Two years anniversary at Procomum Institute

Two years anniversary at Procomum Institute

By Zen EditorNo Comments
At the Procomum Institute, we just launched our open call for short term residencies at our lab with a focus on arts, communities and aesthetics of the commons. We had 138 registrations for our first commons residency, beautiful people coming from 30 different countries and 25 different Brazilian cities. We consider it a great victory that so many awesome people around the world are interested in imagining the present and the future from other aesthetics, a commons one. We launched a 3 minutes video talking about the beginning of the Colaboradora project: 13 resident artists collaborating in our space. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw3oLVG2Otg   This second video describes our almost 2 years of activity as Procomum Institute: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-J7nnYL95E...
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A New Wave of Impact Investments Sweeping Across Egypt

A New Wave of Impact Investments Sweeping Across Egypt

By Zen EditorNo Comments
Alexandria, Egypt- June 27th, 2018: The networking event, taking place in Cairo on June the 28th 2018, titled “Impact Investing and the Future of Startups”, concludes the second part of the Mentoring Up activities. As a seed for putting “impact” in investment in the Egyptian ecosystem, the highly anticipated networking event will witness the presence of a pool of active, well-respected investors, a variety of purpose-driven startups and other supporting organizations. It is an honor to have H.E Mr. Laurens Westhoff, the Netherlands Ambassador in Egypt, at the event who will give the opening remarks emphasizing the importance of impact investing and social entrepreneurship in Holland and Egypt. The event will also comprise a panel discussion exploring the impact investments climate and ecosystem in Egypt, additional highlights from the Mentoring Up programme as well as allowing time for the entrepreneurs and investors to meet and network.  Ahmed Bastawy, Founder and Managing Director of icealex will be, in his welcome note, highlighting...
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MakerNet report on design and knowledge sharing

MakerNet report on design and knowledge sharing

By Zen EditorNo Comments
The MakerNet initiative has been making progress, and a report has just been released that looks at design and knowledge sharing and procurement from local manufacturers. The report is shaping where the MakerNet concept goes next. It shares the results of experiments, workshops and interviews with makers, humanitarian staff and GIG members. THANK YOU to everyone at GIG who participated! Key results include: the need for standardisation across design sharing platforms; the need for focus on in-person engagement; strong support for mapping of local manufacturing capabilities; and demand for a one-to-many contracting system for distributing production. Field Ready, the MakerNet initiative, Humanitarian Makers and others are securing funding to work on these priorities – so expect more good news soon! Access the report at humanitarianmakers.org/[…]...
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How Ghana’s Maker-Movement is driving young innovators

How Ghana’s Maker-Movement is driving young innovators

By Zen EditorNo Comments
Last week, pan-African journalist Lee Kasumba stopped by Kumasi Hive for an interview with Jorge Appiah.  Excerpt What started out as a community of makers, innovators and entrepreneurs has quickly grown into the biggest Maker Movement in Ghana. Heading this movement is Kumasi Hive – a tech innovation hub that supports entrepreneurs in the process of rapidly prototyping their ideas, developing product solutions for critical challenges and, providing support. One of the challenge faced by 2% of Ghana’s high schools – was access to laboratories and the various resources required for practicing science. To address this particular challenge, one of the start-ups in Kumasi Hive’s network has developed an innovative product called the Science Lab in a Box – which is a low-cost mobile lab for students. […]   Read the whole story at 702.co.za/articles/304179/maker-movement-driving-innovation-in-ghana and watch Lee's full interview with Jorge Appiah: ...
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GIG AND RE:PUBLICA 2018 

GIG AND RE:PUBLICA 2018 

By Zen EditorNo Comments
I just arrived this week back home from my last visit to Berlin, attending to this year's editions of re:publica and the Global Innovation Gathering (GIG) Network annual meeting. This is my second year in both events and again it was a reinvigorating experience. Here some comments about it. re:publica had its usual packed program with talks, workshops, meeting and actions. If you go to the events related with your themes of interest, you'll find that the activities and discourses resonate with stuff that you already know, with some distilled new insights from devoted practitioners. For example, I was surprised by how gendered technology takes dangerous, invisible, but common forms, like all popular limitedly "smart" but submissive assistants (Siri, Alexa, Cortana), only having female voices. Also finding clever critical readings about "cancelling the apocalypse" and co-designing the future, as reported by Lisa. But the important opportunity that re:publica offers is the one of face to face connection and serendipity. re:publica is becoming an important platform for...
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GIG @ re:publica 2018

GIG @ re:publica 2018

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“We are what we create together” re:publica #18 is happening again and we are excited that a vibrant, diverse community of innovators joined for the 6th Global Innovation Gathering (GIG). The GIG network brings perspectives from across the world to Europe’s leading conference on the Internet and society. Every year since 2013 the Global Innovation Gathering hosts a track and since 2015 a pop-up Makerspace to showcase innovations from all over the world. In the past couple of days over 85 people from 30 different countries arrived in Berlin to meet up, share sparkles, experiences, design projects and prepare for re:publica with speakers representing projects in Kenya, Pakistan, Nepal, South Sudan, India, Brazil, Colombia and many more. You find many of our sessions in the Tech for Good and also in the tracks such as Blockchain, Fe:male Digital Footprint, or re:health. We will be reporting on how the unconnected are connecting themselves, how Zero Net Neutrality unintentionally accelerated Fake News, tell...
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Human-centered formats and the SDGs

Human-centered formats and the SDGs

By Zen EditorNo Comments
In the past two years we have been developing human-centered formats for teaching the contents and especially the new transformative components of the SDGs to policy makers that work for or with the German Development Services. Hence we are training parters, policy consultants and politicians to stop designing perfect solutions for ill-defined problems and unknown recipients. The format is a summer school academy of one week where the participants get SDG related theoretical input and apply it to fictive challenges in order to learn by doing. The next step is to actually help these people implement the learnings in their country programs. For this purpose we would love to reach out to our network....but this will sure take a while... policy design sure is a challenge of embracing slowness and patience. This is just one part of our - now somehow more structured - activity. In April 2017 we set up the innovation consultancy and capacity building company marzavan.com. I remember...
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Building the commons and working social innovation from the bottom up

Building the commons and working social innovation from the bottom up

By Zen EditorNo Comments
The year 2017 was the growth and consolidation of the Procomum Institute in Santos, on the coast of São Paulo, Brazil. We are working as a network in the construction and promotion of common goods and using citizen innovation and free culture to improve people's lives and solve local problems. Among other projects, we carried out the first edition of the LABxS Circuit  - our citizen innovation festival in which 13 ideas were selected in a public call and carried out actions to promote common goods in the Baixada Santista. The festival was marked by collective work and strengthening of citizenship. With all that we have learned, we have developed the Maral methodology so that the festival can be replicated in other territories and by other organizations. Have you considered promoting low-cost actions of citizen innovation? >> Read the full text in English at procomum.org/[…] Yes! We have a Lab The Procomum Institute has reached an agreement with a former Social Association and...
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Building the Africa Open Science Hardware community

Building the Africa Open Science Hardware community

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Our GIG colleagues Vicy, Jaiksana, Stephen and Jo made their way to Kumasi, Ghana to attend the very first Open Science Hardware summit in Africa: AfircaOSH. The event is being hosted at Kumasi Hive. AfricaOSH is a gathering for everyone interested in Open Science & Hardware as a means to achieve locally adapted, culturally relevant, technologically and economically feasible production in Africa; as an alternative to traditional Intellectual Property (IP) and closed knowledge systems; and to understand its potential for development and collaboration across Africa, especially by reducing barriers to entry in education, research and manufacturing. Participants will include but are not limited to makers, hackers, practitioners and researchers in science, technology, engineering, government officials, private sector players and civil society across the African continent, the global South and the World. The GlobalGathering for Open Science Hardware recently launched the Global Open Science Hardware Roadmap: Making Open Science Hardware ubiquitous by 2025. If you are also working towards Open Hardware in general or more specifically with research...
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Join the global alliance of makers and local manufacturers

Join the global alliance of makers and local manufacturers

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In 2016, several GIG members came together to launch the MakerNet Consortium. Starting with a pilot project in Kenya, MakerNet explored how products needed for development and humanitarian purposes can be made locally by digital designers and hardware entrepreneurs, rather than being imported. From the work we’ve done so far, we know that this is both technically feasible and economically viable. MakerNet is now expanding into a broader alliance, to bring together people and organizations working on different aspects of local manufacturing worldwide to:  Share knowledge Connect with new partners and facilitate collaboration Design tools, norms and standards needed to help local manufacturers connect with market opportunities Do you work with makers and local manufacturers in your community? Get in touch with us at [email protected] or sign up at makernetalliance.org ...
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