Online - Adventures and Failures in Civic Tech during COVID-19

Join us as Tim Lipp provides his insights on launching a tech startup during a pandemic.

Is tech already reaching the upper limits of what it can do to enable civil society? If there was a limit, how close are we to reaching that limit? COVID-19 is an unparalleled opportunity to re-imagine how technology can shape society, because technology now defines the vast majority of our social interactions. What are we going to do about it?

Over a month ago our team sent out a survey to try and get a handle on what the real needs were as the COVID-19 crisis emerged. We already were a tech social enterprise and so it was in our nature to see how we could help “the crisis of our time.”

https://forms.gle/6WqdmnhT6BxFu1hr8

That survey set us on an interesting path full of insights and mistakes. I’ll share the survey results, and how we acted on it in the midst of juggling the management of our core product.

Our flagship product ( www.Beaverlodge.game ), just launched its beta nationwide. It began with a mission to give introverts a way to solve climate change, but has evolved to address a data asymmetry that costs taxpayers as much as $300/person. Our second product ( www.stopthecovi.com ) focused on mental health and mass isolation. Is there a social benefit from conspiracy theories? Can a few carefully-placed apps reshape the way that the world works?

That’s the dream anyways. In this talk our CEO will share some of the methodologies we’ve been using, lessons we’ve learned, and comedic failures we’ve completed. Serious nerd alert including economics, philosophy, linguistics, information theory and neuroscience. Bring your own curiosity (BYOC) and let’s see where the discussion leads.

Speaker Bio:
Tim Lipp began his career as a sociolingusitic researcher in Nepal, publishing a report that impacted the language resiliency efforts of a 300,000-member indigenous group. He then studied Economics and Accounting at Mount Royal University, winning awards in both and applying the lessons to two consumer-product social enterprises. After graduating he worked as an auditor at PWC (winning internal data analytics competitions), before transitioning to work as a product manager. In November 2019, he founded Beaverlodge Inc. which won one of Canada's largest social enterprise awards. If you really want to see him excited, ask about Mandelbrot or for one of his latest poems.

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