Homeless advocate takes TEDx stage to promote use of What3Words in disasters

LTD’s community liaison got an opportunity to step into the spotlight. Instead, she used her moment to shine the spotlight on the streets. Sarah Koski spoke at a TEDx event Oct. 10 at Edmonds College, just north of Seattle.

Sarah Koski: I had seen a posting on LinkedIn about this open call for TED presentations, and the fact that the theme was ‘resilience’ really spoke to me after working the disaster activations up the McKenzie Valley, doing the work that we did with the (Lane County) COAD (Community Organizations Active in Disasters).

[00:00:32] And I had no idea: TEDx is extremely hard to get into. Everyone knows my heart is for the streets, right? And the reason why I went up there is to tell the story. What I didn’t realize is TEDx has become a launching point for careers.

[00:00:48] I mean, once we were done, folks were already talking about the book deals and putting the TEDx on their LinkedIn. And now, you know, that I’m a formal TEDx speaker and my video is going to be online on the TED stage, it opens up for paid speaking opportunities. Because what is a TED Talk? You are the expert in your field of industry and it’s ‘ideas worth spreading.’ So you have an idea, you take that idea, it spreads, it multiplies. It reproduces.

[00:01:17] So we’re talking, on average, they say a $60,000 increase at base minimum, for becoming a TED speaker, right? And so what I noticed is that there is an entire industry now to get folks on the TED stage. There are consultants that take all of the TED events, put them on a calendar, research the themes, and then do TED placement. And consultants to get you placed start at like $10,000, right?

[00:01:55] Then you get accepted into TED and then you typically get a formal speaking coach and you typically get a formal speech writer, and then you typically (I had no idea) hire someone to design your own slides, right? When you get to something like a TEDx Portland or a larger arena, the greater, bigger stages, folks invest because of what is reciprocated once they get off the stage.

[00:02:25] Now that wasn’t me, right? I don’t have $10,000 to work on, nor do I have time. I want to be out in the streets, right? I want to be out serving people. I don’t have time to try and figure out how to spend $8,000 on a speechwriter.

[00:02:42] I actually talked to a gentleman on LinkedIn who is one of the foremost placers of TEDx, and I had just sent him some LinkedIn messages just with some questions. And he was flabbergasted that I was able to be accepted at a TED on my own without any sort of advisory or consulting.

[00:03:04] And so, one could say it was based on the merit of the work and the fact of a lot of elbow grease. In my opinion, it was a little divine intervention too, right? I don’t quite know how I got on that stage except for miracles, signs, and wonders, right?

[00:03:19] My entire budget was a rental car, gas, some food for snacks, and a hotel. So, that’s all I spent. That’s all I spent and so what an opportunity to say, hey, I’m talking on a TED stage about a low-barrier shelter with low-barrier homeless service support, with low-barrier access to funds on my own behalf.

[00:03:43] John Q: The application asked two questions and requested a short video clip.

[00:03:49] Sarah Koski: There was two questions that were asked, and it was difficult. It was not easy to do that writing, and then you had to do a one-minute video clip of what you wanted to talk about.

[00:04:00] So, I had ended up at MLK Park, which is over by Garfield, and it is a one-block-radius park where a lot of unhoused individuals stay. And I had just gone to that park to do some street outreach a while back because that park is kind of the outdoor resting site for the safe sleep sites. If people want to get some fresh air, kind of lay on the grass, it’s a good place to do it.

[00:04:26] So I went to that park to kind of find my muse, and then I was looking at, ‘Well, if I was unhoused and I needed shelter from the sun, where would I go?’ And there was this little play station. So I went and kind of hid under the play station and was looking at shade and kind of exploring, and I was like, ‘Well, this is the best place I could film,’ and I took out my camera and I started talking about, you know, what I wanted to say.

[00:04:53] Lo and behold, it took 41 takes for me to get everything down of what I wanted to say, unscripted, in under a minute. So I uploaded that. I had to create my own YouTube page. I didn’t even have a YouTube page to upload. I mean, talk about starting everything from scratch. It took so long just to upload the video, let alone submit, that I submitted my application 10 minutes before the deadline closed on a Friday,

[00:05:22] Three weeks later, I am presenting on my role as community resource liaison and some of the work that we’re doing in anti-trafficking, and after I do my typical run through Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, there’s an email and it says, ‘Congratulations. You are going to be a TED speaker.’

[00:05:43] And so how poetic and how amazing was it that I was able to share with the team that I love so dearly, that, ‘Man, I’m going to be a TED speaker!’ So literally, the leadership committee, my direct supervisor, all got to hear in the moment that I’m now going to be on the TED stage.

[00:06:02] I am not a prepared speech writer. I don’t memorize easy. And TED, in order to help you be successful, has certain requirements. You need to write a speech. You have to submit that speech to the organizers. You have to practice your speech about two to three times a day until the event comes.

[00:06:22] So, individuals that were sharing the stage with me had memorized their speech and practiced anywhere between 200 to 300 takes before walking on a stage.

[00:06:33] And I said, you know what, I’m going to have no prepared words. I’m going to go, and I’m going to speak my heart, because my heart is dedicated to the streets. What I say is, if God got me all the way there, and I got accepted, and we’re working on this, then the words are going to flow out, and that’s exactly what happened.

[00:06:52] So we finally get to the point where I’m about to walk on stage, fully mic’d up, the organizers come, give me high fives. They’re like, ‘Man, we’re so excited about your talk.’

[00:07:01] John Q: The speech itself was a blur.

[00:07:04] Sarah Koski: I walk on stage and I black out. I can’t remember from the start to the end of what I said, talking about, you know, my work with the streets, how I got to this TED stage, how there was this incredible individual in the shelter who actually had helped me create a plan to get to TED, and now I’m here at TED, so I dedicated the speech to him, and then went further on talking about What3Words.

[00:07:30] And then the rest was, you know, it just ended. And I went back and I got hugs and claps from all of my peers, huge feedback, wonderful, wonderful support.

[00:07:44] This could have been the first time on a global stage that What3Words and homelessness and addressing tents could have been combined.

[00:07:53] What3Words was invented because these individuals were doing deliveries to large conference centers in the UK. And if you think about a conference center, conference centers usually span two blocks. They have north, south, east, west entrances, and they have these back entrances. And so, these guys were like, ‘Man, it takes us so long to figure out what entrance we need to deliver at.’

[00:08:18] So What3Words is the global addressing system where they gridded the entire globe in three meter by three meter squares. These squares are assigned a three-word address. That three-word address, if you plug it into What3Words.com, it can navigate you to that location, either based on Google Maps or Apple Maps.

[00:08:43] What is wonderful about this is when you think about addressing tents of the unhoused, these tents are typically off the beaten path or hidden or in a location that’s not easily accessible. Instead of saying, ‘Oh, well, we’re kind of at Alton Baker Park,’ right? ‘Well, we’re in Alton Baker Park. There’s a lot of territory in Alton Baker Park. Can you go to locate.What3Words.com? What’s the three words?’ And then they can get to that individual immediately at a location at Alton Baker Park.

[00:09:19] And so the goal is the reduction of time. So What3Words has been documented now for years that the emergency response time is cut down significantly, anywhere between three minutes to 10 minutes that an emergency responder can get to that individual.

[00:09:36] Search and rescue teams, when it comes to mountain hikers or someone that gets stranded, you can tell people, ‘Hey, this is where I’m at.’ In war, when we were leaving Afghanistan, and everything was happening so quick and so fast, it was What3Words that they were using to find people and extract people.

[00:09:57] And then icing on the cake came just this year when there was chatter on the What3Words social media that they had been working very hard to get individuals to adopt using What3Words to address their tents at Glastonbury. And so now you think of these huge festivals and at festivals, people camp. So now you address your tent using What3Words, you can get exactly to your tent. So say you need help, people can get to you instead of going through hundreds and hundreds of tents.

[00:10:34] And this is what I said on my TED talk: If we can use What3Words to address tents of folks with means, why not use What3Words in times of crisis for those without means? It’s the same concept.

[00:10:48] And so this is what I’m really excited to see moving forward, is the adoption of this concept on a broader scale.

[00:10:55] So in my last post before I got on stage, I actually tagged What3Words so that people could click on What3Words and start exploring more. So if people were really serious in learning more, they could go back to my page and start exploring. And I sent the YouTube over to What3Words.

[00:11:12] And these ding, ding, ding, ding, dings on my phone, the notifications are coming, and it’s on my LinkedIn. It was the head of global PR from What3Words, and she just said, ‘Wow, Sarah, saw you took the TED stage, love to connect.’ And she wrote back and she’s like, ‘This is it. Let’s go. Congratulations.’ I was so excited. I couldn’t sleep after that.

[00:11:34] So this week I have a meeting with the global PR director of What3Words.

[00:11:40] My goal is to use the global stage to not only incorporate What3Words stronger in the Pacific Northwest, on the West Coast, and across the United States, but to work directly with the marketing team of What3Words to create white papers, and handouts and downloads and some videos.

[00:11:59] So what we can do is start shooting those videos out to street outreach workers, case managers, so that we can, as a tribe all across the United States, start using What3Words as an addressing system to effectively reach out to the homeless. And so it’s starting.

[00:12:15] This is where the time is right. And so this is the gift that I want to give, is innovation technology, mapping, emergency access, natural disaster support, resilience support, and the homeless. What could be better?

[00:12:31] This is the open door to a beginning of an incredible story. And this is just the origin point of where we’re going to go. And so that’s my greatest desire, is that this will spread in a way where we can potentially save lives and save lives on the street.

[00:12:53] John Q: Sarah Koski from LTD takes the TEDx stage and promotes a faster way to find those on the streets, in the hope of saving lives during the next disaster.