IDDS 2011 - Maker Faire

For final presentations we set up tables at ITTU in Suame Magazine and brought people from the communities where we worked (there were three village clusters--mine was New Longoro) as well as local artisans and technicians. Each team had their prototype as well as some posters explaining the technology and the venture. It was amazing that in spite of our proximity, I still didn't know the direction that some of the teams had taken with their projects.

At the start of the event, all the teams had the opportunity to present about our projects. My team nominated me to do our talking and then I was told that we would be the first team presenting. As the moment approached I could feel the dread setting in. And then the opening started an hour and a half late because a certain attendee decided to show up at his own convenience and our hosts insisted that we couldn't start before he arrived. I gritted my teeth as I had to thank him during my speech for attending.

Another difficulty was that they set up speakers and had a DJ. We used them to make announcements and the music helped attract some passers-by to see what we were doing. Unfortunately, the speakers were pointed right at our table, so it was sometimes difficult to explain our technology to the attendees. We kept asking the DJ to turn the music down, but as soon as we walked away, they would turn it up again. Finally, I thought back to my days as a sound technician and found the perfect situation. There is nothing more offensive than tinkering with someone else's controls, so I slid a couple of faders before turning down the master volume. The DJ was fuming and unplugged his CD player. All of a sudden it was a lot easier to explain our project.

We were a bit frantic at times during our demonstration as we collected moringa seeds from the team next to us after they had removed the shells (their project was a machine that did just that). Then we winnowed the shells away (okay, so about 95% of the winnowing was done by Rose from Tanzania) and tried to put them into our machine as fast as the passers by could turn the handcrank. People were generally impressed with our machine and some wanted to know when and where they might be able to buy one*.

There was also a fair bit of down time (it seemed like we had either 20 people at the booth or no people) so I was able to wander around and see what everyone else had been working on. I enjoyed trying out other people's technologies and asking all sorts of questions (often in the direction of whether we could try it out in Tanzania). I will say that having the exhibition run for two days was probably longer than necessary, but otherwise, it was a great way to get lots of feedback. I have to give kudos to Nathan who organized the event for doing an outstanding job.

* That was a pretty good compliment for our design, but there were some teams where people were offering to buy their prototype.

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