Birdeez Team Launching Into Action to Change the World!
Left to Right – Thomas Kuo, Jeff Simeon and Patrick Toerner.

A version of this article originally appeared in the Santa Barbara Audubon Society‘s news letter – El Tecolote for June-July 2013.

If numbers are to be believed, only a quarter of those reading this sentence can identify birds. The US Fish and Wildlife Service reports that 74% of people who watch birds can identify fewer than 20 species by sight. We at Birdeez hope to change that and, in the process, change the world.

Birdeez is an iPhone app, but you can think of it as the un-iBird. Instead of being an encyclopedia, we built Birdeez to be the easiest app for anyone to pick up and start learning local birds. The app knows where you are and what birds are near you at any given time of year.  Enter a bird’s shape, size and color and you’ll get a short list of birds that match. You can even save your bird sightings right in the app. We designed it to help anyone from 7 to 70 years old learn their birds. By connecting more people to the birds around them, we hope to create the next generation of environmental stewards.

When I started at UCSB’s Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, I wanted to find an idea to change the world for the better. Joining the Audubon Society in rural Virginia when I was 11, I know my long-term interest in the environment was inspired by my direct observation of birds. I also observed that mobile technology has been changing people’s lives, but unfortunately most people use it to detach even further from the natural world.  At Bren, I began looking for an idea to that would do the opposite––plug people back into nature. Birds seemed like the golden opportunity, and that led to Birdeez.

If Birdeez was hatched at Bren, it was incubated in the Technology Management Program  (TMP) at UCSB. That program and its New Venture Competition gave me the chance to connect with fellow UCSB students Patrick Toerner and Thomas Kuo. Working together, we have what it takes to make this idea a reality. A year ago in May, Birdeez won first place at the New Venture Competition.

Last October at a Silicon Valley event called DEMO, we launched Birdeez. We even won over the tech crowd to be selected as one of the five best presentations at DEMO.

We have a long way to go to change the world, but we’ve certainly started. Since DEMO, Birdeez has been downloaded thousands of times nationwide. We’ve been using it with groups of children to introduce them to the world of birds. We hope you’ll help us by using Birdeez with your kids and grandkids.

Birdeez is available for iPhone at GetBirdeez.com. Let us know what you think and shoot me an email anytime at Jeff@GetBirdeez.com.