I was surprised when I met Anthony for the first time at the 2012 Barbot competition in San Francisco. This guy was part of the Lego Mindstorm team. How cool is that! Not only does he know how to make cool stuff with Legos, but he actually makes Legos. I appreciated the use of not one, but two Mindstorms for the TipsyBot that Anthony built. I’m not sure it made my drink taste any better, but it was pretty fun to see.
Emeka is maker’s maker! He is one of the main forces behind Maker Faire Africa. Emeka has the same name as a famous professional basketball player, but they are not to be confused! I met him at A Better World By Design, a student run conference in Providence, RI.
John is my dopplegänger. He works at NASA. That’s cool! He is an outer-space food packaging expert, a motocrosser, and an Arduino hacker. We all take packaging stuff for granted, but I can assure you that there are many challenging trade-offs. It’s great that someone as talented as John is working on these critical issues. I like the motocross and Arduino hobbies, too! I’m wondering if he’ll find a way to combine all those talents? I did hear that John has an Arduino project involving motocross. Good start! If only there was a way to get NASA involved with that project…
Amon Millner is a member of the Modkit team. I also first met him at Maker Faire in Austin, Texas. He does a lot of cool stuff and his students do really cool stuff, too.
OK, it’s tax time and I’m tired. That’s no excuse for not posting more awesome Black Makers to the blog! Especially since it’s tax time and I’m about to give Uncle Sam more of my hard-earned dollars I would be sadly remiss to not get Pamela Jennings up here, since she is like a super-meta maker. Not only does she make her own cool stuff, but she is at the National Science Foundation and helps get other makers in the research world the money that they need to change the world. Awesome, yes? I think so! Pamela is another fantastically talented maker who I first met at Sketching In Hardware. I wish I could direct all my tax dollars to her funding initiatives.
Most people take for granted so much of the technology around us. One man who doesn’t is my neighbor and fellow Brown University faculty member Don Stanford. He is the genius that helped transform a small lottery machine builder into the world’s leading lottery machine manufacturer. No small task, considering how much money is transacted through these devices and considering how totally critical it is that they work all the time and maintain very secure transactions. What happens when a machine goes down? Well, GTECH would pay the owner of the machine for all the lost revenue until the machine is fixed! Just think about this for a second. What if Microsoft or ATT paid you every time your computer crashed or a call was dropped. I bet that would cause a transformational reliability improvement in Microsoft or ATT’s products!!
Fortunately, I have a supportive family that helped me follow my dreams of becoming an engineer. Unfortunately for a lot of kids, they don’t have the kind of support network and opportunities that got me to where I am today. So last March I decided to do something more to help inspire these kids. First, I gave a TEDx talk on the topic. Then I began to collect profiles of black makers wherever I travelled with the hopes of giving kids heroes and role models. I’ve posted these profiles to a website “Black Makers.”
