IDDS 2011 - Delivering Content

One of the most exciting opportunities I had this summer was to stand up in front of everyone and lead some sessions. It feels weird to think of the participants as students, which is why we euphemistically referred to it as "delivering content". The curriculum team does an amazing job of balancing the amount of time spent in the classroom with hands-on learning experiences and I worked on both (I hope to do that more in future IDDSes).

On the third day of the summit, we had a series of Build-It activities where participants built different simple technologies to learn how to use various tools. There were six different areas (metal-working, sheet metal fabrication, wood carving, electronics circuitry, plastics-working and metal casting) and I was on the metal-working team. We were building charcoal presses (link to pdf), so I signed up since I figured I could be pretty useful in explaining the context and why the tool was useful. But as the session went on, I realized that we were a bit short-handed, so my friend Joseph from Tanzania and I taught people how to use the hacksaw, the shear and files to make clean cuts. Then we teamed up with some of the technicians at the Intermediate Technology Transfer Unit where we were working in order to teach welding and especially welding safety. By the end of the session we had three welding stations and I was supervising one of them. It was interesting to be teaching and supervising stick-welding since I have never done it in my life and and I haven't even welded anything in three years. Still, we didn't break anything and no one got hurt and all in all, the charcoal presses came out really well. I was impressed with everyone in the session, but especially with a Zambian woman named Mainess who picked up all the techniques so quickly and was super-eager to try everything. (There's even a picture of me helping her on the IDDS blog (about two-thirds of the way down the page).)

For one of the sessions on venture design, they asked me to present some slides with Ben Linder and Bob Nanes (both much, much bigger names than mine). They prepared most of the slides, but I offered input on some of the topics and they took some of my suggestions. I also put together a slide on my work with GCS and presented a few of the slides during the session. I wish that I had practiced a bit more since I was having a bit of trouble hitting all the points that I wanted to make, but all in all I was really excited about how the session went.

Later that morning we had a panel on water treatment ventures* and my friends Mustafa from Pakistan and John from Zambia and I were up in front to moderate. There were some logistical headaches (the hall where we originally planned to have the event cut off their power and then demanded that we pay them exorbitant rates to switch on the generator--we just changed the venue in the end), but once we got started, it went off really well. Running the event took very little effort and every time I was about to say "Let's have a question for our first panelist" or "Are there any questions from some of the women in the audience?" the audience came through without me having to say a word. I was really happy with the event and very grateful to the panelists who shared lots of interesting experiences.

And that afternoon we had an activity where participants took apart different technologies to consider the manufacturing techniques involved. I was working with Mustafa again and Suprio from India with help from a few of the other organizers to make sure that we knew what we were talking apart. Our project was those cheap flashlights, and our main goal was to make sure that we didn't just sound like we were quoting Wikipedia. In the end, the flashlight had lots of different parts and a short time to talk about injection molding, electro-plating plastics, spring steel, stamping and drawing, circuit board design and some of the other subtle intricacies. It was a really fun session and it was great to have a hands-on activity to wrap up the day, but at the end of the session, I was downright exhausted and ready to collapse. I actually did end up skipping out on the next session to get a nap, which was unfortunate since I really wanted to catch that session, but I figured it was less rude to fall asleep elsewhere than to fall asleep in the classroom.

* Water technologies tends to be a popular sector and none of the projects this year involved water, so we decided it would be good to bring in some speakers to talk about water issues. Since the panel on solar issues was called the Solar Panel, we debated calling this event either the Water Table or the Water Board.

Introduction
My Project (Part 1)
My Project (Part 2)
Other Work
Delivering Content
My Team
Language
Where We Stayed
Suame Magazine
New Longoro
Maker Faire
Food
Potluck
Ramadan
Transportation
Accra