emails (despite a footer that says “sent from my iPhone”) are also not working in your favor. You will need to be able to work with other people in some capacity for the rest of your life regardless of how talented you are.
• Be clear about your skills. We all know you can learn as you go along, and too often that is what must happen as new technologies and languages arrive. Hiring managers should understand this. That said, be clear about what you know now versus what you can learn. When I worked at LiveJournal, all the programmers had to learn BML (Brad’s Markup Language - which only existed in Brad Fitzpatrick’s work). Obviously, no one came to the company knowing how to do this (aside from Brad of course) and all of them learned. However, there are always going to be programmers who know Ruby, C+, and all of the main languages better than you. Managers just want to know what they are signing up for in the skills department, so be honest and clear about what you know now and what you would be happy to learn in the future.
• Invest in future employers. You undoubtably will come across social entrepreneurs who are hoping that you can “share their vision.” Sometimes this means working at a discount or being available for questions when otherwise you would not. You shouldn’t do all of their work for free or let them stomp all over you. Make this clear from the start, but also let them know how interested and invested you are in their vision. Try “I {am;am not} really into the goal of {fixing the world;helping the poor;educating children} so I {can help;cannot help}. However I think it would be a good business decision if you hired {me;a specialist;a team} to do x, y, and z.” Knowing your investment level from the start will help them gauge how much they can lean on you when the going gets tough, and will prevent any misunderstandings for both sides.
• Don’t steal ideas. This should be another obvious one, but isn’t. You may have the CS talent to bring an idea to fruition with little help. However, social entrepreneurs likewise have talents that you don’t have, usually business and field-specific ones. They also (hopefully) had legal agreements, copyrights, and precedent over an idea long before they brought you in on a project. It is a much better option for both of you to work together for a common goal than get into messy legal battles later.
• Agree on Baby Steps. Entrepreneurs want a perfect product, and often don’t yet have the backing or technical process-knowledge to make it bulletproof. And you might not be sold on their product or time commitment. A good way to start off is to both agree to a minimum viable product - meaning the smallest commitment you as a programmer can get a way with while still testing some of their business and usability assumptions. It might be as simple as a programming diagram, a series of mobile web pages or a pong-level app (free of fancy graphics or complex engagements).Taking a small first step will help everyone figure out if they work well with one another and how on board everyone is. After that, you can throw in the towel or figure out the next small step.

Just like last time, I’d love to hear from other management / developers about experiences, tips, and frustrations in the comments.

Gabe Scelta is the Innovation Director at Ethicodes and Research Associate at the Ethiopian Global Initiative. A fellow at the Emerge Venture Lab, Gabe’s deep knowledge of the technology industry keeps Ethicodes pushing the frontiers of the fair trade industry. He holds a master’s degree from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies and a bachelor’s degree from Boston University. He lives in New York City.

Related articles

• What is a Social Entrepreneur? (fiwal.org.uk)
• Entrepreneurship and the Social Entrepreneur (ruralstops.blogspot.com)
• Four Business Tips for Social Entrepreneurs (bayintegratedmarketing.wordpress.com)

In my role with Ethicodes I’m designing a mobile game-type app for ethical and sustainable consumption. In my professional life, I’ve been a designer and programmer for web and mobile. That means I have the unique experience of having been on both the management / programmer table. The work I do for Ethicodes can’t be done alone, and I’ll admit, there are (many) elements of programming that are better left to the specialists. In my juggling of these two worlds, I’ve come across the paradox of social enterprise technology. Most often it comes down to money, understanding and respect. Here’s some advice from both sides of the table.

Part I: Tips for Social Entrepreneurs

• Enthusiasm is contagious, but not that contagious. You are the idea guys, we all understand that. You are doing what you are doing because of a love of something - sustainable energy, or poverty alleviation, or accessible education - but don’t expect everyone to share your enthusiasm. And more importantly, don’t expect technology professionals to do what they do for free. It’s true, if you find the right person, with the right values and skillset you can get a lot done for very little money. But understand that this is very rare.
• Know what you are talking about (or find someone who does). A viable app, website or product includes a lot of moving parts. It is your job to plan and research which of those parts are needed. For example, if you are creating a web product you’ll need to know what platforms you are working on (Web, iOS, Android, etc.), what language you are working in (C+, XHTML, Flash, Ruby, etc.), and how users interact with it (login through Facebook or Twitter, create an account, etc.) to name a few.
• Rome wasn’t built in a day. In some cases you’ll have a product that gets developed and launched and doesn’t change ever, but only if you work at Microsoft. As a social entrepreneur you’re probably going to look for agile or iterative development, meaning you decide on a basic goal for a beta product and expand out from there based on a constant feedback loop. Don’t begin a programming request with “and then fireworks shoot out of the screen.” Decide what kind of core you need and worry about the bells and whistles later.
• Respect talents and time (and expect the same). If you are talking to a programmer, it’s because they are better at programming than you are. Contrary to popular beliefs, they are not kids geeking out in their parents garage anymore. They have invested a massive amount of their lives, and usually a lot of education, getting to know code. They would also be happier spending your meeting time watching Futurama. In order to respect their time and talent, be specific about what you want out of meetings and how long you will be there. If you are talking to a back end Ruby programmer, it’s a waste of everyone’s time talking about the UI and CSS, or worse yet, monetization and business practices.
• Know who you are talking to and what they can do. Again, if you are talking to a Ruby programmer, have a basic grasp of what that means and stick to it. If you are unsure what different roles, languages or processes are or what might be needed, get a technical project manager or ask around. Great tech products are not made by one person anymore, that hasn’t happened since 1998. Jut because you’ve found one programmer doesn’t mean you should expect them to do everything. In most cases they can’t and in all cases, they don’t want to.
• Appeal to desire to do good, but make it clear that you understand what the kind of commitment entails. You are asking for a lot of results, for what is usually - in the early startup days - not a lot of money. There are oodles of private companies with squillions of dollars looking for great programmers. Sell yourself as a growth opportunity and most importantly as an opportunity to try all the cutting edge stuff they wouldn’t have the freedom to play with in a big organization.
• Stock options, student ‘samples’ and hack-a-thons are lame. It’s not 2000 anymore. Developers see right through stock options and internships. Anyone who was around for the boom can paper their walls with useless stock options, and anyone who is younger than that has been in high enough demand since high school that a job that offers only these are laughable. I’ve also noticed an alarming trend toward requiring sample code tests for job applications. Code quality is important and should be tested before a hire, and third party tests like those offered at CodeEval are totally valid. However, when you request a sample that does exactly what a piece of your product is supposed to do, it is highly suspect. The same goes for design—when you are looking for someone to redesign your website and you require a “test” that forces someone to redesign your website before they are even hired, we are all on to you. Hack-a-thons—which are sometimes interesting meetups of like-minded individual, are also quickly becoming shorthand for “write my code for free.”
• Don’t steal code. This seems obvious, but it needs to be said. If you are using other people’s work without attribution or share-alike permission, you are undermining the people you are relying on most. If there is a bit of code that you think would be useful or modifiable, you’ll get surprisingly positive results by writing to the author (yes, coders are ‘authors’) and asking if they want to work with you.

Stay tuned next week for the other side of the table—Tips for Developers. I’d love to hear from other management / developers about experiences, tips, and frustrations in the comments.

Gabe Scelta is the Innovation Director at Ethicodes and Research Associate at the Ethiopian Global Initiative. A fellow at the Emerge Venture Lab, Gabe’s deep knowledge of the technology industry keeps Ethicodes pushing the frontiers of the fair trade industry. He holds a master’s degree from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies and a bachelor’s degree from Boston University. He lives in New York City.

Related articles

• How to Compensate Next-Gen Venture Capitalists (christine.net)
• How to Hire a Programmer (codinghorror.com)
• Now marketers need to be technologists ? P L E A S E (newmediaandmarketing.com)
• Call yourself a ‘brogrammer’? Then get the hell away from me. (jgc.org)

There’s been a lot of press this past week about Foxconn, the Taiwanese company whose Chinese factories produce iPads, iPhones and many other high-end consumer electronics. The New York Times and This American Life rightly highlight working conditions, and problematic trade issues. 

“The reality is that Apple, adhering to a sound business model, strives to make the best products possible at a quality level that is second to none. Unfortunately, the workforce and infrastructure in the United States is not up to the task.”

Adam Clampitt, Made in the USA: It’s More Complex Than You Think

Apple’s business model is no surprise and no secret. It relies on an imbalance of value, of material, of labor standards, and, yes, of human expectations. In essence, it is the business model of roughly the past 2000 years of trade.

Trade on the Silk Road began in the Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE) and created some of the most successful cities and empires of the ancient world. Despite the name, the Silk Road was not about silk. It was about goods being brought from one end of the world to the other, across continents, cultures, and value systems. Fabrics, spices, medicines and tools were manufactured in one place where they were relatively abundant and cheaply produced and brought to other places where they were not. 

What we see with Foxconn, and with the lurking and enormous problem of manufacturing goods in the USA, is the inevitable trajectory of a system which makes the world much smaller and infinitely more connected.

When I was a child, my family took a vacation to eastern Pennsylvania. For me this was a trip to Hershey’s Chocolate World, where I had fantasies of diving into natural lakes of chocolate alá Augustus Gloop. But there was another part of the trip, which probably made my chocolate induced hyperactivity a little more excusable for the adults involved. We stopped in Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, outside of Wilkes Barre to see where my grandmother, then in her 60s, grew up. 

She always spoke excitedly about riding the Mauch Chunk Switchback Gravity Railroad. If you’re into trivia, you’ll want to know that it was built in 1827, and it’s considered the first “roller coaster” in the US. Actually, it was built to be an innovative way to shuttle coal from the mines of the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company to the Lehigh Canal, where it would be shipped off to the rest of the country, to warm houses in New York, run steam trains to the Dakotas, and power the steel industry in Pittsburgh. Coal, and the things it ran, were the microprocessors and iPads of the day.

When we arrived in Jim Thorpe (the modern, de-natived name for Mauch Chunk), I remember driving around for a long time. It’s not a big place but my grandmother couldn’t quite figure out where the house used to be. It was a long time ago, it was all gone. We asked, “Well, what was the address?” She answered, “Mine 7”. Needless to say, Mine 7 was no longer the name of anything there. You see, all of her family worked in the coal mines, almost as soon as they could hold a shovel. Because women were ‘not suited’ for mine work she was able to stay in school until eighth grade, longer than any of her brothers. It was a town of immigrants and cheap labor and the ones that weren’t killed in accidents eventually got what they called “the black lung.” They worked in appalling conditions, lived at their workplace, and owed their paycheck to the company store.

The point that I’m trying to make, is that nothing has changed. Some day, the workers at Foxconn will have just as difficult of a time pointing out “Dormitory 82” as my grandmother did finding “Mine 7.” The thing that has changed are our expectations of humanity, our understanding of human rights, and our global interconnectedness. Those three things are at odds with the 2000 year old system that relies on imbalances in values and standards. They will not let the old model of a free market stand much longer.

I am not an opponent of the free market, or of capitalism, but I believe the current system is breaking down in ways that may not be fixable. We are all going to need to come up with new ways of thinking, and set new standards and expectations if we are hoping to thrive in this increasingly connected world economy. I don’t know what the answer is, but I know we’ll need to figure it out sooner than later.

Gabe Scelta is the Innovation Director at Ethicodes and Research Associate at theEthiopian Global Initiative. A fellow at the Emerge Venture Lab, Gabe’s deep knowledge of the technology industry keeps Ethicodes pushing the frontiers of the fair trade industry. He holds a master’s degree from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies and a bachelor’s degree from Boston University. He lives in New York City.

Related articles

• The Cost of Doing Business: Foxconn, Apple, and the Fate of the Modern Worker (readwriteweb.com)
• Apple-Foxconn tale goes well beyond Apple, and tech (news.cnet.com)
• How iPad Demand Led to Last Year’s Deadly Foxconn Explosion [Foxconn] (gizmodo.com)

This week I’ve been reading “Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter” by Tom Bissell. Bissell spends a lot of time looking at first-person shooters and the nuances of storytelling in open world games.

The whole point of any game is to be interactive. There is some reason for you to press a button or push a joystick left or right, whether it is to make sure the glowing Pong orb doesn’t fly away or to kill a zombie in Left 4 Dead. For various reasons, the standard video game priorities can be summed up as “Collect & Destroy”—that is, collect the things (coins, weapons, magic potions) that help you get towards a certain goal (the princess, the safe house, the next level) while simultaneously destroying anything that gets in the way (zombies, the Koopa Troopa, orange pixelated ghosts). This has made me think a lot about—at the risk of getting overly philosophical—what we want from our human experience.

Games, in general, are not about real life. Of course, like any good book or movie, part of the reason for that is escapism. If I wanted to live my life, why would I do so on a Wii? But I think the major reason is just that real life is ultimately pretty boring—desperately slow moving and depressingly uneventful. Even real-life games like The Sims have to speed up time and create obstacles like peeing your pants or setting yourself on fire. Just like in literature, we can say that it is “conflict and drama” that make games interesting. But what we seek out in real life is usually avoiding conflict and drama at all costs. As it turns out, the easiest way to get to the safehouse, is to make sure you don’t encounter any zombies at all.

At Ethicodes I’m working on the logic and needs of a game in which the player is a coffee farmer. The goal, like your average zombie apocalypse game, is simply survival. But instead of battling zombies you are simply battling the current global trade economy. By far the easiest thing to do is to avoid all conflict, but in the current agricultural market, avoiding conflict, not fighting for every penny of that sale, means starving to death. Can we make not-starving-to-death as compelling a goal as reaching a zombie-proof bunker? Our lives may depend on it.

Related articles

• 2.1 Media (mediads.wordpress.com)
• The Importance of Gaming - Jane Mcgonigal Shows Why Video Games Can Save the World (TrendHunter.com) (trendhunter.com)
• Pigs like video games too! Interspecies gaming to combat boredom, aggression in livestock. (blogs.scientificamerican.com)

For once I’m not sure I agree with my co-blogger Kris Gryte’s last post—Why Ethical Deals Send the Wrong Message. I mean, I do agree with it on all the fundamental levels, but I think there are some key points missing. As someone with a lot of marketing experience, I think Kris’ sentiment represents a Pie-in-the-Sky argument that isn’t necessarily realistic.

If consumers are even moderately aware of ethically sourced goods, I believe they are keeping all this in mind. For instance, if you are invested enough to be reading this blog, I’m confident you are already aware of the nuanced balance between fair trade and free trade and do your best on a purchase-by-purchase basis to do good. The challenge comes in moving the much larger portion of the consumer market away from the dark side.

Ultimately it is a language barrier. The larger market forces have created the language: daily deals, holiday sales, doorbusters, discounts and coupons, oh my! Sites like Groupon and Living Social use these linguistic gymnastics to stress one thing—that price is the most important thing consumers can base their purchasing decisions on. When ethical brands try to push the idea that (surprise) ethics, and real people and experiences behind the products might be more important, the message is quickly drowned out by the other 90% - Sale! Cheap! market noise. The market is shifting, there’s no doubt about that, but the ethical message is still no more than a whisper.

Understanding the larger language issue puts the marketers of ethical goods in an awkward spot. If they only focus on transparency and ethics, as Kris suggests, they are preaching to the choir, the portion of the market that is already listening very intently for that whisper of ethics. If they buy into a daily deal or push holiday sales, on Blissmo, EthicalDeal, ecomom, GreenDeals, and Fair Trade A Day, they are using the dominant language to possibly shift a tiny percentage of the market, who in turn, might start listening a little closer next time to the ethical message.

I absolutely agree with Kris’ message: 

So, as this holiday season comes to a close, let us step back, reflect, and realize the true impact of purchasing decisions. Think twice about that ethical ‘deal’, but rather spend your money consciously, wisely, and ethically, endeavoring to build a sustainable relationship between you, the good, and the producer who brought that good to life. What is not so important is how great a deal we offer or find, but doing our bit of good by remaining true to our core values and ensuring a brighter, greener, more transparent, and ethical future. 

But I’m sure if you are reading this, you were planning on doing that anyway.

Related articles

• Slave-Free Shopping this Christmas (todayibegin.wordpress.com)
• Eco Concious Collection From H&M Hennes & Mauritz! (graziadaily.co.uk)
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