The lists of people looking for matches is now up on the site, HERE, Sorry to all that it took a little while. Please browse the lists, especially - but not only - those from Ghana and see if you ‘match’ with someone there.
Match a Maker is a great way of helping each other, you can offer someone advice on design or technologies for example and perhaps gain advice or help on funding or mentorship. There are so many ways to ‘match’
At the live event in Ghana, lots of matches were made, for example: a man working on biocarburant found a mentor to further develop his business model, an inventor needing AutoCad skills was linked with the FabLab in Ghana, a shea butter maker was linked with a fabricator for a new machine to do same, a local children’s community organisation was linked to FM radio sender makers and a Ugandan man was linked to a mentor for developing his bicycle driven medical care service.
Now we want to continue this momentum online. So see if you can help ‘match’ people to take inventing and making to the next step.
We are also working on a fully fledged platform to support the same types of matching but then globally. We envisage liking this to a ‘Whuffie‘ type approach to reward people who match others. You can help us design and build this full platform, if you have suggestion are are willing to volunteer time to get this platform up, running and connected please mail us
Patrica Temma Bio and friend - Emer's match @makerfairafrica
Dominic Wanjihia building the solar dryer he invented.
[Snipped from Afrigadget] Dominic Wanjihia is from Kenya, and he’s here at Maker Faire Africa in Ghana because of the innovative designs and solutions that he comes up with for problems that ordinary Africans face. We had profiled one of his earlier inventions, an evapocooler for camel milk in Somalia, last year.
He’s been in Accra this last week working in the timber yards in Makola building a food dryer and a food cooler to show at the event. Both of them use air, and the dryer takes advantage of the heat from the sun. More detailed posts will be coming on them, but here’s a few shots of him and the carpenters building the devices.
Read the full article at Afrigadget.com
The Maker Faire is all about Makers and meetings. In order to facilitate more exchange between makers and other makers and between makers and attendees Butterfly Works is running a Match a Maker service.
Everyone at the Maker Faire will be invited to take part, fill in the form or text their request to a mobile number. Then we will match up people who have related requests. We know that many of the attendees even if they are not presenting their work during the Faire itself are in fact entrepeneurs, innovators, trend watchers etc. In this way they will have another channel to meet up with people who need their services. Matches could include for example a programmer in Kenya meeting a new client from Ghana, a designer from Ghana meeting with an international group of makers.
Watch this space or the Maker Faire Africa twitter for the mobile number, so you can take part even if not present. After the event we will report on some of the best matches made.
Dominic Wanjihia's "Evapocooler," used to keep Somali herders' milk cool, profiled at Afrigadget.com
Thanks to the generosity of an MFA supporter, Kenyan inventor Dominic Wanjihia will be attending Maker Faire Africa. Dominic, who first came to the anonymous donor’s attention through an article published on AfriGadget in 2008, describes himself as, “an inventor of appropriate technology, environmentally friendly gadgets applicable to … the empowerment of rural people.” Among his inventions are:
- The Malaria Integrated Vector Management (IVM) Disc
- An evaporative cooler
- A solar food dryer
- A food smoker for meat and fish
- A shallow well – deep well water pump
- An eco-friendly pest exterminator, mainly for moles and termites
We’re looking forward to meeting Dominic in August and expect that he will benefit greatly from the opportunity to interact with other appropriate technology inventors like Amy Smith of the International Development Design Summit.
Flickr Photos