The Super Happiness Challenge!

Investors Panel

A friend forwarded me a link to a pitch session yesterday morning, and as I’m in networking mode, trying to find an amazing job, I signed up and attended. I didn’t know much about the event before I arrived and the first thing that struck me was that all of the folks pitching had startups that did good things, that aimed to make the world a better place by increasing what Project Heha calls “Super Happiness.”

I’ve been to quite a few pitch sessions, and this was by far the most inspirational pitch session I’ve ever been to. I was brought to the point of tears many times over the course of the afternoon. To see so many people trying to do good in the world in one place was humbling and quite inspirational. 

The Super Happiness Challenge was an international competition that started accepting applications in May 2017.  There were two tracks, an Idea Track, and a Startup track.  Five finalists came from as far away as Iceland and Africa to pitch. The event was hosted by GSV Labs, great people with an amazing space.

From my perspective, the winners in both categories were obvious choices, and the judges had difficulty deciding, especially between the grand prize and runner-up prizes.

All one needed to enter the idea track: “The idea track is open to individuals who have an innovative, creative solution that promotes happiness.” Most of the idea track entries were pretty far along. Many had apps or significant achievements. The winner, Smart Garbage Medical Insurance, created a micro-insurance system where slum residents in Tanzania collect plastic refuse, which widely pollutes the slum, it’s collected monthly, and turned into plastic timber, which is sold to make things like decks and fences. The proceeds go to buying insurance. So far, they have insured 75 families!  It’s a triple win, people most at risk get insurance, the environment is improved, and a new building material that is much more resilient than wood is created. What an innovation! 

To enter the startup track, one needed to, have a startup along the same lines. All of the startup entries were impressive, not just from their ability to do good but also from their viability. The winner, WeFarm.org, blew the top of my head off!  They have created the world’s largest farmer to farmer digital network.  They have over 420,000 farmers connected in Kenya, all via SMS.  Farmers are rated, and AI is used to connect folks who have questions to those who can answer them. We are talking about folks who have, until now, no access to the internet and no way to communicate outside their personal networks. WeFarm is also using this service to sell supplies like seeds and insurance and plans on a peer to peer market soon.

For those of you who don't understand how big a deal this is, 80% of the folks in Africa have cell phones, and only 30% of the population has internet. Similar numbers exist for other developing regions. This demographic represents the biggest opportunity for service providers, eCommerce, and social media worldwide. It’s a nearly untapped market, and luckily the brilliant folks at WeFarm are using their foresight for good.

I’d take a job at any of the companies that presented at whatever they could pay me. They were that good and got me that fired up.

This is the brainchild of Project Heha, started by Sammy Lee.  Sammy took the idea of propagating sustainable happiness to new levels and, in the course of doing so, has created a multinational, multibillion-dollar company.  The phrase, “a rising tide lifts all boats,” was never truer. 

We need more of this in the world! 

Technology For Traveling

What technology do you bring when you are about to hit the road for an extended travel adventure? I travel light. One carry-on bag and a day pack. I can and have lived out of one bag for a long time. There’s no way I can bring a laptop or much of anything heavy. After much research and hemming and hawing, this is what I came up with:

• iPad Mini 16gig Wireless (the least expensive model)

• Anker Ultraslim Bluetooth Keyboard

• Galaxy Nexus phone, the GSM model (It’s the phone I’ve been using for the last six months)

• Seagate Satellite Wireless Plus hard drive, one terabyte of storage

• Canon SD780IS w/ a dive housing, an EyeFi card, and spare battery

• New Trent IMP52D, an 5200mAh external battery

 All of this stuff weighs 3.5 lbs, about the same weight as a Macbook Air with the charger. This array of stuff does a lot more than a netbook, and if I need to use an actual computer, internet cafes are everywhere in Southeast Asia. 

I love my little point-and-shoot camera, it has a viewfinder, looking at it from the front, it’s a bit smaller than a credit card, it takes great pictures, and does full HD video. As a bonus, Canon makes a dive housing for it that I picked up on eBay for about 1/4 of the retail price. Technically, I’ll be traveling with three cameras as my phone, and the iPad Mini both have cameras. When I was traveling across Asia in 2009, I had my camera stolen on a bus at the India-Nepal border and lost 2 months’ worth of photos, amazing, wonderful, and gone photo’s I vowed to never again let this happen. 

My photo preservation strategy is this. I have an EyeFi card in my camera and EyeFi software on my iPad Mini. The EyeFi card has a tiny wifi access point. At the end of the day, I just sync them up. Then the EyeFi software uploads the pics to Picasa. Once a week, I’ll copy all the photo’s from my iPad to my wireless hard drive.  No more lost pics!

The iPad Mini. This was the hardest call. Let’s face it, the specs for the iPad mini are lame. Old processor, a low-resolution screen, and two speakers but still in mono. I looked at most of the tablets out there and was leaning toward the new iPad when a friend showed me his iPad Mini and told me how much he liked it. If I were going to be working while on the road, I probably would have gone for the iPad 4 with a Bluetooth keyboard, but I won’t be working.  I’ll mainly use the Mini for viewing/editing photos, writing blog posts, and consuming media. It’s perfect for those purposes. I suspect I’ll get very good at thumb typing, or I’ll end up in internet cafes to type out my blog posts. I got the lowest-end model because I knew I’d be using some sort of external storage, and if I need connectivity when I don’t have wifi, I can tether it to my phone.

Taking media on the road. In 2009 all I had for technology was a crappy Kodak digital camera and a brand new iPod Touch, 32 gig. I put the entire NYPD Blue TV series on there, a bunch of ebooks, some audiobooks, and apps like Skype. for the most part, is was great. There were some issues, though. Battery life was not very good while watching videos or playing games. Even 12 seasons of TV shows eventually run out.  I was able to download some other movies and shows via apple, but it wasn’t ideal. 

This time around, I’m bringing my entire iTunes library, my rather extensive ebook library, my audiobook library (I have audible as well), and a metric shit ton of movies and shows. Granted, I’d rather spend my free time meeting new people and having adventures. There are times when some decompression is needed, then there are the 18-hour bus rides. 

The Seagate Satellite Wireless Plus has a battery that is good for 10 hours that will recharge in 3 hours. It has one terabyte of storage and can connect to an access point while up to 8 other devices connect. It’s small and light for what it does, and the app, Seagate makes and IOS and an Android app allows streaming for apple native media and DNLA for streaming codecs to third-party apps that apple does not support. It also allows for coping files to either my phone or the iPad Mini. In addition, it has a USB 3 for speedy data transfers. 

Running out of power on one’s devices is going to happen if you take the 18-hour bus ride of doom. That’s where the New Trent external battery comes in. This little guy will charge my phone twice or the Mini once. That’s enough juice to make those long rides less doomy. It has charge indicator LEDs and as a bonus, it has an LED flashlight and a laser pointer.

Staying connected on the road is always a challenge. In 2009 I used Skype when I had a wifi connection or phone cards and pay phones. Since I already have a great GSM cell phone, I will use it. I’ll be buying SIM cards in all the countries I’m going to. Phone and data plans are very affordable in SEA, and I don’t plan to use many minutes. Mostly I’ll use the phone to make reservations. I’ll use Google Voice and Skype for all my calls to the US. No more pay phones! 

I’ve found the right balance of weight, stuff, and cost. The camera and the EyeFi cards were gifts. I bought the iPad Mini, and the dive housing used and got good prices on everything else. Look for a follow-up post on how all my toys are working out.