Dans le cadre de la série de conférences “45 minutes of Success Story Telling”, la JCI Rabat a le plaisir d’accueillir Mr. Cesar HARADA et Ms. Gabriella LEVINE pour une conférence sous le thème “Success Story of Change Makers”
Cesar Harada est inventeur, Environmentaliste et Entrepreneur Franco-Japonais, il est TED Senior Fellow.
CEO de Protei, César est actuellement en train de developper “Protei” – un navire autonome à voile révolutionnaire, à coque à forme variable.”
Gabriella Levine est américaine, Hardware Designer & Hacker, Top women in Tech (Adafruit), Master de ITP Tisch de New York, et COO de Protei.
Soyez Parmi nous pour les découvrir et partager leur expérience.
DATE: Samedi 20 Avril 2013, 10:00 – 23:00 LOCATION: ESITH Eole Supérieure des Industries du Textile et de l’Habillement. Route d’Eljadida, km 8, BP 7731 – Oulfa, Casablanca, Maroc. Plan LANGUES : Francais, English, Arabic
Above from right to left : “Make, Code, Sail, Share”.
SUMMARY
Venez fabriquer des robots a voile basés sur micro-controller Arduino, raspberry π, servomotors, DC moteur et autre senseurs pendant une journée inoubliable d’électromécanique, de code, de test dans l’eau, de Kinecthacks, de rencontres. Nous fabriquerons des coques de bateau, des mats, des voiles, des boitiers de contrôle mécanique, assemblerons des circuits électroniques, programmerons, testerons nos machines sur l’eau, partagerons sur les réseaux sociaux. Nous discuterons aussi les principes du mouvement DIY et Open Hardware (technologies ouvertes et gratuites). Protei (page facebook) est un navire autonome Open Source a coque articulé developé pour explorer et nettoyer les océans. Les océans souffrent de marées noires, de pollution plastique, fuites radioactives, surpêche, mort des récifs coralliens, changement climatique, montée du niveau de la mer. Nous devons developer ensemble des technologies àtants la hauteur de ces défis.
INSTRUCTEURS
Le Hackathon est ouvert aux experts comme au débutants sera facilité par :
+ Cesar HARADA (France-Japon): Inventeur du system Protei de bateau à coque articulé, Ex-Project Leader au MIT, TED Fellow.
+ Gabriella LEVINE (USA) : Hardware Designer & Hacker, Top women in Tech (Adafruit), Master de ITP Tisch de New York.
+ El Wali El Alaoui (Maroc): Fondateur de SaharaLabs / Tarfaya Hackerspace, premier et unique hackerspace au Maroc.
+ Darren Bennett (USA): Directeur créatif, Microsoft Studios, Membre de groupe a l’origine de la Kinect.
PROGRAMME
10:00 – 11:00 : Introduction du mouvement Open Hardware. Protei, robot naviguant. Introduction du Workshop. Questions. Formation des groupes.
11:00 – 12:30 : Prototypage rapide. 3 cycles rapide de design en petits groupes.
12:30 – 13:00 : Dejeuner leger.
13:00 – 14:45 : Fabrication de bateaux robotises en petits groupes. Revue par les instructeurs.
14:45 – 15:00 : Presentation interne entre groupes.
15:00 – 16:30 : Construction des prototypes.
16:30 – 17:00 : Nous marcherons avec les prototypes de l’ISETH au lac le plus proche. http://goo.gl/maps/Z5opH
17:00 – 18:00 : Test dans l’eau, photos, video, documentation.
18:00 – 19:00 : Diner
19:30 – 23:00 : Sceance d’approfondissement pour celles et ceux qui veulent aller plus loin, améliorer les prototypes, documenter et partager sur les réseaux sociaux.
RESPONSABILITE CIVILE | LICENSE | DROIT A L’IMAGE
Chacun des participants du workshop est libre, responsable et ne peux poursuivre les organisateurs, l’hote, les partenaires, les sponsors, les medias presents en cas d’accident corporel, de vol ou de perte des biens ou de donnees.
Tout ce qui sera produit lors du workshop est publie sous license open source : Hardware (CERN OH), Code (GNU GPL) Documentation (dessin, photo, video, diagrames, textes) sousCreative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Chaque participant permets aux medias presents d’utiliser les photos et videos capturees pendant la duree du workshop.
AGE MINIMUM : 18 Ans, ou accompagne par les parents.
FRAIS D’ADMISSION : 150 DH a l’entree. Boisson et nourriture inclus. Amenez des outils, des composants et des materiaux. INSCRIPTION OBLIGATOIRE :https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1HPJYWniY3YFLlcMmlz-2puLsYvO-QKSnlToYnfX0VIs/viewform REJOIGNEZ LE GROUPE “PROTEI HACKATHON” SUR FACEBOOK : Joindre le goupe Facebook n’est pas une inscription formelle. Pour participer au Hackathon il est obligatoire de s’inscrire.
With Gabriella Levine, we had the amazing luck to have Jeff Hoffman who “is a serial entrepreneur in the internet, technology, and entertainment industries. He has founded, co-founded, and been the CEO of numerous start-ups and larger companies, and has led his companies through acquisitions and public offerings (Priceline.com, uBid.com, CTI, and others).” Jeff told us that many people have great ideas, what really makes a difference is the execution, but more precisely the targeting of the customer. Who will buy? At what price? What kind of quantity? When? How? These are critical questions that change over the lifetime of a product and keeps changing as the technology improves, the cost fluctuates depending on the supply – demand balance and the marketing and distribution strategies.
We had for Jeff these 2 main requests :
Help us narrow down our customer target
Help us “choreograph” the timing in the pricing and product / technology development
Put the client in the room
Jeff’s first advice was to literally put the client in the room. So we did! We drew a life-size client in the room who would be writing either a bank check (yes!!!) or a “fail” sign (no!!!). Having the client in the room helps you answer these hard questions. The client should be there at every stage of decision. We called our client “William” and quickly we realised that William would not be our (only) client in reality, if our client at all. So… we realised that we would quickly see a “fail” sign if we were not more thoughtful here. So… who is Protei’s client?
Who will buy Protei? At what price? In what kind of quantity? How?
Jeff told us that most entrepreneurs would say that “the entire world would buy their products” (by year 4, more than 50% startups would die btw), but since it is impossible to target the entire world, it is a wise idea to target as precisely as possible to start with. Jeff said “Think big, act small“. The people would buy / use Protei come in many different color sizes and flavours (from left to right) :
Humanitarian user: someone who’s life depends on the data / clean up work produced by Protei. This user is hard to reach, has very limited resource and needs a very highly performing product. Even if this potential user makes the greatest use of Protei technology we may not be able to serve this user immediately since our technology is so new and untested.
Kid: Kids are great users, they want a product that is easy and fun to play with, it has to be cheap and robust, plug and play and we can sell in great quantity, but few parents are ready to put a lot of money on expensive toys.
Hobbyist: Hobbyists are great because they love novelty, they are patient to receive their order they have passed on-line, they tend to be very dedicated to assemble, test, document their activities and give us feedback on-line.
Hacker / Maker: want a product that is modular and extendable to modify and run their own experiences on the product as platform. They tend to be very good at tinkering and sometimes good at documenting and sharing their improvements with the community.
Ocean Scientists: are our ultimate target as they are the one that serve the highest goal of Protei that is to explore and protect the ocean. That’s what we want to turn kids, hobbyists and hackers into: active advocates, data-producers and ocean-cleaners. Now Ocean Scientists in academia and institutes generally do not purchase machines and instruments with their own money, they would carve out part of their lab budget to buy Protei. What ocean scientists need is reliability and extendability since often times, the instruments they will put inside will add up to be much more costly than Protei itself. So, interestingly, if ocean scientists may not make the biggest volume of sales, we want their technical needs to drive the evolution of Protei.
Sailors: We have sailors (of real large boats) but they are falling very much in the hobbyist category when it comes to operate a 1 meter long Protei.
Industrial: this is where most revenue may come from in the future but currently the technology is not mature enough to market Protei. These guys are willing to put big money for industrial applications but they need industrial 100% reliable results.
Military: big money surely, but that is not our culture and not what we want Protei to be developed for.
We decided :
GREEN: Our target for MARKETING = Hobbyist / hacker! This is where the greatest volume of sales can be achieved, determining the packaging, channels of marketing and distribution (mostly on-line distribution).
RED: Our target for QUALITY = Ocean Scientist! We want Protei to be used for ocean science and collect ocean data, so we need to know more from our “golden user” the ocean scientist that will drive product and technology development.
Product evolvability : in short that means that we will market a product aimed at hobbyists and hackers that would be easily upgradable to be used for ocean science.
Redefine Product with a user-centric lens
Now we know who is our target market (Hobbyist / hacker) we take in consideration what they want in GREEN, they want to have fun:
1. Easy to use
2. Affordable
Right after which comes the requirments of our quality target (Ocean Scientist) in RED, they want reliability:
3. Robust
4. Modular, Extendable
so they can install all sorts of ocean sensor on the sailing robot.
This is a user-centric approach that redefines our product agenda and development strategy.
Very different from the engineering, scientific or intuitive / artistic approach we had so far. It was more than time to do this.
Ranking
We made the assumption that different buyers would buy a device at a very different price (with different features of course) :
$1 : Humanitarian user (subsidised)
$250 : kid (parents paying)
$700 : hobbyist
$500 : hacker
$1000 : ocean scientist (using lab budget)
$700 : Sailor
$5000 : Foundation
$7000 : Industrial
Empirical criteria ranked on a scale of /100 :
Pricing: at which we can sell each machine depending on the client profile (above)
Promotion: satisfied clients are our best representatives / evangelists. Especially at the beginning, influence might matter more than pricing or even volume of sales.
Improve and share: Protei is Open Hardware that means that we actually invite people to use (copy), modify and distribute our technology for free. We’re asking in return to be credited but most importantly we’re requiring our community to contribute to improve the technology. So our customers are really our R&D department, we treat them as our most precious collaborators.
Contribute data sets: We may have few sales to ocean scientists, gathering data, analysing them is going to be what adds the most value to our sailing platform for remote sensing.
Accessibility: How easy it is for us to reach our clients? That’s totally subjective, that’s our social networks, the people we like to talk to, the people who like us.
Ease of Production / expectations: Industrial users have extremely high expectation and even if they are willing to pay a high price it will take us a long time to meet their expectation. Kids just want to play, it is much easier to produce for them. Hobbyist / hackers / ocean scientists are the most likely to tinker and to be satisfied with an alpha product.
Ease of delivery: where are we located? Are there high tax / regulation / compliance on imports in the country for the application envisioned? Is the country we’re trying to work with politically unstable, suffering corruption?
These different factors allow us to carve out the potential each client profile have for us. That’s the yellow line.
Next is to roughly estimate how many Protei boats we can sell to each of these potential client. That’s the red line.
So now we multiply the yellow line by the red line and obtain the sales potential per client profile. That’s not an accurate technique in any way, but that’s fast and easy helping us find out who gains the most value from our product VS what’s the sales opportunity for us.
For Protei at the current stage, the rank for potential revenue from sales would be :
Industrial: scoring the highest because that’s where we can make the biggest marging, but the technology is not ready for that yet.
Hobbyist: that’s the immediately most accessible market
Sailor: same as hobbyist as they are passionate about sailing and willing to invest money in their passion
Foundation: they would finance buying many units at the same time but they are quite hard to get
Kids: as we come on the market, we want to build a brand culture that is welcoming for kids but that’s more aimed at ocean scientists
Ocean Scientist: our favourite user but almost smallest group!
Hacker: “hyper-technological-human-anomaly”, but oh so valuable ;)
Humanitarian user: the one that personally needs our technology the most that is also the hardest to get to and serve.
This research is highly valuable since it tells us that extreme users – that we expect to represent a minority of our clients – are the one that are driving technology development even if they rank very low in our sales potential. I think this is not unusual, and crucial for us to aknowledge who are the most valuable (in volume) and/or influential buyers / makers of our products. That also tells us that we need to fight to get to industrial users as fast as possible.
Strategy & Marketing, to reach our goals of sales and cultural growth
Now we know the quality we want to achieve (ocean science), and we know the target client (hobbyist), how are we going to orchestrate our sales?
As our customers are our R&D , our community for a Open Hardware technology, we cannot stress enough how determinant it is for us to be intentional about how we set the right culture (hands-on, hacking for ocean science) around our product depending on who are going to be our first users.
$1000: Early adopters, setting a culture.Ocean Scientist. We want our first users to be hackers – ocean scientists. They are a minority of power users, that will be our star-testers, tinkering and driving with us the development of this new technology.
$700: Quality UP, Price DOWN!Hobbyist, sailors. Driven by our small but high-profile community, we can improve the technology and deliver a second generation of machine with many more features as a kit. Basically it would be a version with more sensors, more powerful electromecanics, more processing and communication range etc. As a reminder, even if $700 could sounds like a lot, it would actually be a very good price for a sailing robot that could be made autonomous with a suitable embed intelligence and sensors.
$500: sustainability and growth. Hackers. $500 retail price is the current average price for a basic 1 meter long RC sailboat. For that price, I believe we should be able to build a very robust sailing robot fully fitted with sensors and an android powered CMU on board. That kind of price and high quality for value should satisfy the greatest volume of customers while being a powerful and extendable platform for science for a while.
$250: Democratize!Kids. Once our technology has been validated by a small (read manageable) but highly qualified core group that would have contributed design and code improvement, it would be time to broaden the diversity of customers. We should open to a large volume of sales also after we have built a robust and scalable data infrastructure to welcome. The dream is ”Science instrument at the cost of toy!”.
Kits: customise your product. As an Open hardware company, we pride ourselves to be transparent and offer our clients to buy the parts they want and assemble the boat they dream of. From travelling around the world and talking to potential clients, it became very clear that Protei would be one product in our catalog and that even the internal components of Protei could be used for many other sailing robots designs. At this point we will diversify our offer and empower the community of makers that want to explore and protect the oceans like we do.
From making this one day research we learnt enormously about our sales strategy, and how we intend to building our community and culture around products that they would love and invest in. Thanks a lot Jeff Hoffman for this great lesson!
Francais
Venez fabriquer des robots a voile basés sur micro-controller Arduino, Raspberry π, servo-motors, DC moteur et autre senseurs pendant une journée inoubliable d’électromécanique, de code, de test dans l’eau, de rencontres. Nous fabriquerons des coques de bateau, des mats, des voiles, des boitiers de contrôle mécanique, assemblerons des circuits électroniques, programmerons, testerons nos machines sur l’eau, partagerons sur les réseaux sociaux. Nous discuterons aussi les principes du mouvement DIY et Open Hardware (technologie libre et gratuite).
Protei est un navire autonome Open Source a coque articulé developé pour explorer et nettoyer les océans. Les océans souffrent de marées noires, de pollution plastique, fuites radioactives, surpêche, mort des récifs coralliens, changement climatique, montée du niveau de la mer. Nous devons developer ensemble des technologies àtants la hauteur de ces défis.
Le hackathon est ouvert aux experts comme au débutants sera facilité par :
- Cesar HARADA (France-Japon): Inventeur du system Protei de bateau à coque articulé, Ancien Project Leader au MIT, TED Fellow.
- Gabriella LEVINE (USA) : Hardware Designer & Hacker, Top women in Tech (Adafruit), Master de ITP Tisch de New York.
- El Wali El Alaoui (Marocco): Fondateur de SaharaLabs / Tarfaya Hackerspace, premier hackerspace au Maroc.
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English
Come for a 1-day intense hands-on workshop we will build remote-controlled sailing robot based on arduino microcontroller, raspberry π, servo-motors, DC geared motors, and the available parts. We will build boat hulls, mast, rudders, sew sails, assemble electronics, write code, build circuits, test-sail our boats the water, and document it online. While doing so, we will also discuss some of the concepts of DIY & open hardware movement.
Protei is an Open Hardware Shape Shifting Sailing Robot to explore and clean the oceans. In order to address the scale and complexity of the issues in the ocean – Oil Spills, Plastic pollution, radioactivity, overfishing, Coral reef mapping, red tides and climate change- we must develop scalable, hence, Open technologies.
The hands-on workshop open to experts and beginners will be facilitated by :
- Cesar HARADA (France-Japan): Inventor of the Protei Shape-shifting system, Ex MIT Project leader, TED Fellow.
- Gabriella LEVINE (USA) : Hardware Designer & Hacker, Top women in Tech (Adafruit), Master from ITP Tisch New York
- El Wali El Alaoui (Marocco): Founder of SaharaLabs / Tarfaya Hackerspace, first hackerspace in Morocco.
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Nous cherchons un espaces avec ces critères suivants:
pour 50 personnes, tables, chaises
proximité de l’eau (lac, grande piscine, mer)
electricité, Internet
capacité de faire de la poussiere et travailler tard le soir
We’ll start by the fun stuff with good Ghanian music :) We were very much interested about the life of the Ghanian fishermen, so we just drove there and met a community of them near Axim. After a few minutes of discussion we asked if we could join them for a fishing experience and they accepted to take us out on the water. At rising sun, we pushed the vessel in the water on big steel rolls and wood boards, passed the wave breaking point, sailed to the fishing spot, deployed our nets, sailed back to shore, pulled the nets for a long time. I was surprised that even for pulling the nets back on shore, no mechanics is being used, it is all raw human power. The men were incredibly strong and pretty much risking their lives without any safety. The reason why we came to visit the fishermen, is because we wanted to know if their had been affected by the recently introduced offshore oil industry nearby. Thanks to Samuel Ainoosoa Kwesie for introducing us to the captain.
According to the World Bank Ghana is a relatively healthy democratic developing country with a good multi-party political system, freedom of press, a good education infrastructure, with a growing industrial, illegal mining (Ghana is one the top producer of gold), oil and growing population. The CO2 emission is in steady increase – not that this would be an index of sustainable growth rather the contrary- but indicates the country is increasingly active on the industrial, transportation and construction fronts. So overall Ghana is doing “well”. Still we found several important issues:
I recommend watching 2 short movies of May 2011 about “Fish VS Oil” Part 1 (2’32) , Part 2 (3’36) communities or this longer and more detailled documentary (22 minutes, Dec 2012) . Several reports indicates that Ghana lack oil spill monitoring and cleaning capability: Bloomberg, Ghana News Agency, even if the EPA claims having a sufficient contingency plan. Either way Protei could really contribute to early oil spillage detection and clean up.
SINOPEC Chinese fortress
At the top of the hill above the fishermen’s village, there is… a chinese castle! SINOPEC is installing a large pipeline along the coastline.
Inside, a real garden of eden with multiple fountains. We were told that about 100 skilled chinese engineers and workers live here. Many Ghanians seem to be unhappy with the chinese presence and feel their natural ressources are being exploited by foreigners. As a half-asian person, I wonder why Ghanians do not build their own castles and garden of Eden… And why Ghanian authorities let chinese operate at a scale they do not feel comfortable with? Quickly after we got in, the SINOPEC security agents came, asked us to delete our photographs and leave.
Tullow Oil
Tullow is the largest Oil Industry operating in Ghana on the main Oil Field called the Jubilee Oil Field. We visited their headquarters and attempted speaking to their environmental department without success. We are in email communication now. Below are the concessions of the Jubilee oil & gas field:
According to the locals we met, the annual turnover of several of these companies are many times the turnover of the whole country of Ghana.
Ministry of Energy
Thanks to Faustine Araba Boakye of the International Clean Cooking Association, we were able to meet Kofi Agyarko.
EPA Environmental Protection Agency
At the EPA we were able to speak to Ebenezer K Appah-Sampong, Director Planning, Programming, Monitoring & Education.
Ministry of Fisheries
At the Ministry of Fisheries, we spoke to:
Director: Samuel Quartey
Director of Marine Fisheries: Mathilda Quist
Marine Fisheries Research Division: Paul Bannerman
Field researchers: Joseph Seboah, Richster Nii Amarfio, Noble Wadzah, George Awudi
On the wall of the Ministries of fisheries we could read some press cuts: the World Bank is running a program (among many in Ghana) worth US$ 53.80 million. It is labelled as “loan and credit“. Below is the program abstract:
The development objective of the First Phase of the West Africa Regional Fisheries Program Project is to support the sustainable management of Ghana’s fish and aquatic resources by: (i) strengthening the country’s capacity to sustainably govern and manage the fisheries; (ii) reducing illegal fishing; (iii) increasing the value and profitability generated by the fish resources and the proportion of that value captured by the country; and (iv) developing aquaculture. There are five components to the project. The first component of the project is good governance and sustainable management of the fisheries. This component aims to build the capacity of the Government and stakeholders to develop and implement policies through a shared approach that would ensure that the fish resources are used in a manner that is environmentally sustainable, socially equitable and economically profitable. The second component of the project is reduction of illegal fishing. The component aims to reduce the illegal fishing activities threatening the sustainable management of the country’s fish resources. The third component of the project is increasing the contribution of the fish resources to the national economy. The component aims to identify and implement measures to increase the benefits to Ghana from the fish resources, by increasing the share of the value-added captured in the country. The fourth component of the project is aquaculture development. The component aims to set the framework for increased investment in inland aquaculture. The fifth component of the project is regional coordination, monitoring and evaluation and project management. The component aims to support project implementation and regional coordination with the project, ensuring that regular monitoring and evaluation is conducted, and the results are fed back into decision-making and project management. Administrated by Berengere P. C. Prince.
Source: http://www.worldbank.org/projects/P124812/ghana-west-africa-regional-fisheries-program-gef?lang=en
The program started in July 2011 and will end in December 2017. This is a very important information. There is capital to carry on all these tasks, clear objectives and deadlines.
University of Ghana, Professor Christopher Gordon
Professor Gordon is the most scientifically educated and creative person we met in the country.
Prof Gordon mentioned that Protei might be an interesting device to deploy in Lake Volta, but also the many lagoons to study oxygen levels, redox potential, sedimentation and other environmental parameters. Lagoons tend to accumulate land-borne pollution in particular heavy metals from mining. We are interested to build a pilot proposal with Prof Gordon and use University of Ghana as our base when we come to Ghana. A topic that we are also interested is the interaction between the oil and the fishing industry when it comes to environment.
Center for Environmental Impact Analysis, Samuel Obiri
With the sharp mind of Samuel Obiri, an independent researcher, we wrapped all the discussions we had with the different ministries and stakeholders. Mr Obiri explained us what is the relationship between the scientific and the legal as well as the business sides of the oil exploitation in Ghana. We discussed the level of oil spill preparedness and the expected involvement of fishermen in the event of an oil spill.
An important observation was that
fishermen are currently the most at loss with the development of the oil industry and
if an oil spill was to happen, they would be on the frontline to clean up and suffer the heaviest health, mental, environmental social and economic damages.
Consequently, what are the most valuable data sets to be found?
Samuel Obiri has published the most comprehensive measurements of oil pollution in Ghana that I could find, compiled here in a pdf [6mb].
Networking at Hub Accra
It was great to have a sneak preview of the burgeoning startup culture in Ghana. We met a lot of cool people at the freshly built co-working space in Accra. Just to mention a few:
Open University if West Africa : John Roberts, Victor Ofoegbu, William Edem Senyo, John-Paul Parmigiani, Heather Cochran
Akua A Nkrumah and Laura Stupin of WeWASTE Entreprisers doing waste water management
In a very short amount of time, we have been capable of meeting most of the key stakeholders of the oil and the fishing industry, from ministry representatives to local fishermen, from University researchers to independent environmental consulting agencies. The challenges that Ghana is facing in terms of environmental impact of the oil industry, the apparent lack of preparedness to oil spill, the lack of environmental data about water quality and fish stock suggests that Protei could really make a difference in Ghana. The low cost, open source, modular, transparent nature of Protei appealed to all the people we talked to. There is therefore a case for coming back to Ghana with Protei.
The main difficulty now is the definition of a strategy for raising funds to address these issues.
If we run a pilot, which stakeholders shall we involve?
Fishermen
Academia: University of Ghana, ASESHI, OUWA, AITI, foreign Universities
Politics: EPA, Ministries of Food & Agriculture & Technology, Fisheries
“GHANA’S EMERGING PETROLEUM INDUSTRY, What the stakeholders need to know” 2010, Mr. Ishmael Edjekumhene Mr. Prince Owusu Agyemang Ms. Paula Edze, KITE. [Archive 1Mb]
“AN ILLUSTRATED GLOSSARY OF SELECTED OIL AND GAS TERMINOLOGIES” 2010, KITE. [Archive 500Kb]
Talking to Megan Both (Microsoft) and Chris Shipley recently has helped us a lot thinking about Protei services. What should we monetize? What should remain free? What piece has got to be Open Source? What part doesn’t necessarily have to be Open Source? What can we scale? What are our horizontal (business baseline) vs verticals (applications/users)? So much marketing and business strategies to think around beyond a simple product!
The way I like to think about this is the same as cameras : you have someone who builds the parts, one person that assembles the parts into a camera, someone else to test them, ship, distribute, sale, insure, provide all the connected services, accessories, hardware and software, someone that gives you the driver, someone that teaches you how to use the camera, maybe even go to a photography academy, than you have to buy the memory card, the memory card reader, an extra battery, the guy that sells you the cable to connect it to your computer, than you take pictures, but soon you fill up your hard drive, now you upload your pictures, you be part of a community, you sort and tag them, they get into your profile page, it becomes your consumer identity, feed to your social network, flickr it, instagram it, facebook it, you are being analysed among thousands of other users, become part of stats, give general tendencies about what’s beautiful and popular, what is not, what should be tolerated, it informs the company strategy company, can go higher into policy and the philosophy of media, social cohesion, the economy, the making of culture. Each of these steps can become a flourishing business independently. All of these services can be provided by different people, and many new services can be invented around a new technology. mmmm…. 5AM, time to go to sleep!
Thanks a lot to Nanine Steenkamp of HumanIPO for covering this event at the One&Only in Cape Town, South Africa.
“Protei, an open source oil spill cleaning robot startup from the United States was appointed as the winner at the SAP conference for Cape Town’s Unreasonable at Sea shore stop today (Tuesday).
The panel of judges was impressed by the principles of biomimicry, the open source environment principles and the “massive impact” the innovation can have worldwide, Simon Carpenter, director of Strategic Initiatives at SAP in Africa said.
The idea originated from the concern of damage to nature because of harmful oil emissions in the ocean, spread by the currents.
Protei provides the solution through a shape shifting robotic sailing boat which cleans up oil while moving in the water.
Although different motoring technologies are applied according to varying sizes, wind power mobilisation and solar power can be implemented to be even more environmentally friendly.
Further possibilities posed by the invention include upscaling of open source hardware, provision of ocean data, playful educational science-focused activities and tablet games associated with the control of the sea-bound robots.
Gabrielle Levine, chief operations officer and Cesar Harada, chief executive officer, are the two founders of Protei.
Judges included Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress.
The Unreasonable at Sea initiative carries 11 startups from across the globe to destinations around the world in a ship where the selected entrepreneurial seafarers are sharpening their skills and business ideas for market success through a program designed by Daniel Epstein, founder of the Unreasonable Institute.”
Cape Town is a spectacular city. The mountains that surround the city. The beauty of the ocean. The powerful winds. Captured above by our wonderful media team having lots of fun at work.
First thing we did in Cape Town was to go and meet with Gabriella’s friend who owns a fashion shop called Unknown Union in the hip area of the city. At the entrance of the shop, we were so surprised to find the installation of a my friend Candy Chang “Before I die, I want to …” !
Every time I come across Candy’s work, it reminds me of the good times I had when I was living in New Orleans a few years back, living in the same street as Candy in the Bywater. It reminds me of my dreams, it reminds me that everyone has amazing dreams, and we’re all in this world to make them all happen…
The SAP pitch event
The pitch event went very well, additionally to our “classic” pitch we added a soundtrack that was emotional and I think it really worked !I love the idea of making a music hall instead of a pitch event :) We won the SAP pitch event in Cape Town and the reward was …
A diner in a chic restaurant with all mentors and special guests
We were very fortunate to share the table with this group of exceptional people. Many of which were our influential mentors.
Koeberg, Africa only nuclear power plant
We spent about 2 days investigating about Koeberg, Africa one and only nuclear power plant. We rented a car, drove there twice.
You may be positively surprised to hear that the levels of radioactivity that we measured around the nuclear power plant were acceptable. In fact we had higher levels in the center of Cape Town than close to the Koeberg plant. We measured levels on the beach, and in the water at about 1 meter underwater with the sensor we customised with Safecast for the Fukushima expedition. We were able to pay a little visit at the Koeberg Visitor Center and learn all about the plant and the technology they use. Many kids were also visiting. We were not allowed to approach the power plant closer than 2 kilometers. According to documentation in the plant, the cooling of the reactor causes the temperature of the sea to be significantly increased (up to 10ºC) outside the plant outake of water. It was surprising to see that the Nuclear power plant is installed in the middle of a natural reserve that is a highly secured perimeter. What it felt was that the natural reserve was more of an excuse to keep curious people and activist at a greater distance… I’m now curious about the radioactivity levels at Vaalputs in the Northern Cape where the used fuel is disposed.
The local makers
Thanks to our connexion Ralph Borland that we knew from the Science Gallery back in Dublin, we were able to have a really nice insight into the maker / designer culture of Cape Town.
We were introduced by Paul Mesarcik to the local designer / maker’s world.
Below Protei INC Art Collection very first acquisition !!! Who is the artist?
The Cape Town University
We were delighted to find a customised version of OpenROV at the University of Cape Town. Protei and OpenROV have shared a wonderful time at TechShop SF Summer 2012, it is super encouraging to see OpenROV in other countries, being modified and used.
Thanks to Paul Mesarcik that studied electro-mechanics at Cape Town University, we were introduced to Dr Robyn Verrinder of the Research and Instrumentation, Departement of Electric Engineering of Cape Town University. We discussed with local researchers their their latest development in autonomous sailing robot. Above, a freshly build hull that is being compartmentalised and ballasted with fishing lead weights in the bulb. Quite a few researchers are now interested in developing autonomous sailing robots, this is the people we want to involve with Protei!
The Gangster Incubator
We were lucky to meet Marlon Parker (Facebook) of Rlabs who introduced us to many inspiring young people in a not very inspiring neighbourhood. They explained us about their community, the hope they found, how the access to technology helped them feel empowered to look a their future, how it re-enchanted their lives.
We want to keep in touch with the RLabs.
Shuttleworth Foundation
We were lucky to meet with some people at the Shuttleworth foundation. Thumbs up for the Foundation!
Marine Transect, Moving Sushi
They explained us how they sample the coral reef ecosystem using stereo-video to determine fish density, biomass, diversity and community structure along 1 500 km of the Western Australian coastline.
They just arrived from a 4 months journey the day before our departure from Cape Town! We had to meet!
The East African Marine Transect expedition is a not-for profit expedition that is managed and facilitated by Moving Sushi. Moving Sushi actions strong ideas by facilitating globally important marine-based scientific expeditions to explore the relationship between humanity, our marine environment, science, technology and how new knowledge is communicated and shared through open source channels.
They just completed 234 dives, were quite tired, and after sharing a quick breakfast they went back to unpack their boat.
Joe Heywood of North Sails
Our last encounter in South Africa was with Joe Heywood of North Sails. It was great sitting down with his family, sharing food and geeking about sail / rig designs. Thanks a lot for your precious advices Joe!
“The Fish Pi that will be venturing across the Atlantic will be much bigger than the concept vehicle. Early plans suggest it will be about 5ft 6in (1.7m) long, a foot (90cm) wide and its hull will be made of carbon fibre. Development costs will be about £15,000, estimates Mr Holloway.”
“The Wave Glider’s capacity to operate autonomously at sea for months on end gathering data from uncharted reaches of the ocean has attracted $40 million in funding, including $22 million from VantagePoint Capital Partners, a leading Silicon Valley green tech investor, and oil industry services behemoth Schlumberger. VantagePoint’s chief executive, Alan Salzman, sees a huge potential market among companies and scientific organizations that now must spend anywhere between $30,000 and $150,000 a day to staff and outfit a carbon-spewing deep-ocean vessel. “Resupplying a ship in the middle of the ocean is staggeringly expensive,” he says. “The Wave Glider has enormous implications in terms of the ability to provide monitoring and information on things in the ocean we otherwise have no access to.”
Such different animals. I’m so in love with the space Protei is operating in. Autonomous sailing robots. An ocean of possibilites. The next frontier. We are a few players now, we may be thousands soon. It feels like it is the beginning of a great epoch. I think we all feel that. It probably has a lot in common with the the exaltation of the first manned flights years. Seeing your baby sailing on it’s own is a magical feeling. Imagining that one day it will become this little dot on the map collecting information, among many other points, such an adventure.
And the numbers are so impressive. The money. The size. The materials. So different. We have large corporations with multi-million investments on major media outlets facing devices made of parts that costs a few hundred dollars. And we’re all progressing fast with so much conviction, underdogs, overlords, all humbled by the power of the elements, all willing to be brocken and try, try again. I am happy I read these 2 articles side by side today because it informs me with the situation of Protei. I feel we’re somewhere between these 2 extremes. A rather sweet spot. A good place and we must pursue that “middle” slice. Not only for hackers, not only for big corporation, for everyone. I’m excited. Let’s go.
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