 Hi everyone and welcome again for the Regional Innovation Forum for the Americas, which is taking place alongside with the Global Innovation Forum just right this week. And now we are in our second session for the Americas Regional Forum, which is about the innovation journey. And we are going to hear today amazing stories from the front lines, innovators, entrepreneurs in the Americas who are doing amazing work on the ground, bringing education, allowing people with disabilities to get access to a full life, and also those that are supporting other innovators and startups to get their way. So thank you very much for everyone for joining. I hope I didn't introduce myself to start with. I'm Raquel Gado. I'm Brazilian. I'm speaking in English right now just to avoid it with my Portuguese. But we do have interpretations. So if anyone needs the translation, the interpretation, just go in the options in the menu bar below. And you can see there is English and Spanish available. So I'm going to be the moderator for today. We do have an 80-minute session. So hopefully we can go through some short pitch rounds to understand more about each of the winners and mentors to all the innovators represented here about their challenges and what we can do to replicate and to get better as a region and as a collaborating with the digital ecosystem. So with Dr. Fern there, I do because the important thing is to hear from from our panelists. I'm going to quickly introduce, we do have five panelists here today. First, Valentina Araya. I'm sorry, I'm sharing this screen so I cannot see you. Valentina is the key account manager for Startup Chile. She's also the 2019 winner for the IT Challenge Award and this year she's also a mentor for the new group. She's also based in Chile, right? So welcome Valentina. We also have Sean Melville. Sean, are you there? Okay, Sean is not here yet so we are going to save his seat. But Sean is the managing director from Epson Technologies. He is also a 2019 winner and a 2020 mentor and he is from Trinidad and Tobago from the Caribbean. Next we have Carlos Mosquera. Carlos is the creator of Ginding Sounds. He's also a Venezuelan who is now living in the U.S. and we are going to hear more about Carlos 2020 winner context going on. And then next we have Zainab Khan and I hope I'm pronouncing your name correctly. Please just let me know if I'm not correct me. But Zainab is the creator of the Tick Mill. A teacher kid makes an individual life and Zainab is based in Canada and then we have finally but not least, last but not least Nelson Miller from Honduras. Nelson is the founder of Macau Tech which is also dealing with educational skills and he is going to take us through his journey pretty soon. So I hope everyone, oh now I can see Sean is also here, Sean welcome. If you need, so let me just make sure again that everyone is aware that we do have the interpretation. If you need interpretation into Spanish or English you can enable in the menu just below in the Zoom and it should be working if not just let us know. I also had the information from our organizers a while back that we had about 200 people in Swapcar today. We don't have the figures right now for this session but just so that you know that there is there are people joining and it's amazing to have this crowd and this discussion. So let's go with time, time is ticking. For the first round of question and I'm going to start with Valentina. So my first question to you guys who have been working on the ground is how do you feel like being an innovator in our ecosystem in our region? How does it feel like and if you can take us through the pitch in three minutes? Valentina? So on the side of the institution I work in that sort of Chile it has been challenging since the beginning because we started as an experiment. So we had to first validate that we were doing actually added value and then we had to keep finding new ways of adding values to the country, to the entrepreneurs and somehow remain competitive because we were the first public accelerator but then the whole offer of the Latinx system started to grow so we have to find new ways and we have to be reinventing ourselves all the time. So it's amazing to be like the head of this kind of ecosystem but also it's very challenging in terms that you have to be always finding new ways of became to keep somehow outdated and always be doing something valuable for those that you are trying to support. And on the other side on the side of the entrepreneurs I have talked to some of them and they say it is also challenging because we are still at young ecosystem so the perception that we have in terms of what is a successful business is quite different from maybe the perception that you can find in the US or in the Israel ecosystem. So we still maybe believe that achieving and receiving a lot of prices and rewards means that you are going in the right direction but if you are still failing in to make your project and your idea into a enterprise that actually have traction and it's in a new market maybe you are not in that right path so that kind of perception sometimes makes entrepreneurs confused and makes people think that this is a maybe a niche journey and it's a very direct journey but it's not you're probably going to fail a few times before you actually succeed. And that's a very good lesson Valentino thanks very much we need to be comfortable to fail and to start again and then try new things and sometimes persist right tenacity is a keyword. So next I'm also going to ask Sean if you can walk us through how to do fail being a native in our region and in the Caribbean can you share yeah. Hi Raquel thank you. So I would just share I guess in terms of my journey because my journey has been one that has been unconventional in the sense that I started this not intentionally speaking at a startup weekend event and coming out of that I actually met one of my co-founders who's totally blind and we actually just innovated and came up with a solution but there was no real intention to start a business but in the process of going through that journey we got the opportunity because we won an award and we you know we were able to see the potential it had we started off and registered a company and therein lies a challenge in that if you are not fully aware of all of the things that you need to to do in order on a business it therefore becomes a difficult journey because you're not you may not necessarily get into a business understanding the difficulties that you may go through and have a clear go-to-market strategy but what I would say has worked for me is that I surrounded myself with mentors and other persons who can provide some of that insight and I would have made it a little bit easier for me in that I actually got information from various sources and I would say we have a lot of information but it's not very organized and so the challenges you have all these different groups started communities, government agencies, they all are there to support these initiatives but there's no coordination of the ecosystem and so I had to find myself going from one silo to the next really to understand what are the different rules each player has to contribute to making this ecosystem work and so having gone through that process of not knowing learning as I go along and really experimenting with the viability of my idea that has now made it a little bit more viable for me to be able to offer solutions it was a bit of experimentation exploration and seeing what works and what doesn't that's what works and I think if more people approach it that way it may be more helpful for them to understand how to build a business Perfect Sean and it's a perfect hook after Valentina raid it's having the safe environment to fail but also how important it is to get information about what to expect where to start and just experiment so very good points and we do have next also Carlos who is working with also with innovation for accessibility for people with disabilities so Carlos do you want also to tell us about the your journey and how did you feel being an innovator in our region and I guess you have the experience from kind of two worlds from Venezuelan from USA well actually I totally understand and relate to Sean's story in my case more in the technical side my business background is really weak but my project personally is more about trying to get support from the public sector and even though I'm based in LA and even though LA is amazing to be honest in in terms of support and in terms of diversity education connectivity you know it's very pragmatic and the standard of living is actually very accessible I mean compared to you know Silicon Valley either way um to me it's been more difficult to access that public sector like I need help from from the I don't know from the government to implement my my idea more than actually get funding because well it has to come from the actual government so in my way in my in my experience I can do all the technical part but when it comes to the you know to all to them their relationships the networking and all of that is being more difficult for me in the way that LA is spread out LA is difficult to to meet people personally it's not like I don't know like London New York like you have access to people like every minute I mean here is more like all the networking is based on internet and right now with COVID it's more difficult and but my idea is mostly okay let's do meetups okay or be online but I'm not again I'm more like like I will say my brain is more into the numbers the programming and what it helped me a lot is when traveling to France where I met this my a blind friend and I learned like okay this is a problem there's a problem that I actually I didn't know and now I know so there's must be a way to solve this problem and um being in LA I couldn't see that happening just because I don't interact with blind people often but I know they exist it's just like okay I need to I need to now that I'm back in LA I'm interacting like learning more about the people in the blind people in LA the visually impaired people in LA so it's been to me like very important in terms of the entire diversity it actually come from Venezuela as you said and the diversity part of the whole environment is important in the way that in LA actually it's weird someone that's come from LA is actually people from everywhere and it's gonna I think it's gonna that's gonna help me a lot with with my project thank you very much for sharing Carlos and I'm going to have some follow-up questions in the second round and perhaps after we can tackle I mean it's very interesting that you were mentioning about the the public sector is one of the gaps great and to understand further if that's a matter of you know regulatory frameworks or it's just the environment the niggling environment with the network that you need to tap on so but next we have Zaneb I hope I'm pronouncing right and if I'm not correct me can you also share us with your creation right tick mill where the the how do you think where the this pressing challenge is that you have as an innovator in your ecosystem thank you very much Rekha and yes you pronounce my name right it's Zaneb so I'll present a narrative of two worlds also my innovation journey started from Pakistan and if I say and talk about the region of America I'm taking a transition as I moved here like eight months back so I'm finding my way and navigating through here when I started my journey I would say to be honest that I didn't know what I was doing is called innovation it started off from a very basic problem in the society that there are children and they are digitally isolated from the world and they do not have access to education so I was started it with that problem while I was a student in my university and I was I knew this is the problem in the world in my country in my society around me and I have to you know fit in myself to solve this problem so I started my journey from there with time I grew with my team I had access to many communities but the problem was that I was running on a system of grants and funding and donations right so now the innovation was that I was creating a technology for the communities in rural areas where there's no access to technology but at the same time I had a product that could be offered to those children who are in established schools the same product could be a revenue generation model so there comes the innovation a sustainability model so my innovation journey well I would say that it's taking a transition started from a non-profit volunteer work attempting to solve a very big problem of the world that is 258 million out of school children no access to education no access to digital literacy but identifying what product could actually be a source of you know sustainability for these children connecting the children in the school established school systems and making their them as a support for those that are not in school so this is I'm trying to connect I'm trying to refine my product I'm trying to find the right connections Valentina is here she has been my mentor along this journey in this boot camp so these are the connections that matter and these are the connections that I look forward to in the you know upcoming time in in refining my innovation journey so this is the narrative of two worlds Canada and Pakistan already yeah and that's perfect Zaneb and I guess with COVID what we also learn is that the world is much more less with borders and we are all children of many worlds together we're humanity right so but thank you very much for sharing your journey your and your motivation I guess it's not also a surprise that we have the previous winners now mentors and and the current winners for the the ITU innovation challenge awards and so it's the network that needs to start building and it's also doing what you pitch for anyway so next and our last speaker for this round is also Nelson from Honduras who is the founder of Macau Tech and I guess Nelson you've identified with Zaneb in terms of the educational challenges that you were trying to face but please tell us your journey and your motivation how did you feel like being this innovator in the ecosystem in our region hello everyone how are you I hope you're doing great I will talk in English but please let me know if my English is a little under rusted side to switch to Spanish but okay I think my journey is more of a multiple journey in the sense that I have been really active not just like in the entrepreneurship myself but helping entrepreneurs in that regard I am started week in progress facilitator I organize events so I have got to know a lot of these ecosystem of this new growing ecosystem and well I have found two big challenge that needs to be addressed in order to start having all these companies with really impact on society I think the first problem is that Honduras as a country is really politicized yeah it's really polarized so I have talked with all these people and government funding for example which is the largest funding program on the country becomes a liability yeah so they become a hardship that means to the address instead of a help you know like they give you money but they give you tons of work that are not related to your company right more like paperwork more like come to this press conference because you win etc etc the other problem is actually education like the numbers are like two thousand people are currently signed on on a computer science degree out of 10 million people so just to get a number of access to education in general in Honduras is really difficult like five to ten percent of the people has access to public education systems at the Heiger degree like the bachelor degree it's only like five to ten percent of the people that can access it be at the public system right like the free system so those are the challenges that I have found in the ecosystem and that that is why my project is born right like trying to take people that has to succeed not on an entrepreneurship level but on a technical level like people that are working outside of the country Honduran people that went to France that are living in New York that are work that are based in Honduras but are working for I don't know an Amsterdam company right so taking all these success stories and putting it in putting them out there like look these people these people have succeeded has found better life in tech and like kind of teaching them the tech they do but at the same time like giving them this feeling of achievement like they can achieve this too right so that's a little bit about the environment here in Honduras that's perfect Nelson and thank you very much I mean it's also the perfect link for my second round of questions I guess that you've already started and which is about as an innovator right and then someone working in this environment to boost other innovators to flourish what do you see as the kind of perhaps it's not only one but trying to prioritize what is the gap that is missing to make this digital ecosystem in Honduras but also if you can go more specifically you started mentioning kind of where the public sector can be helpful or either this is more of the private sector so what is missing and who could take action for it okay so I think the key component that is missing is really on the vision side of things right like the way we set goals in Latin America has been a copy paste from Silicon Valley or Boulder or Boulder Colorado sorry that are the two major ecosystems in the United States right and all of these people have sold us their literature their books their media and these has been I think a problem when we define a success in Latin America people have this mental image that success looks like Facebook that success looks like Google like Airbnb and yeah it's it's kind of success but is it success in our context like I get the feeling that this is a bigger problem in the ecosystem because these big goals these unicorn mentality like my company will be successful when it turns into a unicorn it's what makes the landscape very political right like everyone wants to take a company and make it a unicorn and then say the Honduran government made this unicorn or there's a bank here that has a really good program but it has their liabilities too because they do they do do this like they take these companies and their end goal is tell the world we create Honduras unicorn here it's what it was thanks to us right so I think the first thing to tackle is this mentality right because this ends up being a contest right like did the private sector made the first unicorn did the public sector made the first unicorn did I don't know right did this incubator this accelerator made an unicorn or made a big company here like they are always in this fight right and this leads to a lot of cannibalization on resources right like instead of sharing and building together they are taking what's a speaker from the other like I remember sorry this will be a short story the government funding program had for their challenge winners to get the money they had to sign an agreement where they agreed to be just a mentor for people on that program right like they could not go I don't know to community programs like start a weekend or programs on the private sector not like if they want the money they have to sign that they will only be mentors for the government funded programs right and I think the other challenge that needs to be addressed is technology that's why I'm addressing it right now like tech education right like it's easier if you have these mass of tech talent and you start teaching them like hey you can do your own company you know you can be right because we have this problem that you cannot be competitive on the world landscape if you are not technically able right so people on the outside are talking about artificial intelligence quantum computing uh cryptocurrency and you're stuck here with a lot of engineers that no war press you know so how can we generate value out of these people that has these outdated skillset right how do you generate value to the world so I think that are the top two problems that need to be solved at least on the Central American region fantastic Nelson and I guess it's very important where you bring at the beginning also in terms of the culture for what success looks like and how we need to take this and develop this vision within the region if you were able to listen a little bit on the session on the first session for for the regional forum we had for example Mercedes Aramendia she's the head of the telco regulator for Uruguay and she mentioned over and over how important it is as a government to be handled and and understand that this is a new field in terms of how government operates and and you need to listen in what are the the the ways to solve instead of putting top down some of this this but of course also there are different countries within the region and and we all need to learn from from each other but thank you very much Nelson and next we have Sanay and perhaps as being you know working with your world you can also tell us a little bit more about what do you feel is missing right and and where is this gap to to really achieve the potential that a universe can can have I think I'll start with the quote and you see some great scientist I think I don't remember his name he mentioned that carbon actually same form the same wants to become a diamond or a gray pipe and the difference is in the connections the connections how they build and how those connections turn out to be beneficial I find that the real gap is finding the right connections the connections the connections that actually work and turn out to be beneficial for me it was difficult finding the people who are aligned with my ideology with my vision and where I want to see the education and how I want to see the technology transformation in education yes when I find those people I connect with them and that's how things work they are their chances of collaboration partnership you are complimenting each other's strengths and the weaknesses are you know complimented by each other especially if I talk about developing countries the culture of actually you know giving a nurturing environment to the entrepreneurs giving them the right connections this is the platform where you should go and you will find the people who you want to connect with and they will share their experiences and they'll walk you through those paths they have walked and that will be a lot I think easier to navigate your way now what's happening I see that everyone if I talk if I talk about Pakistan they're saying okay I want to be an innovator or I want to be an entrepreneur and I'm going to start and all of them are starting from the same point they have their own journey they're falling getting up brushing there and self up then going ahead but there's so many who walk through those paths right they don't have to do that again and again how about if we connect them all and connect them in true sense and if they align and make those connections work and I think this is the gap the real gap the which I would say these are the entrepreneurs supporting networks that should be strengthened in a way that can actually give benefit to the young entrepreneurs especially those who are just starting and they have a lot to you know tackle in their future so I think this is the main gap for me from my personal experience that's perfect Sanayip and I guess next we have also Carlos who is enjoying I think also many worlds in terms of the challenges for this network and Carlos for you what is this big gap what is missing to really achieve the potential well as you mentioned I'm from Venezuela I had to leave the country because there's no support at all in my country unfortunately so you have to try new places fortunately I'm here in LA which is now it's trying to become the next Silicon Valley even if it's not but LA has been putting a lot of money in fact they put like a couple of billions actually and it's growing actually very fast which which is awesome at the same time LA is being focused more in the Hollywood side you know like the only movies and now it's investing in more and more but at the same time the talent is also usually coming from education from you know we have a lot of amazing university universities so they have UCLA USC Coltec the Jet Propulsion Lab too so they take people they take those talent from them what about but what about the other people that is just just came here they don't know anyone how can you help them like how can you make them access all the resources all the VC monies actually just distributed in I don't I don't feel like not distributed properly there's about I don't know 90 VC firms in in here and then in the LA County and I believe it should be distributed properly for people that actually are not that have not been here for a long time and didn't use the education that LA supports or the LA provides you so in that case to me it's in it's been more difficult it's same with the connectivity same with the access to the public sector which is stuff especially for my project which is is very important having the public sector input so in that way Los Angeles even though it's it's fast growing startup ecosystem in the U.S. the fact that it's the fastest one it's still like having some gaps in in that regard the fact that being not European not American not I mean I'm being Latin it's not a problem I'm not saying that it's just like it's you need more connections in terms of maybe language barrier maybe maybe the lack of of having a proper education even though you're innovative maybe you didn't have you know like you didn't go to an engineering school or to a business school or whatever it's it's it's the fact that you have less opportunities and I'm talking about and I get I'm pretty sure it gets worse if you're a woman which is it's really sad so in that case I will I will love if those things will change here thanks a lot Carlos and I guess tapping all the inequalities rate for inclusion it's it's pretty much important and you've connected to I'm calling Max the Sean and I think Sean connected to some of those challenges in terms of the not being prepared right for your education in terms of to to be an innovator and and what it takes to to to hold your own company but Sean so apart from this what else do you think it's missing in terms to to to help boost this innovation well so I will actually touch on what Zahid and Nelson shared a little bit and I would identify the human connection I think the human connection in the whole process of of building ecosystems part of it is missing it's more transactional based than relationship building and so for instance when you have these different ecosystem innovation challenges etc a lot of time it's really looking at how can you screen out ideas as quickly as possible rather than understand who the innovators are what problems that they're solving and really trying to see how you can support that innovator I also look at in terms of the silos so because of how the silos are constructed you don't as you say you don't have coordination of the system and so you really need to connect innovators to each other and really get people to understand what are the opportunities that are available how can you collaborate and build partnerships with others in order to then get your product or your service to your customers without without that and without existing being able to tap into existing systems is very difficult for an entrepreneur to actually create all of these systems and then get your product to market so I think that quality of relationship and then tapping into those existing networks and partnerships are key and it's what I believe is missing. Perfect Sean human connections either you were face-to-face prefer to be your own line it's all important to keep that in mind but thank you very much and at last for this road we have Valentina Valentina you've been working now for a while with this innovators ecosystem and so what do you feel is that the the priority is missing to really boost the ecosystem? On my perspective I will have to agree with what Carlos mentioned and also Nelson for me it's education maybe in different levels I think that from my experience as I work with the government what I see is that we lack of a common vision or a shared vision as all these different institutions kind of work separately so on one side you have institutions like the one that I work in that is supporting innovation and new ways of doing things for example I don't know, electromobility and then we have another institution that for example the minister of energy or transport that is forbidden electromobility in a way so that kind of disconnection between institutions that work for the same government it's just weird it's like you are really not talking to each other so this is kind of my ideal that we have this common vision of the country that we work to be to be or even for the region and somehow I think that will help to all these different organizations to know where we are going where we are heading and maybe you will have find different ways of achieving that but you are going for the same shared vision and goal so I think in the weight of the education I also feel that as this is not a contribution or project this is a still a very close environment for many people and there is a lot of people out there like that it's not really connected with all these technology and digital businesses and blockchain and all these words that we like are familiar with so I think this is a way of putting closer this this world of innovation and technology entrepreneurship to the people that today are not really having access to any of that because they are struggling with all their things in their lives and this is very far away from them so I think that education in the very first levels in terms of technology for example will help us also to build a stronger ecosystem as we will have people with the right skills and abilities in order to actually work in startups or innovation and companies for example and on the other side it's something like I mentioned at the beginning education in terms of the people that is already in the ecosystem and maybe are young entrepreneurs that this is a learning process this is not something that you will come up with an idea and you will succeed one year later maybe this is going to take a few fails first you have to keep learning and you are still learning when you are developing your project and something that came to my attention is that when I talked to one of these guys he said maybe even the 20s is not the best age to start a business because you don't really have experience in how to run a business so maybe you should actually start working for some company in order to understand how this is how this works and because you may have all the technical abilities but this is also has something that has to be sustainable in time and be able to like survive and get income so they're still running on time so maybe the best way is to get a little bit of experience and how is what is that enterprise what is the business how to run it and get some commercial skills network skills and then you are going to have like a better foundation to start a startup or to run a business so I would say that I will I would say that the gap that could actually somehow make this environment better would be to have this ambition and to have education at the different levels so as this is all is something that is already happening I would say that we have to actually look at the young generations because otherwise they are going to be grown up later and they are going to be completely lost in this new world and maybe without the skills they will need to have in order to succeed or to have an opportunity out there that's very wise words Valentina and also in terms of I think it's the paradox for our generation and also the the information society that we are in in terms of we do have a lot of information probably much more than the previous generations but not necessarily you have the knowledge behind it because you need to how you digest how you appropriate from this information and that's all about the education of the culture and the environment you were in you are growing in and I guess in a very quick exercise if you think about even in the past five years what came in terms of technologies is some are really surprises and surprising examples that we were not prepared to even being more of the digital natives but anyway but thank you very much for for everyone for for sharing some of your perspectives I know we have just half an hour and we still don't have any questions coming in so let me tap into one more round among us and I'm going to start perhaps with Zana if you've mentioned your in your experience right that your journey came from this is part where you wanted to have all kids to give access to kids to kids to to education right but apart from I mean your your journey itself how do you see what do you see are the problems you're trying to solve in the world but also in terms of the innovation yeah I think I'll try to you know do justice with this question you know it's ironic we are trying to get our foot on Mars star civilization there and everything but at the same time they are like 258 million children across the globe with no education access and digital literacy if I put it into words like it's like three or four times the total population of New York and imagine if all of this population had never access to education imagine for yourself for a moment that if there was just a time traveler and he could have one superpower to erase one day from your life and that is the day that someone held your hand and then took you to school erase that didn't happen right if that didn't happen where you would be at the moment at this very moment so for me my inspiration did come from a very young boy who actually flew from Afghanistan everything ended for him all I could give him was some education and he got through you know that difficult time and then I looked around in my country that there are 22.8 million children with no access to education where do I start from it's a big thing and maybe I wouldn't be even a drop in the ocean if I start my journey but I did start from 45 children reached out to 1500 out of school children and now I'm saying that there are children all across the globe in Africa in the you know the refugee camps the children in the war they need a solution that is suited for them yesterday I was hearing the talk of Nasir he was saying that creativity is in the captivity we know there is captivity we know there are limitations we know there is no internet over there we know there are no schools we know there are no teachers over there we know there is no infrastructure over there let's build something that caters to all of these needs there are multiple age groups I'm talking about the education level of primary basic level like starting to learn from the very first step so now you have to offer something that is completely out of the box keeping in mind all of these limitations so where there is no electricity use the renewable energy sources there are portable solar generators where you think their online system doesn't work shift into offline systems where you think that you cannot progress track it involve the technology to automate it and progress track through machine learning and artificial intelligence where you think the teachers cannot be trained give them all the content that is available there's so much content available why we are not making use of it why we are not generating the impact so my innovation is connecting all of those dots making a model that works for them in their communities and I am open to you know giving suggestions to all of those people who are struggling to give education to their children that let's build something that suits your environment and that cater to the needs of your children because there is an Elon Musk out there in these children there's a Steve Jobs there there's another Bill Gates there there's so many other Nelson Mandela there these are the children that needs to be given this opportunity I didn't choose where I was born is it their responsibility where they were born no it wasn't their choice no one wants to be born in a bar zone no one wants to be born in a place where there is no school no electricity or nothing so if this is the problem you have to find an innovation that suits to their need and I have a story I mean out of 1500 I have so many stories that gives me motivation on every single day like Maria is like 12 years old and she doesn't have she was very young when she lost her mother and she started her journey one year back and so she is a digitally isolated in a village very small village it is a in the area of church only suns a desert place right and it never rains there when it rains there's flooding that's the situation there and in this one year she learned basic literacy and numeracy and all of that and she set up one you know a little bit of shop in her own village and she started her own entrepreneurship journey in her own village so that's the opportunity that we need to give them and that's the problem that I'm going to solve and I will solve it wherever I can get the right connections and this is one of the forums so that's it from my side I think. Fantastic Sanaib and I I I do hope you can find all the connections that you need because this is not only such important I don't want to be lame like so important and so amazing but but it is right and you were showing a very realistic way that to change the world you need to go one step at the time just do what you can right here right now and then build that up and replicate and find the other hands and voices that you can bring along together so congratulations it's very very inspiring I'm I hope there are many hearing this right now or just later and and can join and and support your project it's really amazing and then also Carlos I guess I'm going to call you next in terms of what is this problem you started mentioning your journey with your friend and and when you get closer to people with disabilities and and and how to bring them in but would you like to tell us more about what is this problem that you were trying to solve and how innovation is bringing that in? Well yeah I have an inspiration it's my friend Venezuelan friend she lives in Paris and I was there I was let's let's see out you know I haven't seen you in a while so I realized how difficult for her was you know to navigate the outside world I was like imagine you like even us like non-disabled people you get lost you can get lost easily even with your google maps imagine if you're visually impaired it gets even worse and I started asking her like hey how do you do this and how do you this and then she tells me she tells me stories where she have to reach out people she have to she relies on help from other people just to navigate because every time she goes to a new place it's a problem and yeah they have other options other apps but they rely on a satellite on a satellite and you have you know buildings that block can block your signal and it becomes a problem and then you waste time you probably feeling secure you are I mean it creates a lot of I would say like stress on them and it's not only her of course she told me another stories and it's a whole community we're talking about millions of people that are having the same issue and we all know about this it's just like the problem that we have the the solutions that we have right now are not very specific for this so in my case it's a whole system where it's of course it's a it's an app as well but it relies on loudspeakers where it tells you like feed accurate and where's your position especially nowadays that with COVID that they cannot reach out to other people for help because you have to maintain the social distancing rules of course but in this case if there's something new like in Paris for example they have to access some hand sanitizer booth that they have to go there after they they go to the subway but she doesn't know because it's something new that they change every day but with this technology you can actually access those specific spots all in real time of course and very accurate something that you know Google Maps is not going to be able to do like even bus stops like something easy like you should do you should be able to do is like it's not possible they you don't have as you know there's a bus station there but you don't know exactly where it is you have to rely on someone else and that's that's a lot of stress I mean you don't want to do that and at the same time the visually impaired visually impaired people the community is part of the economy they can bring a lot of you know work and new ideas and they can be part of the economy the community the entire system but these limitations are there and you know I'm trying to help that and make it make it work that's another amazing inspirational work Carlos and thank you very much for sharing I guess same as then I hope that many are hearing and you can get more support over I guess even to connect in LA with more people and more Latin and others who are interested and next we do have one comment I just want to point out I'm not sure you can all see the Q&A but it's a comment from Facundo Monti and he's saying that the main problem is that the university don't teach about how to entrepreneur for decades and I guess if all tap that in different levels so that's a good one and that brings me to Valentina then Valentina also brought that up in your journey and Valentina for you what is this a problem you were trying to solve where does your inspiration come from all right this is the tough one because I think that we try somehow as a program we try to cover so many gaps but at the beginning so what we first tried to solve it was what I mentioned at the beginning like try to change the mindset and the people inspire into the digital business technology and so on but on the side of the startups and the entrepreneurs themselves I think that we are trying to give them support somehow educate and give them access to these different subjects that we think that will help them to achieve their goals and not necessarily for the startup itself but in life like they have access to this knowledge that maybe in another country they wouldn't have so we try to add value in that way we also try to build a strong network for them so we are able to open doors that it will be extremely difficult for them to open themselves just knocking doors so we try to get these very strategic alliance in order to be able to offer them and get them connected with big companies and big stakeholders in the ecosystem you know somehow make it a little bit easier for them to get into the different markets here in Chile and abroad in the region and also we also give them funding in order for them to validate prototype and hopefully become a successful startup so I would say that we somehow try to cover different subjects different gaps that we have right now in the country and that's our little grain of sand that we can that we can make but on the side of of the project that I have the chance to support in as a as a care manager I would say that the big category that they they try to work in is sustainability I have a lot of agro agro tech projects that try somehow to improve the way that we are producing these the the food and and and these agro products that today we have a lot of eating pesticides and the supply and everything so there are different solutions trying to improve that make it more efficient and more sustainable in time and also some of startups are trying to create plant-based food and even creating the the algorithm on how to build this and open it up for everybody that really actually wants to make a change in the food tech industry and and also also education we have a lot of startups that are trying to find a way of improve education or make it more interesting for kids today as they already have somehow access to technology the whole educational system in somehow outdated so they're also trying to make an impact and a difference there that's perfect Valentina and uh you do have this umbrella where you are the bridge right the bridge exactly as we don't have like in a specific industry we really have to go one by one and see what god can recover so yeah that's a real challenge that's a real challenge but that's a a good one right and also I think it's amazing to work with these different markets or industry shares where sometimes you do have this all digitalized and ready to go but sometimes it's more of a traditional market where you are bringing them in full force and and introducing to a new not only way of working but a new society so that's amazing I can feel the inspiration there so next we have also Nelson Nelson uh I'm sorry I just saw you cutting a little bit I hope it's not my connection dropping we still have some time to go but Nelson I wanted also to hear from you I mean in terms of your inspiration and what is the problem that you were trying to solve in not only noduros I guess you've mentioned that in the beginning but uh what is there you know tickling for you okay okay I think this is a tough one for me too I don't think I have a emotional story like Sainia and Carlos I think mine is a little more on the pragmatic side of things or well my story is like this I used to attend and to mentor and to organize a lot of entrepreneur events I used to mentor like the state program I did once I participate on the private sector events and organize some more grassroots events right and on all of these events we have a constant right so these people came in and they were different people that didn't knew each other and I mean on separate events right and they always came up with the same three startups right so they there were always like a tourism map always there's always a tourism map on on these hackathons on these boot camps on these estate programs there's always the transportation app like you need to catch a bus you can go catch the bus on my app right like the bus is going to be here at this time there's always and you get the point right like these people are always coming up with the same ideas and they never succeed that begs the question why right it's because well at least what we found out is that these people really what they are lacking is the knowledge to do something different right so when you put them to the exercise and you okay no this is entrepreneurship this is a startup no make your own startup they will come and they will use what they know right like basic programming tools and they will tell you here there you have it I will have a tourism app that people can come online to www.honduras.com and they will see the places they can visit right because that's what their technology knowledge leads them to right so I think one of the other problems is the the people that have the technical knowledge go out from Honduras right like why will you stay here with all of the social problems with the money devaluation etc etc etc that I'm sure people in Venezuela and Argentina can relate to maybe Honduras is really on the same track maybe people don't know because it's smaller than those countries but why why will you stay here when there is opportunity for you to work on a company on a big company in the United States right so we took all these people and tried to reconnect them with the Honduras ecosystem like come here well not only the Honduras ecosystem it's really open for all Spanish speakers that's our only rule you have to speak in Spanish to give your workshop because language barriers right it won't say about purpose to talk in English but yeah so that that's our main goal like having these people take the technical abilities that lead them to a good job on the outside and pass on that knowledge to young students right so on the next hackathon we go to on the next bootcamp we make you will come to these people and ask them to make your own startup and they will start thinking about yeah we are going to do business big data analysis as an outsider right we are going to take we're going to make an iot device for this and that yeah so it's not just the basic the basic info website but it's something that people can actually find value in that's that's from my side and that's very goodness and you played there it's not you have a good story you were thinking about the emotional but pragmatic is also about changing the lives and what you were trying to change right and so this is very very good thank you for sharing and i'm i'm so sorry i'm i'm going to rush just we have just 10 minutes to end i don't see any uh oh just as i said there is one more question but before that i'm not missing shon to share his inspiration and shon what are you trying to to uh to change what is your problem that you're trying to solve okay so my startup well first of all the name of my startup is Ipsum Technologies and we got started seven years ago when i met my friend Marlon who is totally blind so i'm working on a problem very similar to Carlos in that we will actually identify the issue of navigation um in colloquial terms one of my co-founder he said um i can't see past my nose i need something that could help me navigate and so we actually collaborated and we developed a prototype which we call the movie assist and so we were able to build an application similar to Carlos again where but in this case what we did is we actually utilized something called ultrasonic sensors to navigate to be able to detect obstacles within a physical indoor type environment and then process that information and then provide instructions so what our device would have said was left clear right block right clear left block and we could have calibrated it to do a lot more than that but we wanted to keep the instructions very simple based on the feedback that we had from the community so that would have gotten me I would say started but what I had some difficulties with is when you're trying to build an electronic device you have to go through um FCC certification you have to test things in laboratories and that's a very expensive process and so I realized that I I could not continue on that part it's it's a it's a need that that is certainly not met in the current circumstances but based upon the challenges with raising finance and being able to show an economic return on investment to you know in preventive capitalists it was a very difficult sell so eventually I I assess what the problem that we were trying to solve which is how can we help persons with disabilities those who are blind those who are deaf those who may have some form of physical impairment and so we pivoted and we looked at how can we do digital accessibility right where we could identify mobile applications web applications identify what are some of those challenges that persons made with disabilities face in being able to access information education job opportunities and the help to develop work along with companies essentially to help to develop accessible websites and mobile applications and so I've been doing that for the last two years more or less refining the model to to a point where I know that it works and I can work along with businesses to help them develop their web presence or their mobile applications in such a way that not only would they meet their target audience but they also are building it so that it includes everyone what I've also been doing is working with the community of persons with disabilities so there are various assistive technologies that they utilize like screen readers screen magnifiers if you you have low vision as well as you have mobile there's certain types of chairs allow for you to be able to move around fairly quickly with um that uh actually have the applications built into them so it's not a standard wheelchair you actually can use the wheelchair together with your app and you can help to you can actually use that term to be mobile um and I've also been looking at the various types of assistive technologies to person help persons who are deaf so for example you have live captioning you have text live transcription etc closed captioning there are various things that people use how can we understand what is available and then make the volume of content that we have produced on a on the web accessible to persons who may not be able to see it or to hear it and so that's what I've been working on but as I said it's not a straight journey you have sometimes pivot and understand where the market opportunities are what are some of the barriers that you face and then figure out a way forward so that that in a sense um helped me at least through experimentation observation and working and getting that type of feedback be able to chat a new course but it certainly as with with the problem Carlos is working on I could definitely chat with him a little bit more um because I think that it's something that we could potentially collaborate on okay and you can literally see me cheering now that we found a connection in the panel and I do hope we have much more uh going on it's it's incredible and that's the idea of sharing right and you can um you know not only you share the problem and the problem as you said Sean are moving targets so the problem also changed and you need new solutions to to tackle them and I guess like Valentina was saying sometimes you do need this bridge octopus mode to address all the multiple gaps that are coming from the view so that's amazing I guess we have four minutes left we do have one question that came in from Facundo Mondi he's asking about what I guess it's an open question for the panel in terms of the neoliberal policies and technology like in Argentina um that they had four years of pseudo technical revolution but was funding should speculation and I guess we are going to see much more of that going on with COVID we can avoid to mention that COVID has accelerated this digital uptake but at the same time we do have the fandom of the bubble and and and all those things financial bubble um coming in uh so with four minutes left I'm not uh unless anyone wants to tap this uh particular question uh I'm going to ask you guys for a tweet like uh 140 uh old tweet like um I mentioned uh to close the panel um you can either keep to a tweet or to a one word that would uh really emphasize uh how do you see innovation and the digital system how to unlock the digital system in the region um here we go I'm going to follow the the initial order Valentina you go first I would say it'll be about uh share vision and education here we go perfect um Sean so I'm going to share my tagline for my company which is digital inclusion for a better world we need more inclusion perfect uh carlos to me just one word actually it's just empathy that's what we need nothing else perfect uh zenith I think as we emphasized on connections so the right connections that would be the concluding remarks from my side great and last but not least Nelson okay uh I think I would like to share with everyone that uh success can look different than having an unicorn company changing the life of people its success too so you don't have to be making billions out of it if it makes the difference in your country if it makes different for people you care about it's enough there are more billions than only money but that's a perfect closure and thank you so much everyone for first sharing your story and taking the time um I think the time really flies when we are talking about our inspirations and and and what you guys are doing uh before we close in this one minute I also want to thanks everyone uh involved in the organization of this panel most of them are behind uh probably we we we cannot see but uh the interpreters um ITU staff um ITU americas uh and everyone that's been there uh thank you very much uh it has been great and I hope you can enjoy there is one more day for the the global innovation firm and tomorrow we are going to see the award ceremony right uh I guess you have some uh some uh some more to to uh to participate uh thank you very much and have a great uh well day afternoon and and see you on the next