Thank you guys very much for having us You guys have just been looking at different maker movements across across the world in different maker spaces and our session is really about

How do we take this idea of making things and turn it? You know put the focus back on our cities and on the sort of development of the areas in which we live and so It's about how can we apply this maker mentality to like building up urban environments and building up cities and engendering innovation and growth

And so one of the things that we've found all of us building communities I think I'm speaking for everyone here to say that one really important components of Developing a city and encouraging innovation is really about encouraging opportunities for people to come together and connect meet new people Gain new perspectives new ideas and new ways of doing things and then from that from the margins of those interactions is where innovation

Really comes from and so in order to kick-start this this session We really wanted to ask each of you guys to stand up This isn't just like a static presentation where we we talk to you guys We want you guys to each stand up Meet someone in the room that you've never spoken to before and tell them something that you do or that you want to do

And in the process also, why don't you take that opportunity to move up closer to the stage? So please everyone take this opportunity to get get to know somebody new and tell them what you do and they can tell you What they do. Thank you

Stand up not saying you standing Daniel in the blue t-shirts in the back left

We want to see some movement So for those of you guys just walking into the room

Right now we're engaging in a process of introducing yourselves to someone new that you don't know and telling them something that you want to do

Cool. So so what what we've just seen up here from the stage is like various people having conversations we just saw a business card being passed over here and I think this is something that we we notice like on a sort of

micro scale when we do this of like sharing an idea that you have or something that you want to do with new people is That those people start telling you how maybe they can help you or how they can work together with you or how their ideas Might be able to combine with your ideas And this is something that we're all doing on in within our cities

We're trying to accelerate the rate at which people come into contact with new ideas and new ways of doing things So I'd like to introduce now tsunami to stand up he's going to talk about his project in Togo Hello, so my name is Sinemi

architect and anthropologist and the founder of well up well app is a hub that is also a community community about for about 20 Young girls and boys and this community is well known for this project of

3d printer the first African 3d printer So I have here a presentation of three projects we develop In well app three project with three different scale and urban projects Project of a space and a project of a product, but I will not have the time to talk about all this

I will just try to present the philosophy of Everything we do in well up and this philosophy is low. I take and for tell you more about low I take I would like to I would like to present you two people two person

The first person I would like to introduce is a Pierre Pierre is a tambour mama so tambour my people Very traditional people you find at the North Togo in Benin there are there are well known for their their culture the fact that everything they do are ritualized and

Pierre here is ultimately That's mean that he he had the the height level you can you can attend For a mass a tambour mama song and taberma are well known also for the the architecture They have a very interesting interesting architecture, which is at the world everything

the second person I would like to introduce is Morin Morin is The leader of the black box the black box is a occur space in Paris and Morin is occur He has you have been in MIT and Morin

every day walk on cloth who make music or lights and so If you think that this two person belongs to two universe very opposite You think as me since some of Me because I work a lot with tambour mama. I'll show you a thing. I do with tambour my people and

I have to say that I'm not at the beginning very interested by the technology car world universe because I assimilated to way to pollution to individuality and to

To to waste So I say that I'm not at the beginning very interested by the universe of more since I discover What we call the acura movement and space like fab lab and I find that in this

Specific space people talk a lot about collaboration Solidarity economy Transmission of the of the of the knowledge and all these values. I know it in traditional society traditional African society Where I walk as a sheet it so I can say that

I make myself the experience of each I was more at best in front of this world of new technology and since this moment I try to invent something to make collaborate these two universe and This thing we call we call low I take and

We could talk about it After but no I take help us to make urban project like the up CD project we've We've mobilized the concept like a she comp and fab lab to try to help

People in cities to have the the capacity That people in village have to collaborate and try to do to do things So we test this Urban utopia in the city of Lome make collaborate

High technology and hacker ethic with traditional societies values and This this project we begin to do like an utopia Give birth to a space Which is the well up and well up is the maker space

But a maker space creates at the beginning to serve this this urban project is a space we create to help population to have a Strategic area who they can come collaborate and try to change Their their their neighborhood

So we could talk a little more about well up and this Project of to the printer who without give birth after in the discussion if you want

Hi So I'm gonna talk about some of my experiences in Creating space for slides might take a load while slow

But it's one image anyway How to how to create spaces and how to actually encourage other people to make spaces how to encourage people to Solve the problems that they have and the challenges that they have using the resources available Around them and I think this is also what's what's interesting about what's happening here

It's like looking at the resources that you have not Necessarily the maker movement in terms of Arduino and Raspberry Pis that have to be shipped in from the outside But how you can actually use what's there on the ground to solve your own problems locally? I've been working in Egypt for the last

Year or so on and off and most recently I was working in a space in Aswan Where there aren't so many resources available Looking at how we could actually catalyze the community and how we could create the opportunity For people to come together and work on solving local challenges using what they had

In order to do this what I normally use is what I call Storytelling essentially you tell stories that inspire people You tell stories about what they might be able to achieve what they might be able to do And also you encourage them to tell the stories about their own dreams their own ideas what they might like to do And then you create opportunities for it to become a reality

You create an event or a context where they can come together and they can bring their projects offering their own Social object as it were in the project that they're making together You create the space and you create the opportunity and you create the time

For them to come together and build something you say to them, you know that thing that you want to do That you're going to do tomorrow or that you're going to do one day Today is the day that you're going to come and do it today is the day that you have the opportunity and Then you encourage them to do so and you make it their responsibility to create what they want

And then they bring their own dreams and their own ideas or they pick up on what you offer or what you've identified as well So the example that I was hoping to talk about which when the image loads you'll see but in the moment I invite you to use your imagination on the island that we were working on one of the challenges that have been identified by the community

Was that they couldn't actually get internet to part of the island one of the villages Mustafa darsh had set up An internet wireless point that was broadcasting to a good portion of the village, but he couldn't get past the trees So as part of a festival that we organized called the felucca festival where we invited people to come and start their own

social projects with the village people came from Egypt they came from Also the Netherlands we had people coming from the UK and Germany People traveling just to come into this space and work together with the villagers that they could find Shared problems and shared opportunities to collaborate on to build something together

Bill was inspired by My idea to build a mesh network on the island. I think bill you in the room or I thought I saw him earlier but so essentially He was inspired by this idea He took charge of the project and he was introduced to people within the village and in the community that were also motivated by

This project to work together They found what they needed using local materials They built a cantina which is a means of actually receiving the wireless signal from a cup that they found on top of the zerp They built a pole which was actually constructed for a toilet that they found lying around the space

They found everything else within the local area. We even had people coming from te data which is the egyptian equivalent of t-mobile coming and seeing the Technology that they were building and looking at how they could apply it within their own space and together They came together over a period of five days and they built

Wireless well wireless internet point for Nubia Linda space that we're setting up in the meantime We had numerous other activities happening people were making plastic bag new crafts new ways to recycle With the with the crafts people on the island with the craftsmen and looking at what they could do together But ultimately the underlying technology was just storytelling

It was just you have the opportunity to come and do something that interests you that motivates you you take responsibility for it And this is a picture of the guys working together at Nubia Lin's beautiful space to set up the cantina They're presently looking for where they could find the wireless internet point Essentially, it's very low management

We create the opportunity you create the chance you create the story you create the inspiration and you provide access to the tools and knowledge which is one of the joys of the internet and open source and then you get out of the way and let it Happen and then you see beautiful things occur and beautiful things emerge. Thank you

Thanks guys. I think we're all used to dealing in situations of lots of constraints infrastructural and otherwise, so Thanks for bearing with us as we're You know applying that that that maker mentality to the getting the presentation shown

Cool. So my name is John and I run a space in Rwanda called the office It's a co-working space But it's it's more than just like a place for people to come and work together It's a place where artists come and show it. We have art exhibitions we do

poetry nights TEDx events pecha kuchas for agribusinesses and networking events and sort of everything in between and we've We slowly over the past year and a half built Built from about a 60 square meter space on the top floor of a building to now having the top three floors of that building

which consists of sort of a big co-working space with anyone from a tech company to children's literacy company to You know photographers and graphic designers as an older woman who's working with educational charities in Rwanda who's co-working with us and then downstairs

We now have a Dutch organization doing access to finance there's an artist there's a tech company who The CEO of which is in the audience today actually and then on the ground floor. There's a Danish organization providing Acceleration training and stuff and so so really what what we've done is rather than just create like a place for people to work We're trying to actually create like an ecosystem to accelerate these

These opportunities to meet new people this this activity that you guys engaged in when you first came into the room This is essentially what we're doing With the city with a neighborhood We're creating opportunities for people to come together and be exposed to new ideas and new dreams and new opportunities for a collaboration

and And I think that's something that's really That I think distinguishes the approaches that we're all talking about is this the difference between sort of a top-down approach to supporting and innovation And really this maker mentality and sort of grassroots bottom-up approach to like creating opportunities for our city and really engineering change within our city And I think one of the more interesting examples of that in Kigali was actually with Clarice the CEO of hey

Hey, who's in the audience here? You you often see in Africa. There's a lot of sort of you know innovation hubs or different different You know Projects to inspire innovation or something else and it's in oftentimes these these projects end up becoming somehow siloed And one of the most interesting things that has come out of the office actually it's totally unexpected

It's not something you ever ever sort of imposed on a siloed tech community is the fact that Clarice is now making You know apps for teaching Kenya, Rwanda to children They've ended up creating the first Kenya, Rwanda children's literacy app in Rwanda ever And this is something they're going to be able to start rolling out onto different tablets and different

You know opportunities for kids across the country to have access to to mobile technology For for learning and this is something that came out of the fact that they're sharing office space with a literacy company That's making making children's books and animating those children's books and one day They were just sitting next to each other and decided hey We could we could actually turn this into an app and this is developed into an app on the one hand

But then it's also sort of infiltrated into this program that their company is doing to teach high school students to program and now they're working with Kids from across the city and those kids are actually designing apps For other for younger children So high school students designing apps for younger children to learn can your Wanda to learn to learn many things and they're gamifying it to

Make it fun And so why that's relevant and why I'm up here talking One of the things that we're working on next is actually to create a third space within our community So now we have a now we have a co-working space We have all these different offices where people can work and the next step really is to create a space where anyone can come in At any time with an idea to share it with people and so we're creating what we call the roof

Our space is called the office So the next step of course is called the roof because it's gonna be on the roof and It's gonna be an opportunity for as you can see up there for community ideas environmental activism but then we're gonna really create this opportunity for a big mishmash of like performing artists with movies with spoken word poetry and

Lectures from you know, people like us and other people to really really encourage this this cyclical sharing of ideas And so it's it's something that we're working on It's something that's gonna take a while to get off the ground and there's like many other sort of facets to that if you'd like to Talk about it more afterwards or during the questions come up to me, but I'll just put up

Just some information so you guys can keep in touch with us and keep in touch with our project if you're interested Thank you guys very much for listening So now like if I don't know who in the audience has a microphone But if anybody wants to ask a question to us, we've basically got about 15 more minutes left in our session

So just raise your hand and somebody should give you a microphone Thanks, I have a question for John

I really like the open model where you you know, mishmash so many different things together And that's how you get the creativity going But how do you decide who should come in and who and who shouldn't because you know, you could attract people from? Agriculture and you know movie artists. How do they go together? Like where do you draw the line? What goes together?

Where is there a good exchange of ideas? And where do the world's just not, you know meet at all? Yeah, that's a really good question. So thank you very much for it I think actually our belief in what we came up with very early on in the project Is that that we would not curate at all so the sort of belonging to our communities in a way self self curating or self filtering because only the people that are interested in

Collaboration sharing their ideas are attracted to be a part of our community but really I think it's the most interesting when you have the agriculturalist and the filmmaker sat next to each other in a room because it's the intersections of their Experiences and their worldviews and their skills is where you're actually getting getting innovation, you know, the filmmaker may be able to help

Identify a really interesting way for the agriculturalist to tell their story of what they're doing To be able to communicate that message to more people to find more partners and then vice versa, you know There's I'm sure there's opportunities I can't even consider and that's kind of the whole point is like when you put people together that you wouldn't expect you end up Coming out of that

You know like amazing. I mean that's innovation is not something that you can kind of like you can control So trying to say we're gonna have innovation because we're gonna get a technologist and an artist sat next to each other and there have particular Skills, so it's gonna lead to a particular type of innovation. That's that's not really I don't think that's as productive It's just saying like creating an open space building trust inclusiveness and some of these sort of cultural

You know beliefs in the community. I think that's really where you get this sort of interesting like interactions and outcomes I have a question. Hi John. My name is Sheila from M lab East Africa in Nairobi I have a question on the community. So you said you have different

Let's say companies in different sectors. Do you? Okay, is it that the office came into a building that had these people or do they come to the office and say hey I am an agriculturalist and I would like to have a space here. I work with kids I'd like to have a space here. How does that work? Because I think

It's a beautiful model to have people in different sectors and especially I think we have this thing as Guys in the technology sector where we all want to be in one building. So we just end up interacting amongst ourselves

So the ideas are not as diverse as maybe in in the ecosystem you're trying to build so I'd like to know do you Do they talk to you and ask you for space or is it that the office came into a space that had all these people and by default This ecosystem just came to be. Thank you

thanks with with our with our particular space we We actually charged we charge for usage of our office space and then we have offices downstairs So it's sort of a we have to we we don't have any outside funding It all comes from my back pocket at least from the beginning So we have to find a way to sustainably finance the operation

and so right now we essentially rent space like a co-working space anywhere anywhere in the world and then we We try we also have real estate downstairs in the building that we we sublet at like a really slight premium to be able to cover some of our costs and the idea of that is that The you know participation of the community helps to finance the community

Of course, one of the problems with that is that it ends up obviously certain segment of the markets A lot of people aren't going to be able to afford office space in a co-working space because unfortunately We can't charge that much less than what you charge for co-working space here in Berlin For example, just because a lot of our costs are similar. In fact, our internet costs are much higher So what we're actually trying to work on now is this this rooftop project

Which essentially allows us to have an open space where anyone can come in at any time So we're talking about having a little box with like Components for the maker community that they can buy and work on those on certain maker projects there in the cafe Also a stage that we're building with the local performing arts group a local dance troupe To be able to have like dance performances or even in rehearsals there at the space

So then we the idea is to monetize that space with cafe. It was started with with coffee and with beer and with food So that we can pay to finance the space and pay for the running costs of the space But really we don't we don't curate at all people just come in and they take office space if they want to and If they don't want to then they work somewhere else But yeah so far like we've just sort of attracted the weird and wonderful people of Kigali and like more and more so as

People see the crazy things that we're doing Okay This question is for Sinam from Sinam We had a conversation yesterday

I am fascinated By the philosophy behind word lab and We have we had a conversation about growing pains Because what you're doing is so cool it attracts a lot of attention and

So now there's the dilemma of what do you do with all this Attention and how you deal with the prospect of probably

Getting people take you into the wrong direction We had the conversation in French, but he It was it was what the members like the pressure probably from some of the members to do something with this notoriety and

And how that might impact the soul of who we lab So, can you talk to that? Okay, thank you well app exists since Julie 2012 and since this

Period we are we are we are really independent. We don't ask money to anyone all we do We pay Ourself for it so that helped us to do what we want to do and to stay focused on this philosophy to do low I take because if We know that if you open

What we do to another actors They can come and try to put it in some direction that it is not ours So from now, we don't have problem because we try to do it. We have our own resources But we are a lot of question not for actors right now because we are well known in the world

but in Togo We Don't really we are not really known even the government not don't really know well I so we don't have problem, but we have a question with young people who come because Wellab is the only one fab lab the only one incubator and the only one open

Co-working space in Togo. So we have a lot of young People who want to enter the community, but we can't accept Everybody and so for change the scale, I think we will need to Deal with some actor who can help us and at this moment

the problem Will come but we will try to to manage it as we as we do since we exist I Think this is probably a question that applies to both of you respect to like the sharing of spaces like balancing openness

versus closeness because when you're completely Open and when you generate a lot of hype and a lot of activity everybody wants a piece of you so you end up with a flood of people making information requests and wanting to be associated with your space wanting to collaborate wanting to do things and

Yeah, I'm curious on your like further thoughts from both of you actually on how to balance this like how do you remain? Open that you can generate the diversity whilst at the same time not becoming a communication point that everybody is Tearing in one direction or wanting to tell your story or wanting to promote what you're doing because it's so exciting

I think that's really a good problem to have I think I mean really like and I I'm not I guess I guess I personally haven't seen the downsides of Too much openness or too much collaboration yet I mean in a sense being being a terminal point for connections in a city is actually a really good thing for the community involved

And for everyone else and I haven't really seen the downsides of that so far Maybe that's just naivety and I'll admit that there's a good chance that there is a bit of naivety or an ignorance into what? we do but so far we just believe that the more people that we can get involved with our project the better and it's really We haven't there's never been a situation was like oh, I wish I hadn't collaborated with that person

I mean like there we it's somehow we seem to attract like people that really get the philosophy behind the space And we get we're getting requests all the time like in I think in a couple weeks We're gonna be hosting the next like group called Rwanda research roundtable, and it's a bunch of social science mostly social science researchers And you think what it what is social science researchers have to do with sort of an innovation sort of art creative space

But it ends up being really cool. It kind of they come and they talk about their research projects They talk about the problems they're having with research and then that that creates an opportunity for more people outside of the research community to engage with those sorts of topics and then also for Research community to meet other people that have real-world problems that aren't just looking at it from a sort of ivory tower perspective

And so I don't know the more to be honest so far I haven't I haven't encountered a situation where I've ever had like a collaboration that wasn't really worthwhile So I don't know and that might just be naive And tsunami I think the reason the reason I ask is we had

issues with open design city We created a completely open space in Berlin and one of the problems that we had was that you'd almost be completely Bombarded all the time by people coming in and saying hey what you're doing. Hey what you're doing. Hey what you're doing and Sometimes that serendipity can be a very powerful thing

Like you meet people that you can collaborate with and creates new opportunities and that does leave you in new and diverse Directions, but at the same time if you're constantly open like that You're also sometimes being pulled in different directions by those interactions. So like to maintain Like a focus as to what you're targeting and

Sometimes that serendipity is an opportunity But sometimes it can also be a distraction and how to manage that within the space I think that that's actually going to the core of the point which And this is something that's that we hold really dear in the office, which is that we don't actually have a goal We don't have an intention The serendipity is the intention with the knowledge with the full knowledge and understanding and experience that serendipity creates

Innovations and it's beneficial for everyone in the community So we we actually I love the fact that every time a new person comes into the community It changes the community a little bit because our brands as such as the office isn't something that we really care about controlling It's really something that's controlled by the people that were that are part of the community

The last time we did in fact like a theory of change exercise I don't know if anybody in this room knows what that means. It's kind of like this idea of Understanding like how we go from events or activities into a particular area of change We just invited everyone from our community from people that organize events with us to people that partner with us for events to People that work in the space to people that have office space sort of in our real estate downstairs

And we hope we had this really open and open sort of exchange and then so everyone in the community kind of directed Okay this is where this is where the ship is sailing and and this is what we want to do and And I think that's really cool and to do that every six months or every three months or to completely rewrite the space As often as we can I think that's really cool

And we're just really I mean, so yeah, the goal is serendipity in that sense So in that sense, it's it's good to have more people coming in I can add something to this the idea Behind what we do in Lume is is this Me I am I see that traditional societies

Don't need architects on urbanist or urbanist So what I want to do is how how we can help cities to arrive to reconquer this capacity traditional area have to collaborate and do things who

Works so The solution for us is to give people who live in the city some place they can come and Be Educated to this way of Collaborate and you think for themselves and don't and don't wait for the government to do to do it

So we create this space, but it is people who decide what they want to do with this space Yeah, I think that's interesting It's also I think what interests me is like when people start to do things and other people see them

Then it makes available to them a new way of behaving or a new way of doing things You know I love this story of I think it was a guy in Pakistan who started filling up potholes in his street and everybody was like What are you doing? Like why why are you doing that? That's against the law and He explained what he was doing and just filling them with tar and setting fire

And then the next day went out and all of the potholes were filled and just because he'd made that behavior Available to people he Given a new thing. I don't just accept it. Don't just like accept what's here. You can change it You can hack it you can make it and I think this is one of the important things that these spaces do is it?

Creates that chance you can go in and you can see somebody making a 3d printer out of out of e-waste for example, which is Very cool, by the way But this makes available that opportunity that you can be different you can try something new and you can actually

Commit to changing your own environment and making something worthwhile for yourself and others So it seems you guys are really generating a discussion here, but in the interest of time We actually have to move on to the next session. Thank you so much gentlemen for that. Please give him a round of applause