Tag Archives: Causes & Community

Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month

As the daughter of a Mexican immigrant, sharing Latino culture with my wider community is a daily part of life. From practicing Mexican folk dances with classmates to introducing neighbors to our favorite traditional foods, my family is always grateful to share our experiences as Latinos in the U.S. That's why I've been excited to help with Google's celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month — a time to reflect on and celebrate the contributions Latinos make to our company and our country.

Latino Heritage and Cultures collection

To kick off Hispanic Heritage Month, Google Arts & Culture published a dedicated collection of artifacts, archives and stories of Latino Heritage and Cultures from across the Americas. You can explore influences of Latino art and expression from ancient civilizations like the Aztec and the Inca from today’s modern street art in Puerto Rico, Argentina, and the United States. In total, the collection includes 55 institutions from 11 countries, 14K artifacts and artworks, 117 expertly curated exhibits, and 180+ virtual tours of heritage and cultural sites. See some highlights in our video:

Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month on Google Arts & Culture

Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month on Google Arts & Culture

HOLA celebrations at Google

We also celebrated Hispanic Heritage Month across Google’s campuses, where members and allies of HOLA, the Hispanic Googler Network, promoted Latino culture, leadership and civic engagement. On September 16, 50 Googlers from across the globe gathered in Washington, D.C., for a three-day Leadership Summit. There, we met with organizations like Voto Latino, brainstorming ideas on how to get out the vote; advised local organizations like the Latin American Youth Career Center and the Hispanic Heritage Foundation using digital tools in the classroom; and mentored students from the Georgetown Scholarship Program pursuing careers in technology.

HOLA members continued the HHM festivities in their home offices. Googlers in Mountain View hosted the rock band Maná, who spoke about their interest in social good and music. And just earlier this week, we welcomed Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez, who discussed the importance of access to Latino mentors, the value of immigrants in the American workforce, and the necessity of technology for 21st century careers. You can meet some of our HOLA members on our Instagram account.

Members of HOLA host Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez.jpg

Members of HOLA host Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month

Support for Latino students and families

At Google, we understand that diverse and inclusive environments are essential to building products and solutions that work for everyone. That’s why we invest in increasing educational opportunities for students of all backgrounds to pursue futures in technology. This month Google.org is committing $1 million to local Silicon Valley organizations to help close these gaps in educational success for Latino students and families.

Across the U.S., Latino students aren’t being adequately prepared for college experiences or college level math. In our own backyard, Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District, 73 percent of Hispanic high school juniors do not meet math standards — compared to 34 percent overall. So we’re providing Silicon Valley Education Foundation (SVEF) $750,000 to support its work narrowing the achievement gap through its student-focused programs, school district policy support, and collaborations with business communities to bring innovation into the classroom. Googlers are already active volunteers with SVEF’s summer intervention program, Elevate Math.

Google.org has also committed $250,000 to the Hispanic Foundation of Silicon Valley (HFSV), which aims to increase high school and college graduation rates for Latino students. Over the course of the next two years, HFSV will conduct Spanish-speaking Parent Education Academies that will reach parents of low-income, Latino students who are at-risk of falling off track. These workshops will ensure Latino parents are knowledgeable about the local education system and how best to support their children to achieve academic results and fulfilling careers.

As Hispanic Heritage Month 2016 comes to a close, we look forward to continuing our support of the Latino community — at Google and beyond!

Commemorating Václav Havel’s 80th birthday

To commemorate Vaclav Havel's life and work, Google Arts & Culture has partnered with the Václav Havel Library to present Tribute to Václav Havel, an online exhibition of photographs. This, along with three other existing digital collections, gives anyone the opportunity to learn more about this famous dissident, dramatist and freedom fighter.

Mapping global fishing activity with machine learning

The world’s oceans and fisheries are at a turning point. Over a billion people depend on wild-caught fish for their primary source of protein. Fisheries are intertwined with global food security, slave labor issues, livelihoods, sovereign wealth and biodiversity but our fisheries are being harvested beyond sustainable levels. Fish populations have already plummeted by 90 percent for some species within the last generation, and the human population is only growing larger. One in five fish entering global markets is harvested illegally, or is unreported or unregulated. But amidst all these sobering trends, we're also better equipped to face these challenges — thanks to the rise of technology, increased availability of information, and a growing international desire to create a sustainable future.

Today, in partnership with Oceana and SkyTruth, we’re launching Global Fishing Watch, a beta technology platform intended to increase awareness of fisheries and influence sustainable policy through transparency. Global Fishing Watch combines cloud computing technology with satellite data to provide the world’s first global view of commercial fishing activities. It gives anyone around the world — citizens, governments, industry, and researchers — a free, simple, online platform to visualize, track, and share information about fishing activity worldwide.

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Global Fishing Watch, the first global view of large scale commercial fishing activity over time

At any given time, there are about 200,000 vessels publicly broadcasting their location at sea through the Automatic Identification System (AIS). Their signals are picked up by dozens of satellites and thousands of terrestrial receivers. Global Fishing Watch runs this information — more than 22 million points of information per day — through machine learning classifiers to determine the type of ship (e.g., cargo, tug, sail, fishing), what kind of fishing gear (longline, purse seine, trawl) they’re using and where they’re fishing based on their movement patterns. To do this, our research partners and fishery experts have manually classified thousands of vessel tracks as training data to “teach” our algorithms what fishing looks like. We then apply that learning to the entire dataset — 37 billion points over the last 4.5 years — enabling anyone to see the individual tracks and fishing activity of every vessel along with its name and flag state.

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An individual vessel fishing off Madagascar

This data can help inform sustainable policy and identify suspicious behaviors for further investigation. By understanding what areas of the ocean are being heavily fished, agencies and governments can make important decisions about how much fishing should be allowed in any given area. Often, fish populations are so depleted that the only way to ensure they are replenished is to create “no take areas” where fishing is not allowed. Our hope is that this new technology can help governments and other organizations make decisions about which areas need protection and monitor if policies are respected.

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Kiribati's Phoenix Island Protected Area transitioning from heavy tuna fishing to a protected area
Partners have already started using Global Fishing Watch and have committed to providing additional data sources for greater impact:

  • Indonesia’s Minister of Fisheries and Marine Affairs, Susi Pudjiastuti, has committed to making the government’s Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) public in Global Fishing Watch in 2017. Ibu Susi has been a progressive leader for transparency in fisheries with other governments now expressing similar interest to collaborate.
  • Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations will collaborate on new research methodologies for reporting spatial fishery and vessel statistics, building on Global Fishing Watch and developing transparency tools to support their member states in improving the monitoring, control and surveillance of fishing activities.
  • Trace Register, a seafood digital supply chain company, has committed to using Global Fishing Watch to verify catch documentation for its customers such as Whole Foods.
  • Bali Seafood, the largest exporter of snapper from Indonesia, has teamed up with Pelagic Data Systems, manufacturers of cellular and solar powered tracking devices to bring the same transparency for small scale and artisanal fishing vessels, into Global Fishing Watch as part of a pilot program.
We’ve also developed a Global Fishing Watch Research Program with 10 leading institutions from around the world. By combining Google tools, methodologies, and datasets in a collaborative environment, they’re modeling economic, environmental, policy, and climate change implications on fisheries at a scale not otherwise possible.

Global Fishing Watch was not possible five years ago. From a technology perspective, satellites were just beginning to collect vessel positions over the open ocean, and the "global coverage" was spotty. There has been tremendous growth in machine learning with applications in new fields. Policy and regulatory frameworks have evolved, with the United States, European Union, and other nations and Regional Fishery Management Organizations now requiring that vessels broadcast their positions. Market forces and import laws are beginning to demand transparency and traceability, both as a positive differentiator and for risk management. All of these forces interact and shape each other.

Today, Global Fishing Watch is an early preview of what is possible. We’re committed to continuing to build tools, partnerships, and access to information to help restore our abundant ocean for generations to come.

Go explore your ocean at www.globalfishingwatch.org.

Source: Google LatLong


Promoting gender equality through emoji

ogbheader.jpg
More than 90 percent of the world's online population use emoji. But while there's a huge range of emoji, there aren't a lot that highlight the diversity of women's careers, or empower young girls. There are emoji like these for men:
7_14 Emoji.png
but with options like these for women:
7_14 Emoji 2.png
… the emoji representing women aren’t exactly, well, representative. So we've been working to make things better.

In May, we proposed a set of new emoji to the Unicode Technical Committee that represent a wider range of professions for women (as well as men), and reflect the pivotal roles that women play in the world. Since then, we've worked closely with members of the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee to bring the proposal to life.

Today, the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee has agreed to add 11 new professional emoji, in both male and female options and with all the skin tones. That’s more than 100 new emoji to choose from!

7_14-Skintones.gif

Unicode is also adding male and female versions to 33 existing emoji. For example, you'll be able to pick both a female runner emoji and a male runner emoji, or a man or woman getting a haircut:
gender.gif
These additions can be included in future versions of Android and other platforms—because Unicode helps make sure that people with different phones can send and receive the same emoji.

These new emoji are one of several efforts we’re making to better represent women in technology, and to connect girls with the education and resources they need to pursue careers in STEM. One such effort is Made with Code, which helps girls pursue and express their passions using computer science. Ahead of World Emoji Day this weekend, Made with Code is releasing a new project that teaches coding skills through the creation of emoji-inspired stickers.
emoji_blockly_ex1.png

We hope these updates help make emoji just a little more representative of the millions of people around the ? who use them.

Source: Android


Promoting gender equality through emoji

ogbheader.jpg
More than 90 percent of the world's online population use emoji. But while there's a huge range of emoji, there aren't a lot that highlight the diversity of women's careers, or empower young girls. There are emoji like these for men:
7_14 Emoji.png
but with options like these for women:
7_14 Emoji 2.png
… the emoji representing women aren’t exactly, well, representative. So we've been working to make things better.

In May, we proposed a set of new emoji to the Unicode Technical Committee that represent a wider range of professions for women (as well as men), and reflect the pivotal roles that women play in the world. Since then, we've worked closely with members of the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee to bring the proposal to life.

Today, the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee has agreed to add 11 new professional emoji, in both male and female options and with all the skin tones. That’s more than 100 new emoji to choose from!

7_14-Skintones.gif

Unicode is also adding male and female versions to 33 existing emoji. For example, you'll be able to pick both a female runner emoji and a male runner emoji, or a man or woman getting a haircut:
gender.gif
These additions can be included in future versions of Android and other platforms—because Unicode helps make sure that people with different phones can send and receive the same emoji.

These new emoji are one of several efforts we’re making to better represent women in technology, and to connect girls with the education and resources they need to pursue careers in STEM. One such effort is Made with Code, which helps girls pursue and express their passions using computer science. Ahead of World Emoji Day this weekend, Made with Code is releasing a new project that teaches coding skills through the creation of emoji-inspired stickers.
emoji_blockly_ex1.png

We hope these updates help make emoji just a little more representative of the millions of people around the ? who use them.

Source: Android