D Day (-3) - Gearing up for Monday

Unfortunately due to the vast amount of planning that needs to be done for the beginning of the conference I will be unable to backdate the blog for yesterday as I had planned to. However, I will continue updating the blog as normal as of this evening.

D Day (-4) - Learning from the experts

Apologies for the delayed nature of this blog entry. Will be following up with today's installment later this evening to keep you up to date.


Today we took a trip to the MIT Hobby Shop so that the organizers could learn skills that we will then be able to impart to the participants during the build it modules on Day 2 of the summit. The Hobby Shop is an MIT workshop that has been providing tools, space, training and assistance for over seventy years to all MIT students who exhibit the desire to create. We met first in D-Lab and discussed the three build it workshops that we will be working through on the 15th of July. The three separate modules; the making of a charcoal press; the creation of a corn sheller; and a tutorial on cutting sheet metal, will each last two hours and past participants will be in assisting staff and mentors in teaching the participants the skills involved in each of these.

One of these such mentors is Ken Stone, The Director of the Hobby Shop. He welcomed us into the workshop earlier this morning and gave us a tutorial in how to use a superb high tech piece of machinery, the water jet. The jet uses highly pressurized, extremely thin streams of water to cut metal, plastic, stone or glass into formations and shapes entered into the accompanying computer using a basic form of CAD(Computer Aided Design). Participants will be shown first hand how to use the machine in the first week of the conference and judging by today's tutorial, it will surely be an experience they enjoy!

Organizers of IDDS 08' fascinated by the water jet in action

Cutting sheet metal with water!

The team then met up again later in the evening to give trial presentations to each other on their experience post IDDS 2007. These presentations were compelling as they highlighted that the IDDS experience does not simply end after the conference's closing ceremony. Two of the participants, Tombo Banda and Deepa Dubey, talked about how their time in the workshops and teams at MIT influenced their eventual thesis projects and Zubaida gave a presentation on a sugar cane detrasher. One particular presentation, however, caught my eye. Miguel Chavez talked about his experience with Engineers Without Borders, the organization designed to connect engineers in countries dotted around the globe. Soon after he arrived back in Brazil after IDDS 07 Miguel realized that this organization did not exist in his home country. Together with another participant, Fernanda Maluly Kemeid, he worked hard to set up a fledgling organization in the University of Sao Paulo and the organization now boasts numerous Brazilian members

It is stories like this that make IDDS the unique event that it is. We hope this year to further the participants' post IDDS experience by helping to implement the various projects and prototypes by providing participants with contacts in their home country's and and also making money available for grants. Another fantastic element of IDDS is the sheer variety, both in terms of the participants and the various tasks that we are working on. I spent the day working on cutting half inch pipe metal, updating the website and finished the day off by feeding Amy's Cat Thibi! I think she is our unofficial mascot for the conference but I may have to confirm that...

D Day (-5) - Things are starting to get hectic

Today was the first day since I began writing this blog that I have really felt under pressure and I do not think that I am the only one. With the vast bulk of the participants arriving early this weekend we can no longer think of IDDS as a concept - it is becoming a reality! Tasks such as ordering food, creating the participant packet and organizing housing arrangements may seem trivial when compared with the exciting team projects but they are still essential to the success of IDDS 08. We were left to work on tasks such as these in the early part of the day before converging on room 16 -168 for what I think was our longest meeting yet. The speed with which people ran off to do their various jobs once them meeting had reached it's conclusion was a testament to just how much still needs to be done. Fear not though - we'll have everything ready on time!

Meanwhile Crossman and John have been working around the clock to make sure that D-Lab, and their new workshop, is ready for the beginning of the conference. D- Lab is sure to become the real hub of the next four weeks as teams use it and the surrounding workshops as a place to find tools, ideas and even Amy if they are lucky! We have been kindly given the opportunity to use further basement space for the project teams and this will surely be of huge benefit to the participants once their projects begin to grow and expand.

D-lab - before

And a selection of the tools particpants at this year's conference will be using

Following on from yesterday our three Honduran participants arrived safely and soundly this evening. I have yet to meet with them but they were taken out to dinner and orientated by Nadia Elkordy, a recent MIT Graduate who is helping out with this year's conference. She is, in her own words, "immensely awed" by the co-coordinators of IDDS and I can assure you that she is not alone in saying this. It is such a pleasure to interact with such determined and inspiring people as Amy Smith, Benjamin Linder and Co.

One thing we have discussed extensively in our meetings has been the potential problems that those without fluent English could face. Thankfully we have two or three organizers, including Nadia and Ruben, a one year MIT research fellow hailing from Guatemala, who speak Spanish well so we hope that this will help these participants to realise their full potential at IDDS 2008. Once within the workshops though, we hope that the language of engineering and technology will transcend any traditional language barriers.

Tomorrow looks set to be an extremely interesting day. Many of the organizers will be giving trial presentations of the IDDS related work they have been doing since the end of last year's conference to the group which will then serve as templates for when they give the same presentations to participants later in the conference. In the afternoon the organizers will be learning how to design the "build it" projects which they will then teach participants in a crazy, intense one-day training session on the second day of the conference. . Will make sure to bring my camera along tomorrow to capture some design technology in action!

D Day (-6) - Creativity and Corozos

I may as well continue where I left off last night and, if you can remember, our day was set to begin with some serious decision making. Each organizer had been assigned one of the projects in the 'maybe' category to research further and then present to the group. Benjamin Linder, one of last year's chief organizer's and the Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering in Olin College joined us to add his expertise to the selection process.

Amy talked to us about what she felt was the need for as much "creative space" to be left to the participants as physically possible and she also focused on the fact that the four week time frame did not leave too much time for extremly complicated projects. We thus decided that some of the projects we had on our shortlist were simply not feasible or did not have a specific enough design focus for a conference of IDDS' nature. We were then left to vote on the five remaining projects and surprisingly enough the turnout was almost unanimous in all cases. We decided on four projects and thus were left with a final total of fifteen options for the participants to choose from. The sheer potential of some of the projects was highlighted by Ben's exclamation of "holy cow!", as he mentally thought out the potential impact of one project.

There were two projects that did spark some debate, however. Miguel had been charged with researching the idea of a ten dollar computer and while he thought the project was worthwhile he felt that it was in some ways too similar to the work already being done by the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project. The idea behind OLPC is to produce an inexpensive laptop computer intended to be distributed to children in developing countries around the world,"to provide them with access to knowledge and opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves". The group then decided that our ten dollar computer project would work far better as a software project - perhaps with participants then designing through it interactive ways to show how to build or create some simple simple, extremely useful technologies.

A sample of the prototype computer for OLPC

We then moved on to discussing an extremely interesting project put forward by some of the Honduran participants. They were extremely excited about the potential for creating energy through the peeling of a Corozo(also known as Tagua) fruit found mainly in the South American climate. The fruit can not be found within America, however, and thus the Hondurans themselves must devise a way(possibly by cooking it beforehand) to make the fruit adhere to the high standards imposed by US Customs. All very exciting stuff. The Honduran participants arrive tomorrow so hopefully I will have some good news for you all on that front tomorrow evening.

A corozo fruit sample

We then moved on to discussing the t-shirt design we felt would best encapsulate the spirit and unique nature of IDDS. We eventually settled on a circular design that includes a wheel, a gear, an axle and also different parts of the globe representing the practical design and construction focus of the conference while at the same time highlighting how these collective design elements are helping to bring people from all over the world to work together. We must commend our design Guru, Deepa, at this point for coming up with such an innovative design concept. Here is a quick sneak preview...

The IDDS 2008 T-shirt

Later in the day myself and Laura were both sitting in room 16-168, IDDS headquarters if you remember, working in silence on our various tasks for the day. Suddenly Laura shouts out "they are coming TOMORROW!" and begins to laugh hysterically. We have all gotten used to Laura's frequent public interjections to herself over the course of the last few days so this should come as no surprise. For once, however, I felt I shared her feeling of juxtaposition between extreme excitement at their arrival, and extreme apprehension that there had been something really important that had been left undone. Hopefully someone is scheduled to pick them up from the airport, they will have a bed to sleep in tomorrow night and thus hopefully my blog can remain light and cheerful for at least another day.

D Day (-7) - Building towards a better future

Apologies for the break in the blog for the last few days. We broke for the holiday weekend and were given the chance to experience the respective delights of Maine, New York, Connecticut and the fireworks on the Charles River. But rest assured, the blog will now be updated every evening until the participants return back to their home countries after what we hope will have been an extremely productive and inspiring four weeks.

We met last night and again this morning to work out how close we were to completing some objectives and to see what needed to take priority this week. We seem to be well on course towards having everything ready by the time the participants arrive in Boston next weekend but we will have more than enough to keep us busy until then!

One main difference between the 07 conference and this years will be the increased focus on "learning through doing". We spent the meeting this morning discussing the various "Build-it" modules that we were planning for the weekend of the 26th July. We plan to have an entire day devoted to teaching the participants specific skills that they can hopefully then implement in their work when they return home. The workshops on offer at the moment include those designed to help participants to make pedal powered generators, peanut shellers and bio digesters. The organizers have each been assigned two out of the eight possible options and will learn how to build these later in the week. The participants will then have a chance to choose which workshops they feel will be of most use to them on the day.

Our focus then shifted to working out the details of our first ice breaker and design activity. This is an activity that we are carrying over from last year's conference whereby the participants are split into teams and must then build a simple device within a specific time constraint to accomplish a certain goal. In order for them to succeed they must learn to work together with people they will have only just met! We are attempting to focus this year on making sure that everyone withing these teams has a specific role so that everyone gets involved and we are also trying to take into account the language barrier difficulty that will face a number of the participants who will not have English as their first language. Looks set to be a lot of fun though!

Given how close we are to the beginning of the conference it was amusing that some of us met today to discuss the closing ceremony for participants on the 8th August! Amy had run through the schedule at the meeting and when she finished by mentioning that the participants would be flying home on the 9th of August she was greeted with a collective sigh of regret. Laura highlighted the hilarity of this situation by exclaiming "We don't even know them yet!". I think at the same time it also encapsulates just how eager we all are for the participants to arrive and if the past participant organizers are anything to go by I personally cannot wait.

In the morning we will meet at 9am to finally decide on which projects to present to the participants as their final options. We started out with over eighty potential projects put forward by participants, organizers, community partners and outside organizations but tomorrow we will be picking the final fifteen. Tombo sent out one e-mail with the completed list telling people to "fight for your project!" so I'm hoping that there will be some pretty heated discussion! Will report further tomorrow...

D Day (-12) - Pictures, Projects and Participants

Thanks to the wonderful resource hub that is D-Lab I have finally commandeered myself a digital camera so as of tomorrow's blog you can expect videos and pictures from the present to accompany the text. All I have to do now is find the charger in there which is easier said than done.

We met at our headquarters, 16-168, at 9am as normal this morning and were without Amy for a meeting for the first time because she, in her own words, "somehow still has a full time job"! However, Laura Stupin, one of the chief organizers , took charge of the meeting and soon left her own inimitable stamp on proceedings with titles such as "Spanish Sage", "Entertainment Emperor", "Housing Headmaster" and my personal favorite, "Computer Czar" being assigned to the various organizers for the duration of the conference. The aim of assigning titles like this, and other less exciting ones such as "Venue Manager", is to attempt to make the conference run as smoothly as possible. One of the problems with last year's conference was essentially a lack of man power in terms of organization so hopefully we can rectify that in IDDS 2008 as we have a significantly larger group of people to draw on for help.

After lunch we were all sent out a copy of the titles and descriptions of the various projects that are in the pipeline for IDDS 2008. The list is currently at about twenty four but we are hoping to whittle that down to the most popular fifteen before the participants arrive. They will then have the chance to vote on the projects themselves and the likely number of project teams will be ten, similar to last year's summit, but with more people on each team. Reading about the projects certainly had the effect of making the 2008 conference seem a lot more real and a lot closer than we like to let ourselves believe!

Options at the moment for the projects include a Pedal powered Hammer Mill for grinding down charcoal, a low cost, self sustaining incubator for low birth weight infants in rural zones, Small-scale chlorination production and small scale micro hydro power. In particular, the past participants themselves were extremely excited by the range of the available projects and were looking forward to getting involved in making them happen this year. Deepa Dubey, a past participant and recent graduate in Product Design from the Indian Institute of Technology, told me that the project she worked on during IDDS 2007, a low cost refrigerator, actually went on to form the basis of her thesis even though she said "people thought I was crazy!".

Deepa (second from right) with her project team in 2007

We are currently working still working on getting visa's for some of the participants to get here, however. The vast majority of those involved are confirmed but a small minority are facing difficulty. We are hoping that this can be resolved as soon as possible as it would be a real shame for any of those potential participants to miss out on what looks set to be a hugely interesting four weeks. Tombo Banda, a past participant from Malawi, is our aforementioned "Entertainment Emperor" and it looks likely that the participants will have plenty to keep them busy even when they are out of the workshops. She has one idea for an event, the IDDS Olympics, that will surely be interesting if nothing else!

We also plan to encourage as much cultural interaction as physically possible as we believe that IDDS is about more than people simply working on the same projects together. My first example of such a cultural interaction was earlier on today during my conversation with Deepa. We were asking each other about our respective homeland's and Deepa told me that before she had met me the only thing she associated with Ireland was Irish coffee, becuase she had seen it feature in a Bollywood movie. Hopefully by the end of this seven weeks I'll have convinced the other participants that there is more to Ireland than intoxicating liquers!

An intoxixating Irish liquer

D Day (-13) - Putting the pieces back together

Many of the participants in last year's IDDS

have come back again as organizers this year

July 1st featured the arrival of some more of our organizers team, the beginning of the cleansing and ordering of D-Lab and further discussions about the plan for the first week of the conference. We began the day with another early start, fed back what we had achieved the previous day and worked out what needed to be done in order to further the momentum we had gained the previous day.

Amy handed out the preliminary schedule for the conference to each of us at the start of the meeting and the room was filled with excitement at the huge array of activities that would be taking place over the duration of the four week long conference. There were quite a few significant changes in style and approach from last year's summit and Amy candidly explained the reasons why she felt these changes would perhaps help to facilitate a more interactive learning environment for the participants. While there will be a team of full time mentors at this year's conference their role will be less didactic than in the workshops of IDDS 2007 leading to a situation where the participants will be, as Amy put it, "uninterrupted, but not unsupported". We also discussed the need for participants to have an understanding of the relationship between product design and entrepreneurship from the outset of their projects as this was paramount to any of the products ever being implemented in the real world. The schedule reflects many of the above points and will be available on the IDDS website, http://www.iddsummit.org/ , within the next few days.

One of this year's organizers, Miguel Chavez, working hard in a workshop at IDDS 2007

We returned to our dormitories for lunch and were delighted to greet two more of our organizing committee, Sumit Pahwa and Deepa Dubey, Both had flown in from India that morning and were understandably feeling the effects of jet lag. After lunch we turned our attention to D-lab and what seems the huge task of ordering and cleaning it before the beginning of the summit on July 14th. The team remains confident however, that it can have it looking a lot more like the picture below and a lot less cluttered than it does at present within the next week.

D-Lab pictured during the 07 Summit, looking
significantly cleaner and more ordered than it

does at present!

The day finished with further brainstorming sessions about the potential projects that this year's participants would have to pick from and we also continued to try to come up with innovative ways to break the ice between people on Day 1, taking into account the obvious language barriers that would be faced with teams comprising of people from all corners of the globe.

As of the arrival of Zubaida Bai this evening we now have almost all of the past participant organizers with us in the Burton Conner dorms. Just as I was about to conclude this blog, Sumit walked into the kitchen looking completely disorientated and half asleep. His simple response to the bemused looks on our faces, "It's morning time in India!" summed up just how far people have travelled in order to help make IDDS 2008 live up to its enormous potential.