Ugo Conti’s Water Spider Boat

Energy & Sustainability


Excellent piece on KQED’s Quest on this most unusual boat, modelled after a water spider, by engineer Ugo Conti, and great footage of his boat in San Francisco Bay.

I enjoyed Conti’s quotes:

Because I get seasick, I suffer at sea. I think there has to be a better way. I want to fix that.

If I have a problem I tend to solve it with my engineering capabilities. I was born an engineer. I have to work with my hands. Most important. And then I have to make it. I can’t escape these new things. It’s actually a problem sometimes. You go into crazy things like this.

Somebody has an idea, and doesn’t have the money and doesn’t belong to a big company, he goes into the garage and makes it. So we go into the garage.

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DALE DOUGHERTY is the leading advocate of the Maker Movement. He founded Make: Magazine 2005, which first used the term “makers” to describe people who enjoyed “hands-on” work and play. He started Maker Faire in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2006, and this event has spread to nearly 200 locations in 40 countries, with over 1.5M attendees annually. He is President of Make:Community, which produces Make: and Maker Faire.

In 2011 Dougherty was honored at the White House as a “Champion of Change” through an initiative that honors Americans who are “doing extraordinary things in their communities to out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world.” At the 2014 White House Maker Faire he was introduced by President Obama as an American innovator making significant contributions to the fields of education and business. He believes that the Maker Movement has the potential to transform the educational experience of students and introduce them to the practice of innovation through play and tinkering.

Dougherty is the author of “Free to Make: How the Maker Movement Is Changing our Jobs, Schools and Minds” with Adriane Conrad. He is co-author of "Maker City: A Practical Guide for Reinventing American Cities" with Peter Hirshberg and Marcia Kadanoff.

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