TED Community » Carlos Miranda Levy

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Promoting access to culture, education, human development and disaster relief through open collaborative initiatives, stakeholder engagement, options, opportunities, technology and entrepreneurship.

An idea worth spreading

Markets of Hope: An entrepreneurial approach to disaster response and recovery
with dignity, inclusion, generation and distribution of wealth.

Connect local stakeholders with a global market and improve and certify the capacity of local resources and their engagement by International Organizations.

Natural disasters disrupt the local economy and generation of wealth.

Most incoming resources are managed by foreign organizations and remain outside the local ecosystem. International relief funds are largely spent on foreign providers, resources, professionals and volunteers, excluding local stakeholders which end up depending on foreign aid.

Disaster survivors are resourceful and capable people able to fend for themselves and generate wealth if given the opportunity. The physical infrastructure may have been destroyed, but not the social structure. The buildings might be gone, but the professionals and the skills of the people are intact, ready to be put to good use.

Talk to me about

Creativity in Education, Local Innovation and Global Entrepreneurship. Open content and collaborative generation of knowledge. Never Helping: Enabling, Engaging, Empowering and Connecting.

People don't know that I'm good at

Breaking down complex processes into simplified visual maps which help others participate in strategy definition and implementation processes. http://www.socinfo.com/knowledgesociety/mapping

My TED Story

Following the 2010 earthquake, Carlos led 12 missions to Haiti, organically coordinated through social media and mobile technologies. 6 weeks later, he organized a workshop with the Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford University to process the lessons learned, from which the Relief 2.0 model was born: efficiently running the last mile in disaster response through independent units with local stakeholders in the field supported by mobile technologies and social networks to fill the gaps created by bureaucracy and top-down hierarchies.

Then, at the National University of Singapore Entrepreneurship Centre, he developed the Markets of Hope model: Disaster Recovery with dignity, inclusion, generation and distribution of wealth.

Following the 2011 Earthquake in Japan, Carlos organized TEDxEarthquake9.0 in Japan and TEDxPortauPrince in Haiti with the support of the Grameen Creative Lab at Kyushu University and the Ecole Supériore d'Infotronique d'Haïti.

Comments

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• A reply on Conversation: What can we do and what do we do about bullying?

  Jul 13 2012: I don't think video games desensitize gamers. If you are really involved in the game - the only level at which it would actually affect you and get to you - you feel it and are aware of your actions. At least from my experience. Just as playing video baseball will not get you into major league, playing flight simulator will not make a pilot of you and jumping from planes will not make you a paratrooper.
  
  Video games allow you to experience alternate realities and experiences, like reading a good book, listening to a moving story or watching an engaging movie. You are in control, but you always now it's fantasy and make believe. You care for the story, for the characters, for the outcome, but it's just as you care for your tennis match at the club or basketball game at school. Once it's done, it's done.
  
  The fact that I find harder to explain to people and for non-gamers to grasp is how engaging the gaming experience can be for the player yet how clear is its distinction from real life in our minds and sensory experience. Sure, sometimes you wish you could fly or move those boxes with a gesture of your hand, but is just as when you wish for Asteryx potion or Super Goof's Super Goobers in real life... :p
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  A reply on Conversation: What can we do and what do we do about bullying?

  Jul 13 2012: The disturbing element for me is to be conscious of the abominable behavior and yet continue with it because I benefit from it.
  
  Recently, though, in a similar situation where I was stronger than another player and had been taking advantage of it, the user took his time to respawn and I somehow I got distracted with something else and the newbie actually approached me without attacking me and faced me, like letting me know, "dude, I'm not your enemy and I'm not after you" and some unspoken understanding took place where I did not hunt him/her anymore.
  
  Weird moment, as I was wondering how we were communicating without talking, typing, just facing each other, exposing ourselves and not attacking, and silently came to some agreement, just like the same agreement I have with my dog companions, stray dogs I befriend, and every now and them other animals out there.
  
  Maybe there is more to communication than the act of communicating...

• A reply on Conversation: What can we do and what do we do about bullying?

  Jul 13 2012: Thanks. I have been returning to the same path every day... But as soon as it gets dark, I move outside to a parallel street across the park with fast frequent traffic, where I am probably at a bigger risk, but at least not exposing myself to the same attack I already experienced. It does get to you though, just 2 days ago I was biking on the street with traffic and another biker approached me from behind and said "vamos, ciclista!" (go, biker) and I literally jumped scared from the friendly salute :-(

• A reply on Conversation: What can we do and what do we do about bullying?

  Jul 13 2012: Real. I finished Atlas that day and it had been less than an hour since I had heard the lines I quoted. -- I listen to books using Audible while riding my bicycle - it gives me 2 hours of "reading" time every day :-p
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  A reply on Conversation: What can we do and what do we do about bullying?

  Jul 6 2012: Thanks. It all went so fast I still haven't time to process it. That's the main reason I wrote the story of it. One has to deal with such events, not just ignore them or put them aside or they will lurk in the back, affecting our mood and probably judgement. It was a violent attack, unprovoked, violating my private space, my precious 2 hour daily alone time, my right to freely exercise and ride my bike without bothering others.
  
  Worst part, I feel partially guilty of the attack, as it took place at 9:30pm in a dark street on an deserted park that is flooded with people and visible police and security presence from 5pm to 8pm. But that day I started late, and when the attack happened, I couldn't and still can't shake the feeling that it was my fault for riding alone out there so late.
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  A comment on Conversation: What can we do and what do we do about bullying?

  Jul 5 2012: To be attacked last night by two thugs on the last stretch of my daily 40km bicycle ride was the best way to finally finish Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Upon ducking to evade the first assailant with the same maneuver I practice everyday to avoid the low branches on the trees, I surprised the second brute with a hellish scream and raised my elbows to make him release his grasp on my chest. As I sped away the heavy steps of the one desperately chasing me and the other's cry of "catch him, catch him" were muffled by Ragnar Danneskjöld's final words in the book:
  
  "One of these centuries, the brutes, private or public, who believe they can rule their betters by force, will learn the lesson of what happens when brute force encounters mind and force". :-)
  
  (not exactly about bullying, but I guess Danneskjöld's words somehow reflect the sentiment of many in the ongoing discussion here).
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  A reply on Conversation: What can we do and what do we do about bullying?

  Jul 4 2012: Lovely episode and story.
  
  However, I am afraid - and many would point this out - the kind of bullying kids face today is far from the small town, neighborhood one on one bullying where kids could sort things among themselves. We have both digital bullying and harassment on social networks as well as increasingly violent or risky bullying. More and more, and younger, kids today have access to guns, knives and may be inclined to use them.
  
  It may not be enough, or even fair, to send a kid to man up against his or her bullies when he or she is in a position of disadvantage, both physically and socially.
  
  The abundant, yet limited in comparison to their actual numbers, reports of sexual bullying in the military academies, the youngsters who have perished by hazing gone wrong and the plain brutal confrontations and random killings of urban gangs, should make us think twice before embracing such a strategy.
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  A reply on Conversation: What can we do and what do we do about bullying?

  Jul 3 2012: And how would we do that?
  The church claims to do so. And so does any school that claims to include "values" high among its delivery of the academic curriculum.
  
  Can we as parents compete against the favorable conditions for bullying existing in schools and society in general and the praise of anti-values from media and meta-messages kids receive from the experimentation and discovery of society - as in the prominent role of movie and music stars which is not related by far to anything we may try to "inculcate"?

• A reply on Conversation: What can we do and what do we do about bullying?

  Jul 3 2012: Kevin Jacobson in this thread shares his own "split personality" super power to deal and overcome being bullied.

• A reply on Conversation: What can we do and what do we do about bullying?

  Jul 3 2012: Oh, but there is free will. From the meekest bacteria to the mightiest blue whale. Where there is life, there is free will. Only inanimate matter and chemical compounds are bound to the determinism of the laws of physics and even they are subject to randomness and the unpredictiveness of quantum mechanics.
  
  While your lack of belief in free will may not be a choice you make, your post expressing it is a manifestation of your free will, just as my response underlines the fact that we choose to do things - or not - even if our interest in such things does not come from our own volition but from imposed or external conditions to ourselves.