associate who runs the MIT Ideas program said: “That’s a really interesting idea, if you’re going to pursue it, MIT might be able to match some funds. Not a huge amount you know, perhaps seven thousand dollars (USD)”. We thought “Hmmm maybe we should really pursue this. Maybe we should recognize this is a good idea?”. From that an incredible organization Butterfly Works and one of their co-founders Emer Beamer from Amsterdam came on board; it was the first commitments of a small handful of sponsors to support the team as a sponsor.
some family member in Accra, Ghana. We knew Ghana was the oldest democracy in Africa; it would be a great first place to start. It was January/February of 2009: we had a commitment on the location, the Kofi Annan Center, and we had some makers that were bringing things from outside. Then we started to find local makers: Henry and Erik getting on motorbikes and riding out in the rural areas of Ghana were looking for inventors, showing people the stuff we were doing, just finding out some cool stuff. We also had some TV and some radio interviews. At the end, we had 59 makers, and over a thousand people attended. We immediately decided “Ok, let’s do this again”.
From there, we put together the team: Emer Beamer came on work. Henry Barnor, from California, came on as well. Henry’s a technical/technology guy; he’s someone that has the deepest understanding of software. Emer is more, in a way, the operations person. I’m more of the marketing, sales, and business-model side of things. And Erik Hersman is the grassroots guys. Erik understands the Afrigadget side of things. He’s been doing this for some other kind of folks. He knows how to find them, how to discover cover them. He knows the good from the copycats, he understands that all.
Marco Mancuso and Bertram Niessen: What about the makers profiles? Are they engineers? Are they amateurs, or professional amateurs?
From there, we decided to move ahead with our first event, and every team member – including myself! – had someone to contact, including
Mark Grimes: In many cases they’re individuals, in some cases they’re teams of people. The majority of them 81