Visiting snow leopards in their natural habitat or hanging with penguins in Antarctica is a life-changing way to engage with nature but it’s not within the grasp of most people. So how can we leverage technology to offer that exposure and foster empathy for wildlife conservation? My guest today, Gautam Shah, figured out a way to combine his passion with entrepreneurship to connect people with wildlife in fun, unique ways.
Today we talk about why public engagement with wildlife is so important, and how using games can be more effective than current conservation tactics. Gautam shares some very cool examples of work they’ve done with partners such as Adidas and the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We talk about empathy vs. caring, how “behavior change” is not the primary goal of this work, and why many current conservation messages can derail efforts to engage everyday people by not having empathy for them. Toward the end, he candidly discusses the challenges entrepreneurs face to balance purpose with profit and the hard choices that one has to make to keep the organization alive and sustainable for the long haul.
To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
- If everyone had the opportunity to sit with an endangered animal, how many people would it change in favor of the planet? Though that’s not possible, there are ways people can engage individually in the change.
- Compassion is empathy in action. Empathetic people don’t suffer from a lack of caring, but often from not knowing how to take action.
- Internet of Elephants is using modern, creative ways to engage people in the story of conservation and making the stories told by the data gathered on the animals personal. They are making the stories of these animals personal to the individual.
“It’s a holistic process of thinking about the person and understanding their life before you can have any opportunity to think that you can introduce empathy for animals that might be very, very far away.”
— Gautam Shah
Episode References:
- FathomVerse: https://www.fathomverse.game/
About Gautam Shah, Founder, Internet of Elephants, National Geographic and TED fellow
Gautam is the founder of Internet of Elephants, a social enterprise that develops groundbreaking digital tools to engage people with wildlife. He believes that engaging the public with nature and its conservation is the most important thing we can do for the long-term health of the planet and that we need to find modern mediums to tell stories and foster that engagement. Video games are the defining media of our time, so Internet of Elephants tells nature and wildlife stories through thoughtful combinations of mobile games, augmented reality, and data visualizations that use GPS and other data gathered about animals and the planet. In doing so, they hope to catalyze whole new approaches to engaging the public with wildlife. Gautam is both a National Geographic and TED Fellow.
Connect with Gautam Shah:
Internet of Elephants: http://internetofelephants.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/internetofelephants/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ioelephants
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FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
Welcome to the empathy edge podcast the show that proves why cash flow creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host Maria Ross. I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator and empathy advocate. And here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society, it’s great for business. Visiting snow leopards in their natural habitat or hanging with penguins in Antarctica is a life changing way to engage with nature, but it’s not within the grasp of most people. So how can we leverage technology to offer that exposure and foster empathy for wildlife conservation? My guest today, Gautam Shah, figured out a way to combine his passion with entrepreneurship to connect people with wildlife and fun, unique ways. Gautam is the founder of Internet of elephants, a social enterprise that develops groundbreaking digital tools to engage people with wildlife. He believes that engaging the public with nature and its conservation is the most important thing we can do for the long term health of the planet, and that we need to find modern mediums to tell stories and foster that engagement. Video games are the defining media of our time. So Internet of elephants tells nature and wildlife stories through thoughtful combinations of mobile games, augmented reality, and data visualizations that use GPS and other data gathered about animals and the planet. In doing so they hope to catalyze whole new approaches to engaging the public with wildlife. Go to miss both a National Geographic and TED Fellow. Today we talk about why public engagement with wildlife is so important. How using games can be more effective than current conservation tactics. Gautam share some very cool examples of work they’ve done with partners such as Adidas, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium, we talk about empathy versus caring how behavior change is not the primary goal of this work, and why many current conservation messages can actually derail efforts to engage everyday people by not having empathy for them. Gautam shares the profound experiences that led him from IT consulting to a life in Kenya building a social enterprise. And toward the end, he candidly discusses the challenges entrepreneurs face to balance, purpose, with profit, or even survival, and the hard choices that one has to make in order to keep the organization alive and sustainable for the long haul. You’re in for a treat today. Take a listen. Hello, and welcome Gautam Shah, to the empathy edge podcast. I am so excited to have this conversation with you about empathy and nature and helping wildlife and endangered species. So welcome to the show.
Gautam Shah 03:14
Thanks very much. It’s very nice to be here.
Maria Ross 03:16
And you know, I’d love to tell folks our story of how we know each other. We know each other from college at Indiana University. And it’s been decades since we’ve reconnected but you’ve gone on to do quite a few impressive things. So for just a quick couple minutes. Tell us your story and how you got to this work.
Gautam Shah 03:33
Sure. Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, I started my right out of college right out of Indiana University. The only job offer I got was from a big IT consulting company called Accenture. Well, at that time, it was called Anderson Consulting. Yep. So I took that I took that job. And for the better part of for the better part of 20 years, I was working as an IT consultant for for Accenture. What I’ve always loved though was was animal and wildlife. And that’s, you know, that’s something that I think we all have as kids, but for me, it was just maybe it was a little stronger. It was just something that I was able to keep in touch with a little bit more. And so I would spend all my holiday time and all my salary on wildlife vacation, and I would travel the world and I would be without them. And I’ve been you know, I’ve been with everything I’ve been with, you know, you name the animal I’d probably you know I probably had some experience with with that. And I remember that I remember the moment very, very specifically I was it was in Antarctica, and I was sitting alone at the edge and it was a penguin. And I could see the entire you know, the entire ocean. And this penguin I’m sitting on like this is so spectacular. And it’s so gluttonous. Like the only person that’s benefiting from this particular experiences is me. And it was really a moment that was like this is I can’t I can’t go I mean, it’s so amazing, but it can’t take along this way at some point in my life. I’m going to have to figure out maybe it’s in wildlife or maybe it’s, you know in something else, but I’m going to have to figure out how I can put myself to better use then, and then what I’m doing now, fast forward a few years I got sent to Kenya, as again, as part as as part of Accenture. And I started getting a lot more exposure to lots of other, you could call them nonprofit sectors in agriculture, education, health, you could not get US economic empowerment. And I had a role to play in all of those, even though I knew nothing about nothing about them. And that gave me the confidence that there’s a role for me to play in wildlife and conservation and applying this, you know, to something that I really care about. So the way I see it is I put my perfectly good job, and was like, Alright, let me get into wildlife conservation. And, you know, and started to try and figure it out from there. And also, given that I was already in Kenya, and from Chicago. It didn’t make sense to start, you know, to travel back to Chicago to start my wildlife conservation career. Exactly. Right. And so yeah, so I liked Kenya. And you know, that’s where a lot of you know, a lot of conservation work is going on a lot of the problems exist. Yeah. And so I stayed, and I’ve actually, you know, I’ve been in Kenya ever since. Wow. And
Maria Ross 06:08
so how did the idea for Internet of elephants come about specifically? Sure. Well,
Gautam Shah 06:15
if we kind of go back to that moment, that I was sitting with the penguin, and it was like this tacular, or the moment that I was sitting with grizzly bears over the Rocky Mountains, or you again, you name it, they’re really intense experiences. They’re very, they’re very emotional, at least for me, they’re very emotional. And so just getting back to like, What if everybody could have this experience? And of course, they can. Yeah, but what if everybody could have this experience? How would that change the state of the world, if everybody had that those moments, like, if you could pick up 8 billion people and let them spend an hour with Iran, your time, you know, in the middle of a Bornean, rainforest? With 10% of those people, then you know what, it just wouldn’t change them with the way they buy things with the way they vote with the way they donated with the way that they live? Would it change, you know, just reshape it in favor of the, you know, in favor of the planet? And that’s what kind of really got me thinking about, alright, well, again, that can’t happen. But what are the things that I that I could do that might be the next, you know, the next best thing, and that’s, you know, again, my brain, of course, being an IT consultant for that many years, just thinks about, you know, thinks about it, and a lot of what was what was happening at that time was there’s a lot of talk about the Internet of Things, and how everything is connected. And people are connected to other people around the world, people are connected to the refrigerators people are connected to their doorbells. And I just kept thinking, Yeah, but what if people were connected to Iran, batons? And what if people were connected to elephants? And what if people were connected to sniff? You know, whatever, whatever it happened to be again? How would that how would that change things? And that’s where it’s like, well, what if, instead of the Internet of Things, what if there was an Internet of elephants, you know, in a way, and every day, you would wake up and you’d check what’s going on with, you know, my story of the elephant in Kenya? And that’s really where I just started to think about like, Okay, well, that’s the, you know, the basis for the concept. I don’t know what the business is behind that. But that’s what we’re going to try, you know, that’s what we’re going to try and achieve, we’re gonna try and figure out what would it take for you to get up in the morning, first thing, leaned over, pick up your phone and find out what’s going on with an elephant, you know, halfway around the halfway around the. So I love
Maria Ross 08:30
that. And I know, we’re going to talk about a few examples of what the technology does for people and how how you’ve creatively found ways to create that connection. But, you know, the reason we’re here is obviously, because there’s a connection to empathy here. And we talk about empathy being made possible through storytelling, but also through proximity. And so what I’m hearing is that you are trying to find a solution to the proximity problem of being able to see and have the experience and be touched by these animals, for people that don’t have the opportunity to go to Safari or go to Antarctica and all these places. So it’s really interesting how you leverage your your already existing skill of technology, to that social problem. And for you, was it about you know, and the answer could be No, but was it about trying to create that connection and create that, that caring that empathy, so that people would make different choices?
Gautam Shah 09:30
I think 100 100% I think empathy is the, you know, happens to be the right word. Very convenient. But yeah, so it is, it is about empathy. I, I don’t think it’s about caring. And I think this is a really, this is a really important point. And it’s something that in fact, I think, if you want people to empathize, you have to come come at it from the point that they already do care because otherwise it’s condescending, right like that. Now, I’m not trying to create empathy. I’m, I’m saying, like, in this position, like I really care and I just gotta get you to care and if only you care Everything would be, you know, it would be better and and pay. That’s, you know, that’s very pompous and be it’s, it’s not true people do care. Yeah.
Maria Ross 10:09
A lot. Yeah, it doesn’t mean they connect and see a point of view, it just means they care. It’s like how we talked about Yeah.
Gautam Shah 10:14
But we’re gonna we’re gonna do it. I mean, there’s nobody that would rather Uranga tons die then longer tons, you know, then Rhonda, tons live right? Next, it’s not about that. So there is some aspect of proximity, there is some aspect of what can i What can I do about it? There is some aspect of how do you enjoy address the, you know, the, the anxiety that people that people have, or the ambivalence that you know, that people that people have about this. And so a lot of it is that you can’t create the empathy unless you can understand unless I have empathy for you. So what the only way to create the empathy between you and the animal is if I can have empathy in the first place for your life, you know, for your life and the things that these things, you know, the way that you may experience negative news about nature and negative news about climate and like, I live here in St. Louis, like what, you know, what am I going to do about it, but you know, in a longer time in, you know, in Borneo, and yeah, it’s a very holistic process of thinking about the person and understanding their lives before you can have any opportunity to think that you know, that you can introduce empathy for, for animals that might be very, very far away, but I’m never trying to get them to care. I always try and come from a position that you do care. I just wanted to help you express that. Yes,
Maria Ross 11:32
exactly. And, you know, I tend to use other words to help people make this real for people. But we talk a lot about how empathy is not the same thing as being nice. It’s not the same thing as caring. It’s a different lever. And you can have empathy. But if you don’t take action on that empathy, which is compassion, compassion is empathy, inaction. That’s where it can be paralyzing. And it can, it can deter people from even feeling the empathy in the first place, because oh, there’s nothing I can do about it. So I’m just not going to be empathetic to the situation that’s going on. And so it sounds like you’re also trying to activate people, in whatever way it’s possible for them to take action. Is that correct? Yeah,
Gautam Shah 12:13
I think that that’s, that’s true. And we really, I guess, I want everything to come from you. Right? Like, I just want to enable it, enable it, I don’t want to tell you what you should do. I don’t want to try and change I like the term behavior change sometimes troubled me, I get it. Like, we all know what it means. But it’s also like, who am I to change your behavior, like, that’s not what you know, what we’re what we’re trying to do, I just want you to have exposure, and have access, and have a little joy in your life or a little sadness in your life or, you know, whatever that happens to be, you can make your own decisions about, you know, what you’re going to do with it. And that’s not going to happen overnight. I you know, I also don’t expect that like I never, we never try and make a game or a product, it’s like, okay, and then we’re going to measure this by how many people you know, change their behavior in two months. Like, that’s not how that’s not how these things work. That’s not how it works, or long, it’s a long term, you know, it’s a long term process, and it has to come from it has to come from you. I’m just trying to tease out these values that I think people have and just are always bombarded with most of the conservation messaging, I think that happens, actually has a negative effect. It has a positive effect for that small set of, you know, already converted. But if you’re trying to, you know, if you’re trying to broaden the tent, just constantly being poked with guilt, and constantly being poked with, like, awful images, or polar bears floating away on ice things are emaciated and ragged, that like that just, it’s just not going to, it’s not going to have it’s probably having a negative effect. Well,
Maria Ross 13:51
I love that, because that’s about having empathy for the people that are receiving the message and understanding that they are completely going to receive it from where they are. And, you know, I love how you’re balancing this, this, this purpose, with the entrepreneurial reality of you have to know your customer, you have to know what is going to resonate for them. Yeah,
Gautam Shah 14:13
and that’s what any business would do, right? Like every business would look at things from a customer’s you know, from the customer’s point of view, what is the customer data conservation sector serve, it doesn’t do that. It looks at things from their own point of view is like, Well, what do we need? We need these people to donate? What do we need? We know we need to it’s been one of the first things ever I wrote and published was it was about like, treating conservation, like a business, just from that point of view of like, how can we see things through the eyes of the customer of, you know, of conservation, and I’ve got to give a lot. I mean, I need to make sure that I give a lot of credit to a lady named Dr. Rene Eilertsen, who is the one that taught me a lot about, you know, the ambivalence that people feel the anxiety that that people you know, that they feel and I, when we message, and when we write the text in our games, and we talk with people, etc, that if we’re not taking that into account, we’re going to, you know, we’re just going to fall into the, you know, we’re going to fall into the same trap. So we’ve certainly learned a lot from from her. And all she does in terms of how she talks about climate anxiety and how, you know, we need to change the narrative, around climate around nature and so forth to be from the point of view of the of the person receiving it. Yeah,
Maria Ross 15:27
it’s absolutely I mean, I’ve done brand story work with nonprofits. And it’s, it’s getting them to have that shift of actually, the people or the group that you’re ultimately trying to help is important. But you are talking to the people that you’re trying to catalyze to help them and so they have different needs and different drivers than your actual, quote, unquote, end clients. And that is a huge epiphany for them to understand that, oh, we’ve been using guilt, we’ve been using the you know, in some cases, just the moral imperative. And like I said, about empathy, some, that’s not enough sometimes. And so it’s really about understanding where your people are, that you are talking to, and, and trying to give them that exposure and give them that story that could or could not compel them into some sort of action. But I love what you said about not wanting to be prescriptive about that behavior change, because that’s also off putting for people to from, from the social sector. right through it. Yeah, exactly.
Gautam Shah 16:31
Do this. Yeah, exactly. And especially like, if I think about like, Okay, we make games in many cases. And if it’s just very clear that this is a game that’s trying to get me to do something nobody wants, that’s not what people want, when they when they’re playing a game. That’s not what this is not what you you know, so my
Maria Ross 16:46
nine year old says that when we try to like, is this a learning game? Yeah,
Gautam Shah 16:50
yeah, exactly. Yeah. So.
Maria Ross 16:52
So let’s real quick dive into, you know, using these modern approaches, using gaming as a way to tell stories about nature and wildlife. So give us some examples about the things that the company does and the partnerships that they’ve built. Yeah,
Gautam Shah 17:09
sure. So funny. Also, to just say, modern approaches, it’s like,
Maria Ross 17:14
they’re actually not that mod is 2020,
Gautam Shah 17:16
these 2024, right, like, video games have been around since you know, whatever, the 50s. And they’ve been popular since the, you know, since the 80s. So so the idea that it’s even that is the people even still think that gaming is modern and avant garde, it’s such a sector, it’s crazy. There’s 3.2 billion people that play them. It’s a bigger industry than sports, movies, and television, you know, combined, but it’s still kind of in the in certain worlds. It’s still clubbed as you know, as well, I
Maria Ross 17:43
think what’s modern about it is the approach spirit to catalyze something. Where it to me, yeah, help people help improve help. Further purpose. I think that’s what’s sort of the modern approach is like, realizing there’s this hugely popular, hugely lucrative market have out there. But leveraging that for good.
Gautam Shah 18:05
In a way. Yeah. But yeah, it’s amazing that that is, you know, again, that that is considered something modern, something new. Yeah. What have we been doing? We’ve been doing, we just keep making films and documentaries and documentaries, and documenting how are we ignoring this channel, which is an amazing storytelling channel, which gets people deep into a story it gives them, it gives them agency, it gives them the chance to take, you know, to take actions, it’s measurable, it’s like every single thing, you know, that it’s it’s that, you know, that often is not but but yeah, sadly, it is still moderate. So let’s take Okay, so I’ll give you an example. You know, an example of something we didn’t build. But I think is, you know, perhaps that, you know, the best example of the of the way that we think about these things, I had always thought like, well, because I’m I geek out on the data. And there’s a lot of wildlife data that’s happening. And actually, as a company, we started by thinking, how can we tell stories from data, and there’s all this data that’s being collected by scientists and conservationists and find it’s being used for scientific purposes. But actually, it could be could potentially engaged, you know, an entire world. And so there’s a lot of GPS data on animals and how they in how they move. And remember what I was doing with me yesterday, just thinking about like, but wouldn’t it be really neat to like, I also have data from my watch that tells me how much I moved today. Like how many steps did I take today? Or how far did you know how far did I run? I wonder what that mountain you know what that snow leopard in you know, in Mongolia is you know, he’s doing on a daily basis as well. And I wonder like on a daily basis, like how many steps is he getting in? Yeah, just how many steps is he getting and how many stairs is he getting, you know, going, you know, going going up and down to a cigar. But that would be you know, that could be really interesting. And you could have animals at all sorts of different levels. And that’s how we should do that and there’s already fitness outside. out there, like, how am I gonna get people? This is where the business side of things comes in and you know, throws a big bucket of cold water on you. It’s like, yeah, that’s the coolest idea. But how are we ever going to get people to either add another fitness app to what they do or get them to move, that’s never gonna work. So I’m gonna go into the whole details of how it came about. But we partnered with Adidas, and they’re running app called Adidas, Adidas running and said, well, they already have a running app, they’ve already got 150 million people on it, why don’t we just incorporate the data into an existing, you know, into an existing app, and let their users you know, experience it through, you know, through something that already exists, of course, we’ll have to make some compromises on, you know, our ideals of how this should be done. But we’ll also have access to a lot of people that we would never otherwise have access to. So we partnered with conservation organizations on one side, to provide the data and the stories and the expertise when we partnered with adidas on the other side to provide that provide the platform, and we embedded these challenges into, you know, into the app that said, Okay, for the next 10 days, see, if you can run more than Google in this, you know, I’m going to use the Snow Leopard example, you’ll in the snow leopard from Mongolia, and you’re not going to know how much he runs each day. And we’ll use the actual data from, you know, what he did over a period of time. And every day, when you run, when you finish, you will then see, you know, at a particular time of day, in a in a way that you then, you know, submitted his own data, and a little photograph that he took while he was running. And then a little little storyline of like, you know, he just he wrote about his own thing. And I know, some people criticize it as being sort of, what’s the word anthem, more anthropomorphizing. And, of course, you know, of course it is, but at the same time, it’s a straight storyline about their lives, and what they go through and the conservation, you know, issues that they that they face. And you have millions of people that are every day getting a little bit of light into, you know, the life of a snow leopard, or an elephant or a pangolin, or, you know, a mountain lion or some of the other animals that we, you know, that we’ve done it with? And yeah, I mean, I think like I said, I think it’s one of the best examples of what we have what we do, because if we made that ourselves, it would have been way better. And a couple of 1000 people would have, you know, a couple 1000 People would have played it, because the list of getting people to use a different fitness app would have would have been on you know, unachieved. Right. Right. So I think yeah, it’s a good example of the right way to think about it from a business point of view from an impact point of view from a reach point of view from you know, from from from all those point of view, and I think like one of the, we get a lot of press on it. But the coolest press was Runner’s World. And, and that is because Runner’s World is writing about snow leopard. Right? Like their audience, our runners, their audience, our athletes, they want to read about the newest gear and they want to read about the newest running round Central, but Runner’s World is writing about is running about snow leopard. So in that small way, we’re creating this connection between an audience demographic that I guarantee that conservation you know, like nobody’s thinking about how do we reach runners, and we’re bringing, you know, the these animals in this wildlife, you know, to this to this demographic that again, they loved it. Right. Never think about snow leopards. But if you give them the opportunity to think about, you know, think about snow leopards and do it in a fun way that already reaches them, where they’re gonna go for a run anyhow, they will think about they will think Well, well, and it’s like what they do with it is a different story. But yeah, exactly. Least it’s there. Yeah,
Maria Ross 23:42
it’s like all the best principles of education is that is tying the thing the kid doesn’t want to learn about to something they are interested in, right? Like if all of my son’s math and essay writing assignments could be tied to anime shows, or, you know, Pokemon or whatever. Yeah, he’d be, he’d be way more interested in it. And it would it would open the aperture for him of what’s possible with those disciplines. And that’s what I see you doing there. It’s like, this is tied to something you already know and love. And now we are exposing this animal, their story, the conservation issues around it, but not in a heavy handed way. Exactly. Yeah. So what what’s one that you guys have developed that you’re pretty proud of that? Yeah. Is that a good example for us?
Gautam Shah 24:31
I think probably the one that I’m most proud of is a game called will diverse, which, sadly, again, is you cannot play it anymore. But when you could, it was an augmented reality mobile game. So it was, yeah, was straight mobile game, augmented reality. And it was focused on ape conservation. And we told this we picked again, we partnered with two conservation organizations, one in Congo, and one in Indonesia. Borneo, and we focused in on four animals, you know, in Iran Catan, a gibbon, lowland gorilla and the chimpanzee and they were real. You know, again, these were real animals that real researchers were really observing with real stories. And we use the game to bring those stories to people. But the game was, you know, sort of this futuristic situation where those researchers could beam the environment to where you are. And you could help them in the research that they were, you know, that they were doing. And at the end of the day, it’s a hidden object game where you’re up, but it’s a 3d hidden object game with augmented reality where wherever you are preferably outside, you’re going around this, this, this virtual forest, and you’re looking for clues. And ultimately, you’re trying to find the Iran Catan, you’re trying to find the gibbon and you’re getting the clues, and you’re having conversations with these researchers, all the while, kind of learning what it’s like to be a researcher, learning the conservation issues, learning the individual storylines of the animals that you’re trying to find, but also just kind of having fun, looking around your, you know, your background or your parking lot, you know, trying to find the poop trying to find, you know, the fruit, the fruit that’s been thrown on, and then hopefully, eventually, you know, finding the wrong button and the you know, as the Gibbons, you know, in the trees, I just, I feel like, it was really, really thoughtful, it could have been more fun. We could end and that’s okay, we could have done that, if we had had the funding, we would have, we would have made it you know, round two or version two would have, you know, would have made it would have made it more fun. And everything that we did there was, you know, is really just kind of the first time you know that it was done. But, again, and Renee had a lot of insight, she worked with us on that project in terms of how we message and how we treated people, like we were the guides, we weren’t teachers, we weren’t professors, we weren’t, we weren’t telling you what it was, we were that we were like, if you’re going to take a walk through the jungle with a guide, that’s what you know, that’s what the experience was. Like. And we touched on really difficult topics. We touched on zoos, we touched on you know, oil palm, you know, plantations, we touched on things that many people often have this very black and white reaction to like, never eat anything with palm oil, that’s a disaster you’re killing around your towns, right? Or zoos are bad because they’re, you know, they’re caged animals. But we brought a lot of nuance into these things. And again, we weren’t trying to tell you that we were just kind of introducing through the storyline information that could you know, help you understand, you know, how you felt about it, even asking you, you know, in the game, what do you think about zoos? And you know, and there are ways for you to kind of communicate your own, you know, your own feeling? You know, for example, we partnered with zoos on this, how
Maria Ross 27:49
was it distributed? Where was that?
Gautam Shah 27:52
It was distributed through the app stores. So you could get it on Google Play? Or you could get it on Apple? The marketing strategy was to partner with the zoos. So we partnered with Chester Zoo, and with Zoo Atlanta, both of which were zoos that have very strong ape, focus. We, and so what was going to happen was that anybody that went into those zoos, and you know, they get a couple million people, you know, each year, they were gonna see that the game was available and that you could download, right? That was actually a pretty, it was a pretty physical analog marketing strategy, which is what you would think of, and the release date was April 2020. For an outdoor game that’s meant to be played outdoors. Nobody was going outdoors and be the zoos reset for you know, for six months. And when the zoos were reopening it, like their top priority wasn’t, you know, marketing, you know, again, so we got really, you know, we got we got pretty unlucky with the timing. Yeah, how that Yeah, with the time that the time Yeah.
Maria Ross 28:55
How do you How do your projects come to you? Is it you guys coming up with developing a concept and then seeing is it you know, which is the right conservation group to approach which is the right marketing partner to go through? Is that how it happens? Or do you get zoos and aquariums and conservation organizations coming to you saying, Hey, how can we gamify for this concept? I don’t know. Yeah,
Gautam Shah 29:19
we get both the projects that? Well, okay, we did a project with the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which is, you know, which is out and available. That’s probably the only example where an organization came to a lot of organizations come to us, but we almost always talk them out of doing what they you know, of what they want to what they want to do. So most of the things that we put to life have been things that we’ve, we’ve come up with, and then we think about who’s the right Deck, just like you say, who’s the right conservation partner, and therefore the beneficiary and what’s the right marketing partner to make this happen? And then yeah, what’s the right you know, what’s the right funding partner to to make it happen?
Maria Ross 29:56
Tell us about the Monterey Bay Aquarium project.
Gautam Shah 29:58
Yeah, so Monterey. The aquarium project. So it’s a product called phantom verse. And it’s the only citizen science project that we’ve worked in students is straight citizen science project. And what they’ve essentially got these rovers that are traversing the sea at all, and all sorts of deaths, taking pictures and videos of every single thing that you know that it encounters. So, you know, mostly a lot of worms. Right? Like, it isn’t like pictures of sharks and dolphins, and they might show up, but you’re talking about like crustaceans and crabs and more. And they’ve got millions and millions of the, you know, these have hours of footage and photographs. And they of course, want to identify everything, rather, they want to be at the end of the goal is to identify every single thing under the sea and see what type of new species you can find. And of course, AI plays a massive role in that, but AI needs to be trained. And with millions of images, and like five people kind of going through each of them, you’re never going to you know, you’re never going to you it’s going to take you dozens and dozens of years to even get to a place where I can where I can do the job that it needs to do. So they came to us and said like, how can we gamify this experience ident identifying under you know, underwater images, sometimes spectacular sometimes boring, sometimes on you know decipherable. But what could we do that would make that a fun experience so that we can open this up to, you know, a pretty big audience, probably people that already are interested in the ocean. But, you know, that’s everybody that goes to aquariums. So, you know, that’s essentially what we what we worked on with them. It’s like, okay, it’s really kind of getting into what’s, you know, who’s the audience? How are we going to prioritize the scientific benefit, versus, you know, the gamification and that’s always that near, especially in citizen science things, it’s that tension between, well, if it’s not scientifically valuable, then that’s not, you know, as a science organization that doesn’t help them. But if it’s not super fun, you’re never gonna get enough people to get enough data for it to be scientifically valuable. So, you know, that was a big challenge on that part, it wasn’t as much storytelling, there’s not as it’s not a big narrative, you know, type of game, but it’s one of those things that I get, like, how do you get people to be interested in wanting to identify non charismatic animals? Like, you know, like worms under, you know, under the ocean? What is it that you can evoke, in somebody’s sense of adventure, somebody’s sense of like, finding, you know, a new, you know, a new creature exploring the ocean? How do you evoke these things in a way that would make somebody wants to be, and what we came up with was, was blissfully productive. So they know that you don’t want to fool them. You don’t want to insult anybody’s intelligence by making them think they’re doing one thing, but actually, you know, actually, something else is going on. So how is it very voluntarily, like, this is so enjoyable to do? And, you know, it’s, you know, it’s helping, you know, it’s helping us, you know, discover life under the light under the ocean. And so yeah, that’s, that’s something that anybody, you know, anybody can pick up and play on their, on their mobile phone right now,
Maria Ross 33:14
that’s great, we’ll put we’ll put a link to that in the show notes. So as we as we kind of wrap up, I just want to, you know, want to take a little bit of a left turn here, because you, you are the founder of a social enterprise. And there’s a big purpose, as you described behind what you’re doing. There’s also the reality of creating a sustainable business out of it. So how do you balance? You know, to, to reduce it down? But how do you balance purpose with profit? So that you can keep having the impact that you want? Yeah. And I
Gautam Shah 33:47
wonder if it’s even about balancing purpose and profit, you know, as a, as a startup, you’re not even thinking about profit, you’re just thinking about staying alive to the next day and getting getting this project out there you can do so that you can do the next one. And at least for us, it’s like, yeah, profit, like, at some point down, you know, at some point down the line, we’ll you know, we’ll get there. But, you know, it’s just like, how do we just how do we survive off? Yeah, how do we survive? Yeah, and it’s really just as a survival instinct. And so then it becomes a lot more like, as an entrepreneur and as somebody you know, is how do you imbalance the anxiety that you have about dedicating your life towards something and I think when you I’ve been thinking about this is like, if you and it might sound a little bit arrogant, but if you choose to have a purpose driven life, you know, however you want it to find that are you at risk of never being satisfied because that purpose is never going to be achieved? Right, because it like, it can’t imagine the purpose of you would ever just get to a point like yep, we did. We did it out. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, like with a for profit business there, there’s this metric, you’d be like, Yeah, I made a ton of money, I sold the company, it went bankrupt, you know, whatever it happened to be, but there’s something a little bit more concrete about your ability to measure whether you you did it or not, are they getting enough, I’m gonna go switch to another company, or we’re starting, you know, starting another business. But when you’re thinking about, you know, again, with, with impact, and what you’re trying to solve for, like, the balance is knowing that you’re never going to solve it. Right, with still going forward and accepting the small wins, you know, small wins along the way. And how long can you you know, how long can you you know, how long can you keep that up? And that, I haven’t figured that out? Yeah, and I have to take breaks, I have to take breaks sometimes, like sometimes, like, if, for me, personally, if I had like three or four, failed partnership conversations or investment conversations that you know, that don’t go my way, I need to take, I need to take a break. Like, I’m not the type of guy that can just pick myself up and have the fifth one. Where is it really, there’s plenty of people that it just rolls off of them. And they you know, and they just do it, and I’m not I need to take these breaks and be like, alright, just consult, make some money, help help out where you can, and then you know, and then you know, and then pick it up,
Maria Ross 36:20
that’s super healthy. I mean, that’s like what I talk about in the new book that’s coming out in the fall, the empathy dilemma is how you balance people, personal boundaries, and performance. And that’s actually signed, it’s very healthy, because the first two pillars of the five pillars in that book are self awareness and self care. Because otherwise you will burn out. And it won’t be sustainable if you can’t do the rest and recharge cycle within the work that you’re trying to do. So that’s actually very healthy, that you know that about yourself. And you’re saying, Okay, if I want to do this work for the long haul, I am going to need to take a break at this point, and sort of like switch gears for a little bit and work on this. And that’s what’s going to help me continue to have impact and continue to keep things sustainable. What isn’t sustainable is burning yourself down to the ground, and then you’re of no use to anyone. Right. And I just want to I don’t know, think you meant you mentioned a really interesting thing about the purpose. Because in my brand work, when I’m working with clients, we talk about the difference between vision, mission and values. And vision, I, I challenge my clients to think of a vision, that is a world that would make their organization obsolete. That is the end goal, right? That’s kind of what you’re talking about. That’s never gonna happen. Yeah, the mission is the steps and the actions that I take every day in pursuit of that vision. Yeah, it’s the mission that actually keeps you going. Because you’re probably unfortunately, never gonna get to the vision. Right. So that’s kind of life kind of feel like mission and purpose are the same things. But vision is that larger, like, this is what we’re doing all this for. And we may never get there. But it’s about it’s about the impact that we are having, and the progress that we are making. Yeah,
Gautam Shah 38:09
I think yeah, I think that that’s, I think that that’s right, we were we talk a lot about North Stars, or I, you know, I think a lot about North I think about our North Star. And I think about a rocket ship and I think about a flight path. And I know that my I know that my Northstar has never changed. But I know that my rocket ship and my flight path, you know, we still haven’t, we still haven’t figured out what’s the we kind of know what the rocket ship is. But the flight path is kind of the hardest part, but even the rocket ship. Right?
Maria Ross 38:36
Well, that’s about agility and resilience. So that’s a good thing, right?
Gautam Shah 38:42
So I think I think you’re right, I just want to say like, I do feel like, okay, to self care, I happen to have the luxury to be able to do that. And in order to have that luxury, I had to make some very tough decisions, because I had a team of six people, and you can’t have a team of six people and then just be like, Hey, guys, you know what, I’m just going to take a break for a while. Yeah. And that sort of means no projects are going to come in. So you know, find something else. Like you can’t, you can’t do that. So I had to actually, at some point, make a really difficult decision and say, Are we actually going to we’re going to take the we’re going to bring the company down to just me until you know, I’m in a position to you know, to bring it up and yeah, I think in the self
Maria Ross 39:27
care is that drastic. I’m not saying that it’s more like self care is understanding what recharges you as well and being able to, but not all self care is that drastic of like, I’m going to take care of myself by shutting down the company and laying everybody off. In a
Gautam Shah 39:41
way I had to not necessarily take care of myself but even just take care of like this company just needs the opportunity to reinvent itself. Yes. And now because it’s just me for a little while. Yeah, I have some I have some luxuries about taking care of myself. Otherwise I’m not gonna I’m not going to be able to rebuild it. Very
Maria Ross 39:58
true. Well Thank you so much for sharing your story and sharing your work. It’s amazing, soft spot in my heart for social entrepreneurs that are pursuing building a company, but also trying to do good in the world at the same time. So I love what you’re doing. We’re going to have all your links in the show notes go down, but for folks that are on the go or exercising along with their snow leopard, where is a place that they can find out more about you or the work? Yeah,
Gautam Shah 40:26
I think the best place is to go to the website. So it’s web. It’s Internet of elephants.com. Perfect.
Maria Ross 40:32
All right, and thank you so much. It was great reconnecting with you.
Gautam Shah 40:35
Thanks so much, Marie. I
Maria Ross 40:36
appreciate it. And thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge. If you like what you heard you know what to do, rate, review and share with a colleague or a friend. And until next time, please remember that kashflow creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Stay well and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit the empathy edge.com. There you can listen to past episodes, access shownotes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria. Never forget empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.
