At
UN $1M Xprize for Women's Safety
Goes to Delhi Team Live Streamed
But Disparate Embargo Enforced
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Video
UNITED NATIONS,
June 7 – A project that
certainly sounds good, XPrize,
held an event in the UN on
June 6, to award a $1 million
prize to the best technology
solution to the lack of safety
for women.
Inner City Press
sent an RSVP saying it wanted
to live-stream it on Periscope
but was told, “Hi Matthew,
Thank you for your email.
Please note that we cannot
authorize any live recording
or image sharing on-site, as
all content from the event is
strictly under embargo until
Thursday, June 7th at 6am ET.
Kindly confirm you received
this and can honor these
terms.”
Inner City Press which honors
embargoes all the time, for
example in connection with the
International Monetary Fund's
biweekly media briefing where
it reports answers to its
questions on Yemen, Somalia,
Cameroon and Sri Lanka on a
delay, sent in confirmation,
and went to the event.
It
was in the UN's Xpress bar,
complete with tuna appetizers
and champagne and a crowd not
usually seen at the UN. In
fact, other than the UN
Security and food service
staff, the only UN presence
was a few correspondents most
of whom left before the award
announcement.
But
many in the crowd were not
only photographing but also
live-streaming the event. It
seemed clear that the stated
embargo no longer held, at
least for some. But in an
abundance of caution, Inner
City Press shot a video stored
to its phone, not
live-streamed, and did not
tweet the name of the winning
team, for example.
Leaving the event, Inner City
Press immediately emailed its
publicist: “Hi - I attended
and complied, shot some video
for later use, but saw people
live streaming and now see
these, for example here
and here
and here.
Can you
confirm the embargo is off?”
The
response was, “Hi Matthew,
thanks for your note.
Confirming the embargo is NOT
off, thanks for your continued
compliance!” This seemed
strangely - usually in these
circumstances the embargo is
lifted.
Unless the
embargo was unevenly applied,
a seeming trend in the UN.
Recently the office of UN
Secretary General Antonio
Guterres told Inner City Press
it could no
longer stream Periscope
video of Guterres' events in
his 38th floor conference
room, even as UNTV shot video
and audio and others shot
Facebook Live. This has yet to
be explained.
On June 6,
Guterres' spokesman Stephane
Dujarric told
Inner City Press it was not
surprising that Inner City
Press was banned from live
tweeting, even without any
attribution of the quotes, a
presentation in the UN Library
(including about oil
exploration in southern
Lebanon) by Jane's Defense
Industry Solutions IHS Markit.
Well, now at 6 am on June 7 it
can be told, and shown:
the winner of the $1 million
Xprize offered by Anu &
Naveen Jain is (or was) SAFER
Pro from Leaf Wearables (New
Delhi, India). The
description: “Led by Manik
Mehta, a smart safety device
that sends emergency alerts
with location details to a
users’ guardians when they
sense danger. SAFER Pro is a
small chip that can ultimately
be put into any device or
jewelry with a discreet
emergency alert button. When
the alert is received, it
additionally lets you record
audio from the time of the
alert.”
The other
finalists, each given
$50,000: Nimb &
SafeTrek (Los Altos, CA and
St. Louis, MO, United States)
– Led by Leo Bereschanskiy and
Nick Droege, Nimb collaborates
with SafeTrek to provide their
customers an option to call
for professional emergency
services with just a touch of
the thumb. The company was
founded in response to rising
concerns about safety on and
off campus. Both teams work
together to make the world a
safer place.
Saffron
(Bellevue, WA, United States;
Tsinghua, China) – Led by
Nicholas Becker, Saffron is a
collaboration between the
University of Washington and
Tsinghua University through
the Global Innovation eXchange
(GIX), focused on developing
wearable sensors and machine
learning algorithms to create
inconspicuous technologies
that improve the safety and
well-being of women around the
world.
Soterra
(Bethlehem, PA, United States)
– Led by Lena McDonnell,
Soterra used a combination of
global positioning services,
cellular data and bluetooth to
build a versatile, reliable
and affordable network to
connect women to emergency
support systems.
Artemis
(Lausanne, Switzerland) – Led
by Dr. Nicee Srivastava,
Artemis is developing a device
that can be used to trigger an
alert not just by a gesture,
but also by seamlessly
tracking emotional threat
levels.
We
need to know more how this
device tracks emotional threat
levels...
***
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