Welcome back. I'm Vanessa and I'm here with Suzanne an expert on the future of emerging new media. Suzanne's going to tell us about a project that she's been working on and we're going to demo the Build and Action Roadmap Tool with her project. Great, thanks for having me Vanessa. I'm so excited to use this tool. So we're currently working on a project around re-entry into society for newly released prisoners. We've done a little kind of prototype pilot project already on this and we've noticed that there's a lot of attraction. So we'd like to explore this further and the goal is really to decrease the number of prisoners that go back into prison. So today there's about 30 percent of people that end up back in prisons, and by 2030 we want to cut that in half. So we went to roll this out to about 100 cities and see if we can decrease this number. So that is my end goal and I'm hoping you can help me get there. Sure. So tell me what sort of emerging new media are you working with? How does this work to help prevent people from coming back into prison? So that prototype project or pilot project that we ran used Virtual Reality to do that, and it placed people into real life situations that they're going to face when they exit prison to help them understand what those situations are and practice how they can behave. So it can be stressful situations like what happens when you're applying for a job and they ask you if you've been incarcerated before and how should you go about those things, or even introducing new types of technologies that they've never seen. So we're hoping to use VR to help simulate those type of situations, so that they can practice those ahead of time. I had thought that, the quintessential future. Yeah we had. Dissipate. Definitely an urgent future that we want to help. Okay. So you're a preferred future. If I'm trying to make sure I'm clear, is by 2030 you want to cut the re-entry rate which right now is 30 percent. You want to cut that in half by 2030. Right, that's the goal. So people that go back into prison. Exactly. All right. Well, I see you have a few different action steps here, and we're going to use this tool to help map out what you need to do. So why don't you tell me about in easy, what would be a good easy short-term stuff? So first of all we already know there's a lot of attraction around this, because we did that initial kind of prototype. So I would want to kind of rally my allies. So I want to reach out and social media which is a platform I use a lot and see, what are people doing in this space. So what is other people thinking of? How can I get my partners are ready from that source? So I have as my kind of short-term easy step is to start doing that. Okay. I also want to get in touch with people that are newly released, and what are the issues that they're facing, so that we can truly ground this simulations in those stories. So that's also part of this kind of short-term actions that. Wonderful, I think Braley and network is something that all of us can do is a really good first step for working towards our preferred future. So what might be something that's more difficult that's in the short-term sort of one to two years? So another thing I mean I work in in immediate lab, and an Emerging Media Lab we're looking at this technology. So I would want to put together more of these scenarios and more of these simulations, so create these VR simulations based on input that I'm getting from these interviews, and from my partners, and allies. So that's a little bit harder and we'll take a little bit more we need to find developers to do that. But yeah, I think it's doable, we already have a few in mind that we've done before,so we can get those rolling again, get more of those out there. So that's kind of short-term or difficult step. Okay. So building a prototype based on what you're learning from rallying your network. Exactly. It's definitely a logical next action step. So what do you think would come next for your midterm easy? So I mean obviously when we have these, I'm thinking when we have these scenarios that we would want to roll those out somehow. So when I get it out to maybe about Start with 10 to 20 cities that we can get in touch with to try this and see is this helping. So rolling it out is basically what I'm thinking and hopefully for 10 to 20 cities that we can get on board to start testing this system, testing this prototype. Great. That sounds like a good step to take you five years out 10 to 20 cities. All right. What do you think would come next after you've got this program with Virtual Reality in 10 to 20 cities really helping with re-entry what comes next? So obviously, I mean, we don't know a lot about this tech necessarily yet, we don't have a lot of data on the impact of using some of these tools. So I want to make sure that we evaluate the programs,so that it's going to take a little while. So that's why I'm thinking of this as mid-term if we're looking at it like a 10 year perspective. It's going to take time to see are we actually decreasing the number of people that end up back into prison. So evaluation is what I've wrote that I was thinking that we would do is kind of evaluating that program. Okay. So I've heard a lot about Virtual Reality and just a lot of emerging tech generally and there's just a lot of privacy and security concerns. Do you think that that's something that you also need to do in your evaluation? Right. Yes that's a great point. Yes that's true. I mean a lot of this technology you can track like by metrics data. You can see what we were looking at, so that would be very important. I'm going to add it here. So we would have to do privacy and ethics evaluations, I think. So I'm going to do. Great. Yes. Yes I think it's a great use of our network too. Yeah. So we would have to make sure there's anonymity into data, and if we draw conclusions around it we can't find out specifically who we're talking about for example I think that's really important. Okay. Thanks for pointing that out. Of course. That's great. What do you think could be a good easy long-term staff like what? I actually don't know for sure about that one. I know we obviously I mean if we're successful with evaluation and we know this is working, we need to get buy-in from policymakers, so that would be like the final before hopefully we would reach that goal of decreasing the number of people that go back. So I don't think this is easy, but we want to scale that program somehow and get buy-in from policymakers. Well, how about policymakers respond a lot to the public obviously supporting things. So what about something like a documentary like you have a lot of results. You're going to have some really powerful deep profound stories from the families affected by this. What do you think about [inaudible] I think that's a great idea. I think that's a great idea. Yeah definitely creating including media and including those types of media forms to help gain that interest from the public and also from the policymakers. So that's perfect yes, and that can probably be like an easier step. Great. So now that we have all that buy-in from media and documentaries, hopefully, we can get the policymakers to notice that this is a successful program. Sure. We can scale this up to 100 cities and get this going, and keep evaluating it so that we can hit that mark of lowering it down to 15 percent. Yes I think that's a fantastic last action step to take. So you've used this tool now. What was that like for you? How do you? I think is really helpful, and it's really helpful to see this visually because I can kind of imagining what to do now, and also getting some of these missing points so that I can connect the dots. Sure. So that I can actually get to the policymakers creating change and actually having these programs available. So this was a great tool for me. Thank you so much Vanessa. Wonderful. Well, there you have it. We've now wrapped up using demoing our Build and Action Roadmap Tool. So hopefully you can take this and go forth and build your own preferred future. Thanks.
