This afternoon we visited the Cisco office. We took the tram to Bullewijk where the office is situated. The first impression was that it was like a real neat office. People were wearing suits and it looked like people were doing some serious business.
We got our badges and Jan Roggeveen (Bussiness development manager) took us to the meeting room. We started discussing general information about Cisco. Jan talked about how everything can be connected by their devices and through internet. We talked about smart buildings in which light bulbs are connected to the network, so they can be easily maintained. This was the more general information, but after that we focused more on safety. Jan told us about new systems that would enable people to report crimes digitally. Someone could visit a building with a screen and talk to a police officer through this. This would cost less money due to the fact that the police officers are all situated in one place, so they can work efficiently. This might be interested for our project, only we want to avoid the crime. We will not be focusing on reporting the crime. Again, there will be some stuff that we can get out of this. Especially, the fact that it is place independent is interesting for us. We actually need something that is place independent. The device we will make should work everywhere.
There was a thing that Jan said which might be interested for our project. He talked about feedback and how something can eventually become a working system. If you keep on giving feedback, you can start data mining. So if you gather enough information about somethings behavior, you can predict this behavior.
After this, we talked about the environment and how it can influence safety. The thing which popped up into my head was that this will not be applicable everywhere. Of course the lighting will influence the feeling of safety, but this means that we will have to change the environment everywhere, which will not be as effective as making a device that a woman can carry with her.
This brings us to the next issue which we still have to investigate. Jan talked about how feeling safety is a difficult thing to use in our project. How do we know if someone is feeling safe? The only way to find out is to ask people.
We then talked about a possible solution. (We don’t know if we will be using this, but it is just an idea) Everyone has a mobile phone these days which is usable when we make something to save women. They will be more willing to use an application on their phone than another extra device. This way, we use what we already have by using new software. Another idea is that it can be based on, for example, the heartbeat of a woman and this again can be connected to the phone.
To conclude, it was a very interesting meeting in which we also got to see the telepresence room which we can use to talk to India. Cisco is willing to help us and we think that gives us more opportunities and ideas.