nuance intelligence

I couldn’t be more excited about getting to work with AWhere on helping design a collective intelligence engine for the UN Foundation.

Here’s a recent two-part intervew I did at the AWhere Blog with UNF change agent Kevin Starace.  In his words:

As chair of the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) Performance Subcommittee we’re mandated to help the sector improve effectiveness.   Starting in 2007, we’ve been trying to find a technology that enables several things:

1. This one is the most important: we’ve got to break down silos across all boundaries, sectors and specialties, including but not limited to funding, institutional knowledge and to create a sector-wide peer review process.
2. Performance evaluation – how are we, collectively, achieving these huge global targets?  Specifically, those in alignment with the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDG), including an 85% distribution of bed nets and reduction of child mortality.
3. Provide platform by which all health initiatives can input information that is relevant to scientific advancement, investment evaluation, and providing a complete picture of what’s going on at the ground level.

After I first talked to [AWhere CEO] John Corbett, I realized that the common denominator for all of those problems is location.  What matters is not our organizational and bureaucratic divisions, but what’s happening to the people on the ground.  If we organize information sharing around the location of the problem, it helps us create a new collaborative holistic vantage point…

The ability to geographically correlate meaningful information from disparate sources in real time will forever alter our ability to improve the lives of people around the world.  That has never been possible before, and it’s literally going to change everything.

On a personal level, it’s incredibly humbling to even think in these terms.  That I’m helping design a small part of it is an honor.   Any advice?