How do we strengthen social innovation processes in Latin America? How do we leverage the power found within cities to explore new and better ways to tackle challenges in emerging cities? How do we create more resilient cities that are prepared not only to survive disruptive technological changes but also drive them?
These were some of the questions Constanza, our founder, wondered during her presentation at the #DisruptEcuador Conference in Quito on the 13th of October 2017.
#DisruptEcuador was organized by Centro Digital, one of the leading digital marketing firms of Ecuador. The dynamic conference gathered bright minds from 7 countries to talk about policy, media, technology and health. Other speakers included Miroculus, Startup Chile, BanColombia and Asuntos del Sur.
Constanza presented C Minds by PIDES’ view on Latin America’s social challenges in cities and the role of the Data Revolution in the development and implementation of new strategies for change. She spoke of past and present data-driven initiatives we have led including crowdsourcing data for the world’s largest public transportation system through Mapatón CDMX and our startup data accelerator, Labora. This presentation included our lessons learned and the multiple possibilities Open Data and Big Data present for the fields of social and economic development in Latin America.
She pushed for a debate with the public, asking if communities in Latin America are talking enough about data privacy, cyber-security and data ownership. While technologies are helping to solve the toughest social challenges, many questions are still pending. These questions will define the balance of this Data Revolution between guaranteeing a more inclusive society versus creating more personal vulnerabilities and risks.
Latin America has great potential to define and design a Fourth Industrial Revolution, ensuring it brings benefits for all, no matter one’s race, age or socioeconomic level. We want a revolution that is not imported from other regions, but rather, one that is born from the bottom to the top and responds to local contexts and endemic social challenges of southern countries.
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Some interesting facts on the potential of Open and Big Data:
$3 trillion usd – the potential annual value enabled by Open Data in seven domains including education, transportation, consumer products and electricity among others.
3 billion- the number of metric tons of CO2 equivalent emission reductions from buildings that could be identified through the use of Open Data
35 hours per year could be saved by commuters from schedule changes based on Open Data
100,000+ Medical, health and fitness apps for smartphones that could be developed.
$600 usd to buy a disk drive that can store all of the world’s music
30 billion posts on Facebook every month
140-200 thousand vacancies for data analysts in USA alone by 2020