Thinking Ahead

Thinking Ahead

A trio of digital innovators has designs on the future.

When you live in a community where you’re apt to bump into a Nobel laureate at the farmers’ market, or the inventor of iPhone’s talking Siri app at the gym, it’s easy to take rampant creativity for granted. Whether it’s the universities, the labs, the venture capitalists, or the coffee that’s causing all the intellectual commotion, commentators say that the East Bay breeds ahead-of-the-curve innovators by the bucketload.

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Keith Savell

Even before Keith Savell opens the front door, you know you’re in a friendly place. Brightly colored shoes are piled on the front porch of the home, tucked in the Oakland hills, where Savell lives with his wife, Karen, and two children, 11 and 14.

Savell, 53, earned his Ph.D. in gerontology and has spent his career consulting with institutions to raise the quality of life for residents of nursing homes and assisted-care facilities. He recently found his way into high tech with a little help from his Bay Area friends. “When the economy went south, we could either sit around and whine and complain or we could do something about it,” he says, pouring the coffee and taking a seat at the dining room table next to his tail-wagging dog, Teddy.

“We started out by saying: How can we help individuals remain connected with friends and family?” he recalls, explaining that maintaining close ties with loved ones is fundamental to older adults’ well-being. “It’s a slippery slope,” he says, referring to loneliness among the elderly population. “Isolation leads to cognitive decline, which leads to depression and physical ailments.”

Savell and his partners, Lars Graf (CEO) and Rich Brown (president), believed they could tweak existing communication technology to help older adults stay in touch. A year ago, they launched their brainchild, a computer app known as VitalLink. “It’s like Skype on steroids,” Savell says. The simple, one-touch interface lets older adults make low-cost, Skype-like calls, use Facebook, play games, share photographs, and yes, even enjoy the recent YouTube viral video, Charlie Bit My Finger.

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To demonstrate his product, Savell doesn’t need slick brochures. “Let’s call my mom,” he says. Septuagenarian Sheila Savell, who lives in Canada, was one of the first VitalLink customers. He touches one button, the program works its magic, and Savell’s mother appears, looking lively in a bright blue sweater and a beaded necklace.

“Hi, Keith!” she says in a lilting accent. “I was just going to make a cup of tea.” Her computer is set up in her kitchen; she turns on the kettle as she chats with her son.

Computers and their high-tech “solutions” may feel overwhelming for an older individual, Savell says. Grown children, trying to be helpful, often give hand-me-ups of software and computers to their parents. With his expertise in gerontology, Savell believed he could make computers more user-friendly for an aging population.

“Everything you see on the screen—every color, every button, the number of choices, the contrast, the borders—everything here is designed to work with the older eye, the older adult,” Savell says. He and his team wanted to make sure it was simple, sturdy, and relevant.

Mission accomplished, according to Savell’s mother, who says she can’t imagine life without her computer now, thanks to her son’s software. “Everybody who arrives [at my house] wants one,” she says, beaming.

In a perfect world, says Savell, we’d have family and friends nearby; we wouldn’t have to rely on email or the telephone to stay in touch. “But that’s not our reality,” he says. It’s second best, he admits, but regularly connecting via a screen is a big step up from a phone call and infrequent visits. VitalLink is bridging a gap. “My parents are watching my kids grow up. We’re sharing meals together,” he says.

“Our users can speak to friends and family, worldwide, face to face, 24 hours a day, at a low cost,” Savell says. “The only difference is they can’t reach out and touch them.”

Individual subscriptions for VitalLink cost $4.95 a month. Initially, the company offered the product for free. “But old people are used to being scammed,” Savell’s mother says. “When someone says they’ll do something for nothing, especially when they charge me less than what I think it’s worth, a little sign goes on that says caveat emptor.”

Savell hopes VitalLink will be a financial success, but his larger goal is to help as many older adults as possible. Just shy of its first birthday, the software is being distributed in eight languages, with 8,000 users worldwide. “Our dream is that it will help hundreds of thousands of people,” Savell says. And, although VitalLink is primarily marketed to nursing homes and assisted-living facilities rather than individuals, Savell still wants it to be affordable. “This industry can’t afford to be gouged,” he says. “We need to support each other.”

After bidding farewell to his mother, Savell calls another satisfied customer—the CEO’s mother-in-law, who lives in San Jose. And voilà, a smiling 69-year-old Carole Miranda pops onto the screen. VitalLink has made her grandparenting experience richer, she says. She reads her grandchildren stories at night. And the fact that they can all see each other matters. “I’m not a stranger anymore,” she says, sitting back in her chair. “I can show them things, and they see my room, so when they come, they’re comfortable.”

Thanks to the input of customers, Savell and the VitalLink team have added modules with games, newsfeeds in large print, email, Netflix, and an “I’m OK” button that enables a caregiver or adult child to literally “look in” on the user. “It’s a little bit Big Brother,” Savell admits; the older adult has to sign a release for that feature. More bells and whistles are in the making all the time, like calendars and medical reminders. “We’ve all talked to our parents about it—what do you want? What do you need?”

This customer-driven approach has affected Savell’s consulting work, too. “The old way of doing things was, we do something to [nursing home or assisted-care] residents—that’s history. The new model in health care is person-directed. We listen to the resident, to what’s important to them, and we fit our care around them. It’s really cool.”

“It’s all about building something,” he says, “that will make a difference in the lives of people.”

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For more information about Keith Savell and VitalLink, visit vitallink.net.

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Transcending the test: Michael Weiler of Berkeley created EduPath, a creative app that prepares high-school students for standardized tests. Photos courtesy Michael Weiler.

Michael Weiler

There’s something just right about Michael Weiler insisting that we meet at the Guerilla Cafe, not far from his home in North Berkeley. He arrives on a bike, wearing a black T-shirt and jeans, and chooses a chair facing the morning sun. Over a soy cappuccino, he describes his career as an entrepreneur, which includes a stint in filmmaking as well as establishing a cooperative grocery store and a wine-import business. “I like things that are going into uncharted territories,” says the 39-year-old businessman. “I like connecting the dots.”

This month, Weiler will launch EduPath, a sassy new app that takes a fresh approach to preparing high schoolers for standardized tests like the SAT. The father of three children, ages 12, 14, and 18, Weiler has spent the last decade exploring the fertile zone where innovation and education intersect.

“He pushes practical people to think differently,” says Jason Baeten, the head of the East Bay School for Boys, where Weiler—dubbed a “nonprofit guru” on the website—serves as a consultant and board member.

“I didn’t write that,” Weiler says with a smile, shaking his head.

Weiler began his career in education in the tutoring field, creating new business models for test preparation that were different from existing services aimed at well-heeled students. “It’s all about money,” Weiler says of the test prep business. “Which is really the problem. What ultimately predicts how well an unprepped student does on any standardized test is the socioeconomic background of the family.” According to him, typical boutique tutoring services simply perpetuate the system, helping the more affluent students get into better schools.

EduPath takes a different approach. Weiler wants to spread test-taking knowledge and empower students who might not have the thousand-or-so dollars for a typical test prep course.

Weiler’s interest in helping students take charge of their college admission experience isn’t because his was lacking. When asked about his SAT scores, he says he tested well. He was no slouch at getting into college, either, turning down an offer from Harvard in favor of NYU.

Asked to sum up his new app—the beta version will be launched in four Bay Area high schools this month—Weiler pauses for a half-second. “EduPath is the shortest path to your dream school,” he says. And sure enough, the opening screen reads: “Step One: Name Your Dream School.” The student types a response onto his or her iPhone or iPad, and a message pops up: “You’re on fire.” What follows is a wealth of information about the college in question—its location, number of students, average GPA required, range of SAT scores commonly admitted, even the school’s mascot.

EduPath is designed to use computing power to show students the most efficient way to improve their scores, taking advantage of what Weiler describes as “the low-hanging fruit.” It’s not focused, for instance, on mastering complex math problems like factorials (exercises which Weiler says are statistically irrelevant if you want to raise your test scores). “It all comes back to that—where do they want to go to school,” Weiler says.

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So how does EduPath do it? “It’s really about behavioral training more than anything else,” says Weiler. Take the reading section of a standardized test. Students typically read the passage, go on to the questions, and then return to the passage to hunt for the answers. This is a classic mistake. “If they do go back, they’re falling into the traps the tests have built into them,” Weiler says. EduPath tries to break that habit and build the student’s comprehension and confidence. So, in the app’s practice questions, once you’ve finished the passage, the next screen contains the questions. And if you try and go back to the prior page to hunt for answers, a little message pops up, reminding you not to be tempted by those tricks. “I can eliminate a lot of the wrong answers, just by doing that,” Weiler says.

In the math practice questions, students can open a “worksheet” from the right side of the screen. There are “hint” and “calculator” buttons. If a student tries to skip over a hard question that is worthy of mastery (again, based on the score-raising goal), the app will prompt with statements like: “Are you sure you want to skip? It makes prep time longer, but it’s your life.”

The seeds of EduPath were sown when Weiler started working with libraries, offering free SAT tutoring, to further his goal of bringing test-prep skills to a less moneyed population. With very little instruction, students were allowed to play with an early version of the app. Weiler says that after only a couple of hours those students improved their test scores by almost 100 points. How does that compare with Princeton Review and Kaplan courses? Accurate data on score improvement is scarce, but according to Weiler, the data and studies boil down to typical score improvements of around 30 points.

A typical Kaplan course lasts about six weeks, and can set you back between $500 and $4,000. Princeton Review even offers a one-on-one tutoring package for a hefty $7,000. A subscription to EduPath and its virtual tutoring costs about $30 a month, and Weiler says most students will do two to three months of preparation for the test. Students work at their own pace, when and where they want. “I wanted to develop something that kids can use the way they want to use it,” says Weiler. “Not to go sit in a class for three hours. More like, ‘I’m going to the movies, and I want to use it on the bus.’”

Ironically, if Weiler’s new business succeeds, he’ll work himself right out of a job, because ultimately current standardized testing, he hopes, will be nixed. “The very fact that I can take an individual student and increase their score 400 points undermines the test, in my opinion,” he says.

As for Weiler’s own children? “My kids will take the SAT and I fully expect that they’ll use EduPath and that should serve their needs,” he says.

For now, though, Weiler’s focus is on making his product even better at getting students where they want to go. “I have other things in mind,” he says. “There’s a lot more to come.”

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For more information about EduPath, visit edupath.com.

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Morphing high: Steve Beck of Berkeley is known worldwide for his digital art, with its shifting, kaleidoscopic patterns.

Steve Beck

In the mid-’60s, a youthful Steve Beck started working with video synthesizers and music. He’s been an innovator ever since, weaving together art and technology so deftly that in Japan he’s been called the Digital da Vinci: a Renaissance man who’s bridged business, engineering, and digital media. At U.C. Berkeley’s Center for

Entrepreneurship and Technology, he’s the “Executive in Residence,” as well as teaching a course in art and technology. He also serves on the advisory council of the Lawrence Hall of Science, where the Ingenuity Lab helps teach kids how to try their hands at the inventing game.

Now in his 60s, the longtime Berkeley resident describes himself as “an electronic polymedia-ist,” but shrugs off further description. Whatever the phrase means, it’s clear that Beck is well established as an artist; his work has been exhibited in museums from the Tate to the Getty to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His morphing, kaleidoscopic patterns have shown on screens from Dubai to Japan, and even on the giant Plasmatron at Shea Stadium. “But unfortunately the Mets lost that year,” he jokes.

Modern marriage: Steve Beck, an executive-in-residence at Cal’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology, weds digital know-how with ancient themes to create art that has been shown in museums like the Tate and the Getty. Photo © 2012 Steve Beck; All Rights Reserved; www.stevebeck.tv.

Equally compelling is Beck’s track record as an entrepreneur. He doesn’t know how many products he’s come up with over the course of his career—“I stopped counting at 500,” he says. “You take a lot of swings as an inventor.”

Most of those swings, he says, end up as strikes—but occasionally you get on base, and if you’re both persistent and lucky, you just might hit one out of the park. Some of his most successful endeavors include a toy dog named Talking Wrinkles, a kind of early Tickle Me Elmo. He’s come up with a state-of-the-art digital audio player for the Bird Songs series of books, including the best-selling Bird Songs Bible.

“Everything has been satisfying,” he says of his many business ventures, but topping the charts is the Energy Management System he designed for the Safeway chain of supermarkets. “That was a big, huge home run on so many levels,” he says; he’s especially proud of the invention’s positive impact on the environment.

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In the bowels of a U.C. Berkeley building that was once home to a nuclear reactor, Beck’s office teems with creative life. A large, three-dimensional mobile dangles from the ceiling; a guitar leans against a bookshelf. The blackboard is filled with colored scribbles, complex-looking mathematical equations involving the Greek letter Mu, and the phrase “What kind of nylon?”

“These are from a 3-D printer,” Beck says, opening a glass cabinet filled with objects made of resin: a hot-wheel–size car, a swirly shell-like sculpture, something that looks like a lawnmower part. “This was ahead of its time,” he says, picking up what appears to be the head of a doll. “We had this cool idea that you’d go into a photo booth and get your picture taken, and then you’d come back later and you could get a doll of yourself.” But it took about 18 hours to “print” one of the resin heads. Oh, well.

Currently, Beck is hard at work on a number of inventions in this workshop. His lips are sealed as to the exact nature of many of them, but one favorite is a reworking of the Phosphotron, special goggles that electronically stimulate images in the eyes. “My dream is that it has potential benefits to visually impaired persons,” he says. He’s in discussions with Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute and the San Francisco General Hospital Foundation, though much work remains to be done. “That’s a tall glass of water to fill,” he says, “and will require lots of collaboration with experts in the fields of ophthalmology and optometry.”

Then there’s a word game app in development, as well as several major art projects, including the Noor Visual Orchestra, based on Islamic designs. Beck is especially interested in the way art creates human connections across culture and time. He tells a moving anecdote about a long-ago trip to New Mexico, where he showed a series of “video weavings” in the Santa Fe Art Museum. Through the museum’s windows, he saw Native Americans outside selling Navajo rugs; the rug sellers, in turn, were looking in at the screen displaying Beck’s art—which was based on the same ancient designs as their rugs. “They were looking in at the patterns, and I was looking out at theirs, and there was this moment of grok,” he says. “It’s a global language.”

Beck’s perspective remains global, with few subjects escaping his creative attention. “It’s been fun, and I’m not finished yet,” says the inventor. He rattles off a few ideas that intrigue him these days: “Smart cars” embedded with technology that won’t allow crashes. A “camera” that captures what’s actually being generated in your brain. Cockroach-dwelling microbes that can ingest plutonium and make recycled nuclear fuel. “They’d probably glow in the dark,” he observes with a smile.

For obvious reasons, Beck is fond of the fabled story about Louis Pasteur’s accidental discovery of what we now call pasteurization. “That’s not what he was working on,” he says, with a conspiratorial grin. The great scientist—who, Beck says, used technology to benefit ordinary people—was studying ways to stop wine spoilage. When he discovered that temperature change killed microbes, he immediately understood the enormous ramifications for food preparation and human health. “He said, ‘Whoa! This is much, much bigger,’” Beck says.

Over the course of a dizzyingly varied and successful career, Beck has often reflected on one of Pasteur’s pithiest comments. “Chance,” said Pasteur, “favors the prepared mind.”

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For more information about Steve Beck, visit stevebeck.tv.

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Suzanne LaFetra lives in Berkeley with her family. She no longer considers herself a Luddite.

Faces of the East Bay