Millets: Nourishing the Future in the Fight Against Climate Change
July 12, 2023
The growing connectivity of the world facilitates both previously inconceivable advances by humanity and society’s existential challenges in the Anthropocene. Climate change, ecosystem destruction, the COVID-19 pandemic, and challenges to state sovereignty are united by the threat of misinformation. While social media has amplified the voices of those once isolated and disseminated products and ideas globally, the nearly four billion social media users worldwide are subject to a daily influx of incorrect information, often protected by the guise of “online anonymity.” The effects of this polarize populations, increasing global instability and decreasing the resilience of our biosphere.
In a divided world, it is often difficult to envision how to garner the collective action and cooperation needed to develop a sustainable planet for all. However, a new platform, Filmstacker, has reconceived traditional social media models and created a collaborative video-sharing environment rooted in transparency and delivering authentic human experiences of social impact makers.
Filmstacker users can work with their ‘team’ through a mobile or web app to capture clips and weave them into unique stories. Centered around collaboration, Filmstacker serves as a vessel through which a diverse range of individuals can produce content and be a driving force for positive change through storytelling. The platform’s intuitive interface makes it an accessible tool to anyone with a smartphone—young entrepreneurs, farmers, students, individuals from all walks of life can share their journeys in creative ways, inspiring one another and the world around them.
While traditional platforms such as YouTube dominate today’s video-sharing airways, Filmstacker differentiates itself through its collaborative and non-linear nature. Cody Sheehy, creator of Filmstacker, credited a key part of what makes the platform unique as “Filmstacker is a totally adaptive video, meaning that we don’t ever render anything together.” He continued that “we’ve built a system and it’s kind of like the video stays in that edit state all the time. Clips can always be moved and we can use machine learning to generate custom pathways for people, anytime.” The ongoing ability to edit video plays on the collaborative nature of the platform, as any number of crew members can continuously edit a video, rearranging its components to better serve the immediate task at hand.
Tomorrow.Life, an organization committed to rebuilding trust towards science and technology, is a testament to the potential of Filmstacker. In partnership, they launched a pilot, Science Sisterhood, which follows five young women pursuing careers in STEM. Each comes from a unique background and faces inherent and institutionalized challenges to pursuing their passion in a professional setting. Through Filmstacker, these groundbreaking young women documented a day in their life, explaining current projects such as designing an artificial lymph node while breaking through barriers like having an accent and wearing a hijab as a woman in STEM.
As Filmstacker offers the platform and technology, personal stories of global innovation are invaluable in its success as a platform. Science Sisterhood offered a glance at the capabilities of Filmstacker, as its seamless editing capabilities brought together the stories of like minded individuals. Going forward, GASP will work to curate similar stories with our various global partners, starting in the fields of the sustainably farmed Caribbean and expanding to any sustainably focused group with a powerful story to tell.
