The Spring 2010 D-Lab Project Showcase is next week Saturday 8 May at the MIT Museum! To kick things off, the students from 6 D-Lab classes -- Design, Dissemination, Health, Energy, Wheelchairs and Prosthetics -- will give brief presentations of their projects. Then the 26 total projects will be on display and all the working prototypes demonstrated!
The MIT IDEAS Competition is hosting its finale Awards Ceremony this coming Monday 3 May 2010 at the Stata Center at MIT. Keynoted by Carl Bielenberg, founder of Better World Workshops, the night features entries including...
Very cool to have MIT grad student Carrie Stalder join
me on MaximizingProgress.tv tonight. Carrie shared a bit of her background and current experience building up the new Venture Café in Kendall Square, Cambridge. This venue is currently in alpha prototype phase every Thursday afternoon in the Cambridge Innovation Center at One Broadway. Their goal? No less than dialing up the connectivity and serendipity and vitality of the entrepreneurial ecology in Kendall Square! Not easy, but quite needed! After her undergrad studies in engineering and applied science at CalTech -- MIT's west coast spinoff school;-) -- Carrie first got herself into astronomy, then construction, and then the defense electronics sectors! A self-described "extrovert among introverts" she's a great addition to MIT's grad student population as an SDM'er -- System Design and Management.
Check out the projects in MIT's NextLab this Spring at finale event on Tues 11 May 2010 including...
With NCIIA support, MIT's D-Lab releases DIY build instructions and curricular materials for shared use! Anyone can pick from a growing set of open recipes for making useful artifacts, for starters, both agri-waste charcoal processing and hand-held corn shellers. The materials include...
...in Elisabeth Bumiller's piece We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint. Her ill-considered screed mistakenly confounds the make-work of assembling briefings for the hard-work of systems dynamics and analysis required to understand the complexities of counter-insurgency and nation-building in Afghanistan. That graphic by PA consultants attempts to capture all the causal links in a way no written briefing, no PowerPoint list of bullets, and none of the Generals or responsible politicians have yet been able to.
The BP-Transocean oil rig incident in the Gulf of Mexico is demanding the latest in environmental remediation methods as noted in the BBC's piece Robot vessels used to cap Gulf of Mexico oil leak... "BP is using submersible vehicles, equipped with cameras and remote-controlled arms, to try to activate a blow-out preventer - a series of pipes and valves that could stop the leak. However, this was a "highly complex task" and "it may not be successful", said chief operating officer of BP's exploration and production unit, Doug Suttles. If the attempt fails the alternative is to drill a "relief well" intersecting the original well, but Mr Suttles warned that this might take months. BP has also brought in more than 30 clean-up vessels and several aircraft to spray dispersant on the oil floating on the surface. Bad weather forced the operation to be suspended at the weekend."
Toystar Barry Kudrowitz shouts that the 2010 Toy Product Design PLAYsentations are on Tuesday May 11th from 8-10p in 10-250. Definitely come check out the 15 toy prototypes finale presentations by MIT student teams!
Check out the PerfectSight project from the Camera Culture group at the Media Lab! The team is in our Imaging Ventures and Media Ventures class jointly, are Semifinalists in the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition, and are an MIT Global Challenge candidate! As they describe... "Over 153 million people around the world suffer from uncorrected refractive vision problems and 87% of them -- 133.11 million people -- reside in developing nations. [The] team developed an eye care technology that allows for the early, extremely low-cost, mobile, fast, and automated diagnosis of the most common refractive eye disorders: myopia (nearsightedness), hypermetropia (farsightedness), astigmatism and presbyopia (age-related) [and] consists of an Android-based app and a passive optical phase plate on top of the cell phone display. The patient looks in close range and aligns image patterns. The lens prescription is computed automatically based on the displacement needed in the alignment task. The tasks takes less than 2 min. Our system can greatly scale the diagnostic services available in developing countries and help to significantly improve the quality of life for those suffering from these conditions."
The 13th MIT Latin American Conference is this Saturday, 24 April 2010 in MIT's 10-250 around the theme of Building Bridges to a Sustainable Future. I'm moderating the Opportunities at the Bottom of the Pyramid session in late morning with great panelists...
I'm moderating what promises to be a truly remarkable D-Lab Innovators Night panel this Wed night 21 April 2010 from 7-9pm at MIT in 6-120... "Hear the amazing stories of 5 innovators who are blazing trails on the ground in India, Tanzania and Uganda. Get their insights on how to take action on societal issues in creative and effective ways. This is a one-of-a-kind opportunity to meet 5 unique leaders and change agents in one room!"Visiting us and speaking on this panel organized by several D-Lab colleagues and sponsored by the MIT International Development Initiative are:
(This is despite the outcome of the Revolution and all that followed;-)
But what about in the "Real World"? Well, here's fixing buildings with LEGO bricks...
How about a whole table of LEGOs... 
Even a full-on LEGO house (since demolished)...
And now you can build furniture out of human-scale LunaBlocks...
Al Jazeera's Mark Eddo reports from megacity Lagos, Nigeria about Babatunde Fashola, the Action Governor who is tackling the poor infrastructure and healthcare and generally transforming this sprawling, giant central-west African commercial hub for the better...
Thanks to the LondonTimes for spotting a new indy film -- The Infidel -- about Mahmud, a Muslim family man who discovers his birth certificate which shows he was adopted and he's Jewish! Check out his subsequent comedic identity crisis here in the trailer... A comedy of ethnic proportions!
Singapore is a city-state small in size but huge in ambition and strategic sophistication. From founding new universities (and multiple partnerings with MIT) and building stunning greenscrapers and playing a key role as crossroads in the ASEAN community and between India, China, Australia+NZ and in the Commonwealth, this is a key country. Several years ago, I was especially impressed with From Third World to First: The Singapore Story, the reflections of founding leader Lee Kuan Yew. And see here the current Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on Charlie Rose this past week, for a conversation which included... "The whole of our system is founded on a basic concept of meritocracy; we built up our institutions so that you have a government which people can trust and is competent; we have no safety net and we can always fail if we get it wrong; we’ve got to be extraordinary!"
business mindedness CK Prahalad has passed away at 69. Famous for his strategy and innovation scholarship, I got to know him because of The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty through Profits 
and his talk at the Harvard Kennedy School for the International Development Conference several years ago. He was co-founder of Praja Inc -- "Praja" meaning "everyday citizens" -- and active board member of TiE and professor at University of Michigan.
What a lovely WWII-and-beyond vintage romance story laced with business vigor! The key protagonist Jean Paget is an entrepreneur after my own heart. She seeks out her beau Joe Harmon in Australia and ends up starting a shoe factory, ice cream store, general store, swimming pool and other money-making catalysts boosting Willstown from hick town in the styx to a mini-boom zone! The book is just wonderful and the TV mini-series captures the magic too. See here just a wee scene (among several online)...
Just saw MIT's Saeed Arida update us on his new education studio -- NuVu -- which is being prototyped this semester... "NuVu is a place of innovation where middle and high school students join together with experts from MIT and Harvard to create new views of the world. Every semester we focus on a different topic, such as “the Future City”, “Games and Magic”, or “Science Fictions”, and encourage students to explore, design, invent, and get messy in a studio environment designed for and by the kids."
"...is the story of two charismatic mayors, Antanas Mockus and Enrique Peñalosa who, with unorthodox methods, in less than 10 years turned one of the world's most dangerous, violent and corrupt capitals into a peaceful model city populated by caring citizens. With Mockus and Peñalosa and key members of their staff as first hand witnesses, the film uncovers the ideas, philosophies and strategies that underlie the changes in Bogotá and which are now being exported to cities worldwide..."What fantastic heroes! Urban crusaders who transform their city for the better. They're an existence-proof that this is possible. Epic!
"Each of the people in this picture has accomplished more for humanity then any of the guys in that other painting. [...] considering science usually has to drag religion kicking and screaming into the 21st century what exactly did those guys in that other picture do? Oh yeah, they caused a lot of wars."But who are these humanist heroes, these disciples of reality? Rational Crank supplies list...
"...has no eyes, and has never seen anything in the physical world. Yet he can paint pictures with very high precision for a blind man."
From 2:30pm to 4:30pm this Thurs 15 April 2010, MIT alumnus serial entrepreneur Bill Warner hosts his Build Your Startup From the Heart workshop in the Cambridge Innovation Center 11th Floor... "In this 2-hour, highly interactive class and discussion, we'll cover how build your startup from the heart. After the class, stay for drinks and networking as part of the Venture Cafe's Alpha test within the Cambridge Innovation Center"Sign up now! He says, "maximum class size of 35 attendees allowed" which is rather constrained, I must say, but doubtless worth it!
Thanks to Videojournalist Ruud Elmendorp for his latest story -- on Sega Silicon Valley -- the efforts by Kenyan expat entrepreneur James Ofwona and colleagues to bring ICT connectivity to his home village and region... 
"Abel, a 10th grader, with the four younger children he cares for in rural Zimbabwe. The children, from two different families, live on their own, having moved in together after both sets of parents died. The boy on the left is Diego Maradona. Their main hut is on the left, and the one on the right is their kitchen."
PS Big brother Abel's biggest immediate wish is for a bicycle to get around faster than by walking -- smart kid! Kristof writes that people are lining up to donate and reminds us that there are millions of Abels. He notes World Bicycle Relief as one channel for such aid.
Geoff Edgers writes today in the Globe about the Cambridge Science Festival that it... "...isn’t just for kids, but the event, now three years old, features plenty of hands-on exhibitions designed to capture a child’s attention. “Kids are all natural-born scientists,’’ says MIT Museum director John Durant, who oversees the festival. “They’re curious, and curiosity is the fundamental driver of science.’’ This year’s festival, which runs April 24 through May 2, kicks off with a daylong Carnival in tents outside the Cambridge Public Library. There will be 89 booths with science demonstrations, including many activities of particular interest to children."Every child is born naturally curious -- let's help them stay that way into adulthood!
Glorious indoor gardens, here Madrid station...
Stunning Northern Lights...
Cool spot...
Lovely bridges...
Derick Melander's clothing sculptures...
UniqueDaily spots best seat in the world...
