Over the last five years, the VSee team has worked in refugee camps from Asia to Mideast to Africa -- most recently at the Iraq-Syria border supporting Hillary Clinton and Angelina Jolie for a global broadcast by the UN Refugee Agency. We will present the design of three communication systems for refugee and humanitarian environments -- specifically, featuring robust network tolerance and ease of use for non-experts and illiterate first time computer users. The first system is a managed peer-to-peer multiparty video calling, application sharing, and file transfer tool. Its network tolerance made it a favorite tool among NGOs in Afghanistan for medical and education initiatives. The second system is an interactive video town hall on Facebook and Twitter where participants are physically dispersed and network-challenged. Successes include Mandy Moore's Facebook anti-malaria campaign, Nothing But Nets, and a multi-location musical exchange by PlayingForChange. The third system is a distributed social network that can be used offline and synced periodically over cost and bandwidth-constrained networks. We will share practical insight from our field experience, as well as goals for an upcoming i-ACT/Darfur Sister Schools trip in March, 2011.
About the speaker:
Milton is the CEO of VSee, a video collaboration tool that lets you share any application with one click, and send any file with one drag. VSee is used by over 6000 enterprises such as Shell, NASA, Navy SEALs, US Congress, the National Science Foundation, and to stream video over 3G from police cars. Milton received a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from UC Berkeley and a PhD in Human Computer Interaction from Stanford University. His insight in how to make videoconferencing and webconferencing an everyday experience has led to more than 100 invited talks to countries ranging from Iceland to Nigeria to Saudi Arabia. He also received the DEMO God award at DEMO 06, and is the co-author of XMPP video standard.
Contact information:
Milton Chen
3188 KIMLEE DR
San Jose, CA 95132
650.331.0165