What Was It About?
Dear community,
On 18th of March, Seeed Studio hosted a Tech4Good webinar for the UN’s 13th World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Forum 2022. WSIS Forum is the world’s largest annual gathering of the ‘ICTs for development’ multi-stakeholder communities, which is spearheaded by the UN’s International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and co-organized by UNESCO, UNDP and UNCTAD. In simple terms, the Forum is a well-recognized platform to learn the world’s latest technological trends, exchange information and networks, share the best practices, and build trans-sectoral partnerships towards accelerating the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). (WSIS Forum, 2022). (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Seeed’s Tech4Good Webinar for WSIS Forum 2022
On this backdrop, Seeed Studio’s Tech4Good webinar has been moderated by our Sustainability and CSR Manager, Ye Seong Shin, and we focused on real-life application cases of AIoT open source hardware and software solutions for the most pressing SDG challenges of our time: Carbon Neutrality, Climate Change, Wildlife Conservation, and Sustainable Communities. By joining hands and forces with innovators of our open tech communities, 6 speakers have been invited to share their: a) technological knowledge and expertise; b) solutions, cases, and projects; as well as c) insights and reflections. (Figure 2). Click this link to view the webinar recording: https://www.itu.int/net4/wsis/forum/2022/Agenda/Session/148.
Figure 2. Tech4Good Webinar Speakers on Live for WSIS Forum 2022 (WSIS Forum, 2022)
What Are the Main Takeaways?
By now, you might be curious to find out the most exhilarating lessons from our webinar. That’s why, we’ve made a concise and to-the-point summary of the 6 speakers’ scintillating talk outcomes. Are you ready to explore? Let’s start the exposition then! 🙂
💚 Eric Pan
(Founder & CEO of Seeed Studio and Chaihuo x.factory; Producer of Maker Faire Shenzhen)
On the topic of “AIoT Open Source Solutions Towards Sustainable World ∞”, Eric talked about the importance of facilitating 500,000+ developers all over the world to become SDG innovators, so that they can contribute to bringing sustainable and positive impacts to the society we’re living in today. He quotes,
“Makers acquired the ‘how’, and sustainability is attracting the ‘why’.”
By shedding light on maker-level and corporate-level projects revolving around Smart Agriculture and Sustainable Communities (Microsoft FarmBeats & FarmBeats for Students), he highlighted that the prototypes are only the first step to solving the concurrent challenges – far from industrial and real-life applications. He continued the discourse of technological deployment being too complex for non-technical multi-stakeholders, which is why the open tech community should be able to make the solutions simple and easy-to-use for massive scaling up scenarios. Moreover, Eric emphasized the significant role of local people who are the potential end-users of the AIoT solutions:
“We should rely more on local people. They resolve their problems much better in the long run, so we hope to bring more bottom-up and open innovations.”
At the end of his presentation, he announced the upcoming new product launch for ‘IoT into the Wild’ solutions, which are designed to meet the needs of conservationists and environmentalists for wildlife conservation and environmental monitoring purposes. To participate in the product launch, stay tuned for 9:00A.M. (Pacific Daylight Time) on 25th of March here: https://2022.seeed.cc.
💚 Cesar Jung-Harada
(Founder, Director, and Executive Director of MakerBay and Scoutbots LTD; Senior Lecturer of The University of Hong Kong)
[Note: Due to the large size of the original content, this is a summarized version focusing on the key highlights of the webinar presentations.]