 Welcome back to our studio in Halle. Today, the next presentation will be about the caribos, a moving exhibition. The speaker, Saad Ginoj, is managing his local maker space called Selvage Garden in Singapore. He considers himself a geek and maker and will talk about the moving exhibition today. Thanks again. Sorry about all of this. It's become the necessary dance that we have to do with all the remote connections and multiple streams and so on. But thank you again for the intro. And I'm really happy to be with you guys in spite of all of the distances and not really happening in the physical space, which is kind of what I'd like to talk about with you a little bit. And before I get into it, let me do a little bit of an intro. My name is Saad and I'm based in Singapore normally. I set up little maker spaces and I'm all about trying to apply tech for good. And I have volunteer with Engineering Good, which is a non-profit charity based in Singapore, and we work with persons with disabilities. And today to try and talk to you, to share with you a little bit about what we've been doing in combination with partners from around the world through a program called Caribals. And if you've read the little description of the talk, you'll probably be wondering why all of the people mentioned there aren't here. And it's kind of what this is all about. They weren't able to join me in conversation for various COVID related, safe distancing, travel related issues. Ricardo is in between places, Geraldine is also in between places, and so is Fadia. And I'm actually quite fortunate to be able to jump in and share with you what we have. So I'm going to keep it nice and informal and brief. But for my co-presenters, I hope that continued health and that they have safe travels and I hope to see them again soon. Alright, so if I'm able to, if you're able to see my screen, I'd like to show you around a little virtual space that we've created. I mean, caribals.org is the project and you'll find more about caribals on the website and so on. But because of the restrictions that we're all under around the world, having a physical interaction is, you know, like CCC next to impossible right now. And it takes perfect sense. We need to put health and safety first. So the virtual exhibition that I'm about to show you is created in a two dimensional world on a platform called Gather Town, which is not unlike the 2D world that RC3 also has. It's actually inspired by last year's CCC and the sort of interactions that we saw while people were able to sort of run into each other and have a spontaneous conversation just by the fact that they were in that virtual space and a moment in time. So the idea of having that virtual space seems a little bit strange because, you know, it's all on the screen. So why bother, right? But I think the more you try this out, the more you move around in this two dimensional environment, you realize that even though there's a slight difference between having a little character running around, it really makes a huge impact. So that's kind of what we were inspired by. And we create a little two dimensional space here. And we call this the cariboules international talk. And it has various instances or little jump off points for different cariboules moving exhibitions. And I'll show you one of them in particular, the one that I've been facilitating in Singapore last year. And you'll see that in a second. But if I'm going to just show you a little video to sort of situate you as to where, what these cariboules moving exhibitions are a bit like. And the video might be a little bit choppy because of the screen share, but that's okay. There is no text really. This is just a bit of music. So that's what the sort of intro video and you'll see this right in the middle of this crossroads. So when you join the virtual space later on I'll share with you the link. You'll be able to sort of orient yourself by, you know, looking at the video. And I'm hoping that what you what you saw in that video a little snippets of the various exhibitions that have taken place around the world. I was the one sort of facilitating curating the exhibition in Singapore. And it gave us an opportunity to take this EU Horizon 2020 funded project which is cariboules and invite other local partners within Singapore to come forward with similar ideas. And just to give you a little brief thing there, it's about assistive technology. So things that are either 3D printable or modified or custom made that cater to persons with disabilities or try to address a need that has to do with persons with disabilities. So those are the sorts of examples of objects physical or otherwise that we put together at these exhibitions. So let's take a quick look at Singapore. So all you have to do is sort of, you know, walk around to this portal. And once you get there, you got a little instruction that says, you know, hit the hint of key to continue, and it will transport you to another virtual space, which is also built on Gavitown. So I'm going to switch off this little video here. And we can just use the moving around virtual space. All these spaces were created by volunteers and super enthusiastic intern. So they are a work in progress. But you can get a sense of what they're all about. So here we are in a little tiny little shophouse. If you're familiar with Singapore, you'll know what shophouses are. It's basically a shop in the downstairs area and a house upstairs traditionally. So this has been converted into an office. And it's rather narrow. So the 2d space is created sort of to resemble what it would feel like if you were in the physical space in and around Singapore. So I'm just going to walk you through the space and show you all of the things that we have on display here. The exhibition was laid last year and with some really nice fun people. Some of these are local partners. And so that's the little poster at the entrance. This is our little lobby area. It's a courtyard. It's open to the air, but we, you know, sit outside and talk about things and smoke cigarette and things like that. Once you get in, it's a tiny little space where you'll see a whole bunch of laptops arranged along the side. And, you know, there's a lot more in the actual space. And to tell you a little more about why we've got so many laptops, here's a little info video to give you an overview of what engineering grid is and why we do what we do. So I hope this comes across okay. If not, you know, there will be, I'll paste the link in the chat or something similar. When we started the CAC initiative, the computers against COVID initiative, we actually initially thought we would just refurbish 24 laptops and pass it on to the beneficiaries and then, you know, watch Netflix and play PlayStation for two months. So far, we've been able to give out about five and a half thousand laptops. We work with more than 200 social service organizations or charities and through them, we've given out all of these five and a half thousand laptops. Hi, I'm Johan. I am the Executive Director for Engineering Good. We are a Singaporean charity who started out in 2014 working with persons with disabilities to enable their inclusivity in daily life. We grew in 2020 where as a cause of the pandemic, we started a new initiative to refurbish and donate laptops to people who need them. And now we are working on new initiatives that have come our way because of our work in assistive technology and our work in digital inclusion. So for example, our next big initiative is our IT troubleshooting community framework where we will train volunteers to help troubleshoot the laptops and the digital devices of people in need. Together with our growth in digital inclusion, we also have grown our initial work which was working with persons with disabilities. Our Tech for Good for example grew from 80 art participants to 150 participants this year. We've grown from only working with six special schools to the 200 charities in Singapore that work for and with persons with disabilities. So because of the impact that we continue to make and the impact that we are requested to make by our various social service organisations, we have an internal conscience that makes us want to do more and help more. And because of that, Engineering Good is growing in leaps and bounds. We got our first office in little India in September 2020 and being a small team of three, four people, we thought this was all we needed, right? A nice little shop house next to the MRT so that the volunteers can come in. However because of the growth in the initiatives that we want to do, we are hiring more and more people. We now stand at eight full timers and we're hiring another five more that together with the rolling bunch of interns and the part timers and all the volunteers that we have. It's making this space a bit congested so we actually are moving to a bigger space, an industrial estate where we have about 2,700 square feet and we can then run more workshops and more programmes and also train the digital inclusion efforts that we'll be doing. We would like to ask for your support in providing us with more devices to refurbish, to pass on to the people who need them. We ask for your support to come and help volunteer. As Engineering Good, we don't only need engineering volunteers, we need volunteers of all types. We need people to work at Combs, we need people to help us with our website design, our accounting, just like any other organisation. So please if you have the time and want to give more of yourself, come and join Engineering Good. We hope you can support Engineering Good by donating to our cause and helping us grow so we can help more and more people. Okay, so that's a bit of a background of the organisation that I've been volunteering with that you heard from Johan. He's our Executive Director and he puts in a lot of his heart into the work that we do. It's all about reaching out to those who are in need and in the last two years during the pandemic, we found ourselves responding to the call for addressing the digital divide through refurbishing laptops, although that is not exactly what Engineering Good used to do. It was all about assistive tech. And so now that we've handled that campaign, it's because of the volunteers and the sort of devices that we've had, we were able to continue this campaign way beyond we initially thought. We're coming on to now, I think, close to 6000 laptops in the last two years that have gone to families that don't have access or are unable to work from home and study from home at the same time. So in sort of combination with this laptop computers against COVID, as we like to call it campaign, we've also now been able to re-energise our assistive tech work. And those are the exhibits that we have on display here as part of the caribou's exhibition. So we do have a few more videos, but I'm not going to bore you with those. I think as you explore the space by yourself, you'll be able to view those without any lag and delay. So let me just walk you through the upstairs area. So here we've come up to the top floor of the space and at the back, you'll see there's a little corner that's been designated the Savage Garden. And it's a sort of reference to Savage Garden. We do have sort of a, I mean, there's a broad range of volunteers that spend time at Engineering Good, but with the reference to Savage Garden, I think you understand what demographic we're working with. And that's kind of how the name came about. But the idea was that we would salvage as many of these devices that were not working into working devices and then send them out to the families that need them the most. And this is work that, so this is the corner that is a little maker space. And, you know, like most maker spaces, it tends to be appropriately messy. You can probably also see in the corner there, we have our supervisor stuck to the window. She's our most furry volunteer. And she just wandered in while we were refurbishing laptops. And she wasn't being cared for because everybody was in lockdown. And she didn't have the usual source of food, which was left over from cafes and restaurants. So she wandered in from the street and she's been with us ever since sort of keeping an eye on things when nobody is there. Garden is maker space with a cat. She does also keep an eye on activities. And I'd like to show you that. But before I show you some of the current projects, let's have a look at what's on display here. So each of these tables has a sort of like a representation of what was displayed in the actual physical exhibition. So if you walk up to it and hit X, you'll be able to see a photograph or a video or a series of photographs and videos that show you the object. So this is a good example of one of the caribos. It was designed by an Italian consortium member, and they went on to have a successful Kickstarter program around commercialization of this idea. But the open source files and the models do exist. So you're able to just download and 3d print. And if a non commercial version of this to try out for yourself and of course, you know, being 3d printable, it allows for customization and personalization. And this particular object is designed for children with fine motor control difficulties that instead of being able to hold a pencil with their index finger and their thumb. So you have sort of a wearable ring that goes on to multiple fingers and they're able to hold their pens and pencils and draw on paper. If you look at the little poster at the end, I think that'll give us a little bit more of a detailed view of what this is all about. And just like an exhibition, you have links to where it's available and how you can get involved if you choose to do so. So that's Glypho. Let's have a look at the next stage. This particular one is a personal favorite of mine. This is engineering goods, caribou if you like, and it has been doing ever since we started as an organization. We make these assistive switches which are 3d printable and are incredibly easy to lightweight and easy to adapt to specific circumstances. So if you have a mobility issue, say you are wheelchair bound and you have to install switches or access control mechanisms around your wheelchair, then having it be as lightweight and modular as possible is a good idea. So these switches really help and we've been using them in various ways. In particular, we've been plugging them into toys as part of our HackerToy workshop where we teach caregivers and cognitive behavioral therapists how to make these switches themselves. So the idea behind what engineering good does is not just create the devices but to engage the primary caregivers as well as the end users as much as humanly possible and share the skills behind making. The idea of thinking out of the box and looking at what your specific needs are and re-purposing things that you have around you in order to create something new. This is another example of a very interesting invention. This was contributed by SG Enable which is a local Singapore based organization that has a physical library for assistive tech from commercial examples. Engineering good tends to focus on sort of like the low cost alternative to what's available in the marketplace. But if you are in Singapore and you want to have access to assistive tech devices just to get a feel for what they look like, SG Enable may try these things out. So they contributed this which is a very interesting little jacket and it looks like a hoodie like any other but if you look closely the pockets and the lining of this jacket actually have little air pockets inside and they can inflate and sort of give you a feeling of a hug. And it's used for kids who are have anxiety disorders. And it's found to be quite useful and helpful in situations like that. And of course there are other scenarios where this could be useful as well. So that's the G-jacket. Let's look at what else we have here. This is a good little 3D printable that was again a collaboration between two makerspaces and it offers up a forearm attachment that is incredibly lightweight because it's 3D printable and incredibly modular because you can attach different little pieces to it. And as the arm grows or as the users needs change, it's easier to make something that is 3D printable on the spot and it's easier to modify it so that it doesn't rub against the skin or it's a little bit bigger on one side or a little bit more bent this way. So we find that the possibilities around these kinds of objects are far more conducive towards the user rather than what's available in the marketplace and they tend to be heavier and mass produced and incredibly expensive. So we feel at Salvage Garden that we don't just play the role of making these things in 3D printing, we have the responsibility to also make the modifications and the changes necessary in order to facilitate its use. I mean, it's all very well to have as much, you know, brilliant AI enabled fancy tech in the world, but if it's not going to be usable, then what's the point of the fancy tech? So we want to try and bring 3D printable objects and 3D printing closer to the end users as much as possible. And we're not alone in this. There are other spaces that are doing it. And I think Caribou's is a good example of who those people are. One last little exhibit that I'd like to point out here is something that is available in the marketplace but incredibly useful. It's called a Rolleramp and it is a commercial product. It is not particularly cheap, but it is incredibly useful in making spaces accessible. It rolls up into a sort of like a yoga mat kind of format and since it's metal, it is quite heavy, but once it rolls out, you can bridge over the little tiny little steps like this and allow access for wheelchairs and so on. Let's just have a quick look at the poster on the wall. The poster on the wall is not okay. There seems to be a connection issue here. I hope I'm still coming through. I'm going to quickly reload this. But in the meanwhile, at the end of my little talk here, I'll share the link to the main space and to like a little QR code as well with a tiny URL that will point you to the virtual space. And I highly encourage you to come and visit and explore and on your own time. All right, it looks like we're okay here. All right, one last thing I want to show you how to make a space is what I'm currently working on. And you'll notice on this table we've got a bunch of pies and that was not the closest analog I could find in this virtual 2D space for the Raspberry Pi, which is the sort of programmable pocket sized, credit card sized computer that I feel has tremendous potential. And a little slice of pie on the table. And I'd like to show you that as an example here. Hopefully this will work. Yeah, here we go. And let's get rid of these here. It's very quick. It's a little few slides and I'm sure you've a lot of you are familiar with this wearable device, which is the Google Glass, and it's quite pricey. It didn't make it into the mass market, but it still is around and is being used in enterprise environments and is quite expensive. But there was an interesting article, which the link is at the bottom to a use case where children with disabilities are in this case autism could use this device as a wearable in order to assist with the activities of living. And it's still being explored. There are sort of very small little use case and trials where this is being tried out. Personally, I feel this is an excellent use case for something that didn't quite make it into the mass market. However, the technology behind it is inaccessible financially because for 999 US dollars, it might be okay for an enterprise to use it, but for an individual that it's still quite hard to reach. And this little caption at the bottom right side is surprisingly simple. But if you take apart one of these devices, you very quickly realize that it's far from simple and there's a phenomenal amount of tech and engineering that goes into making a device like this possible. Just the idea of having a screen in front of your eyes so close kind of defies the laws of physics and to be able to overlay a little bit of text or a little bit of information while you're able to see through it. But to go back at it, and in our low cost sort of DIY maker kind of way, we said, look, let's find a low cost alternative to this and see if we can make it work. And what we have here is a device that basically auto translates. It has a little microphone that picks up what is being said. And I'm sure everybody is familiar with this by now on YouTube or other video things you can have little auto generated captions. That's text, that's speech to text technology and having that be visible to a person who has difficulty with hearing is a good idea. And it assists with scenarios where otherwise you would be required to lip read. And now everybody's wearing masks. And if you have more than one person in the room, it's a bit tricky to be able to manage it all. So the use case that we were looking at is low cost alternative to something like the Google class, something that can be worn, but it's also lightweight and incredibly affordable. So we did manage to put something like that together. And again, you know, in true maker open saucy fashion, all of our volunteers very happily made everything open and parametric. So this, these are preliminary designs to work very much still in process progress, but the intention here is again to keep it as open and accessible and modular as possible. So where we are now is we have successfully made a functional prototype of just this idea, and you can see the screen kind of sticks out very noticeably. But it does deliver the end functionality that is required so it's not meant to be worn all the time, but you know, like a fancy pair of glasses you put it on for special occasions. And, you know, we're trying to figure out, so we've made five of these in as many different colors as that three different to handle. And we have five hearing aid users who signed up to trial this out and give us feedback on what works, what doesn't work, what needs to be removed whether or not it's a stupid idea, and things like that. And so feedback has been quite positive. I think that it opens up a world of possibilities here for involving users of these devices in its shape and capabilities. So here's where we are now. In this trial it is ongoing. Early mid-Jan, we should have the outcome of the use of feedback, and then we should be able to take it to the next level. But so far we've managed to keep it comfortably within $99. And again, I want to reiterate that affordability is one thing, and it's only possible because of volunteers not charging for that time. So the equipment itself is incredibly low cost, but if you have a pool of volunteers and give them access to space technology tools and equipment and users, I think the product that comes out of it, it makes good sense on multiple levels. So this is the IHEA prototype. That's a little bit about me in my background. You can explore the space and look at this thing at your own time, but should you feel need to contact me, that's my email address. So with that, I'm done with this space, and I've given you a little walk around of our little Singapore exhibition. And before I sort of end, I'd like to point out the other things that we have here. There are a couple of videos to give you a sense of what the space is like. Here we go. This is our little website. And we think about the space and about what we've been doing as part of the exhibition we'll find on a little blog post on this little. So I'm hoping that the physical space is a little bit more engaging than just reading another blog post, but you know, it helps to have it in this format as well. Alright, so that pretty much is this particular space. I'm going to walk you out of Singapore and back to the international park, so to speak. And on the way we'll pass by all these hundreds and thousands of laptops. And go back to the portal that takes us to the main space. We're not working anymore. Oh, there we go. I'm really hoping that we won't have to do these online things forever. I think it's moving forward since a good idea to have a hybrid situation. And now that we're all sort of forced to get comfortable and used to doing remote sessions, hoping that next year we're able to do a more physical CCC again. I really do miss that a lot. Alright, so here we are. You've had a look at Singapore. You've sort of have a little coming soon placeholders for the other moving exhibitions that were done around the world in the last year or so. And that was mentioned in this intro video. Before I end, I would like to just play this video here, which I think captures the essence of what all of these spaces and what engineering good and salvage garden has been trying to do. This one is the Open Health Academy from Be Able. What I find super cool here is that it's not profit-oriented, but value-oriented, and you can actually simply improve the lives of people. Welcome to the Open Health Academy! We develop small teams, aid and life hacks that really make life easier. From the idea to the functioning prototype. For example, we're driving now. And is it fun when? Yes, it's really fun! Which is also fun? Our solution with which every roly will become an e-roller roly. You just have to do it. And when it works, we do it for all of us. Rebuilders. Open Source for everyone. You're not used to it, are you? Together with Jonas, Asir, Rike, Tobi, Adina, John, Robert, Maike, Möwen, Anthasia, Flo, Daniel, Bea, Sven, Maggie, Lena, Thomas, Ferdinand, Ia, Ise, Raul. And in these workshops and fable apps, each idea can really become a reality. There is a lot of space for extraordinary innovations. In addition to workshops, you can read. You can also just really like to try out things like 3D printing or flowers or something like that. That's so really cool! It makes sense to develop a product with the person who needs it. Finally, a project where you don't think about what the whole thing is supposed to be, but... Just do things. If you want to develop ideas for the boot loader, then join us. I think the Open Help Academy is so great because it shows how lame the industry is. It can't actually be that hobby product developers think about better ideas than what I find in every kid. With that, I'd like to thank you for your time. And if there are any questions, I'm happy to take them now. But otherwise, I hope everybody's staying safe, be healthy. Gekko? Yes, there are questions. So... Yeah. Very good question. And yes, that has been the biggest challenge. We're trying to make something new, something innovative, something that goes beyond what's already available. It requires hands-on interaction. And with most maker spaces, this continues to... It wasn't exactly easy to do this even before we went into a pandemic situation. Inviting people into our space, we had different barriers to entry. People were shy, people were not familiar, they were not comfortable, they were scared of the noisy machines. And that still is the case. And in order to add to that, we have masks and vaccinations and all of these sorts of things. But we're still not out of the pandemic yet. So we are finding ways to collaborate while making the hands-on element on our own. So the idea of 3D printing and the 3D printable things is no longer just trapped within a maker space. People have these things at home. One of the most sort of heartening things I noticed in the early days before the vaccines were an option, there was this global shortage of PPE. And a lot of makers stepped forward and said, look, I understand how to use a 3D printer and I don't normally think about this, but what do you need? And it was being applied intentionally or otherwise. It was there and it has happened and it has happened in a global scale. So I feel like we have this opportunity to translate some of that potential and bring it forward with us. We are heading towards an area where hopefully this pandemic situation will be less stressful and allow for more interaction. But if we bring the lessons that we've learned while we've been in lockdown, so to speak, I think the amount of potential that we can realize is going to be phenomenal. That's very inspiring. Thank you. Then another question, do you have any success stories of achieving your goal of inspiring the DIY and the maker culture and then so that someone else could develop or even just fabricate your prototype and then put it to use? Yes, caribou.org is the website and I think you'll find several examples, not necessarily ones that have made the engineering good examples that I showed you with the switches. They are on caribou.org as well. But we found, I found several examples of other people's projects that were relevant to the Singapore context and bringing those into that physical space where these people interact with makers and other people allowed us to have that conversation. So you just hand somebody a thing and they say, look, I understand what you're talking about now. Can you make this for me but bigger or smaller or heart shaped or with a different texture? And we're now able to do that. But there are examples on caribou that have inspired that kind of conversation. So not necessarily an actual object, but definitely that interaction is facilitated by looking at other people's good ideas for assistive tech. The one that I talked about with the little wearable grease as an EYEHG and that's what we're working on at the moment and it will be made available for anybody to download and try it out for themselves. I will just show on screen our little website where all these projects are listed and I'll point out this is the one. So we're calling it an open source head mounted display and you can find out more about it over here. I hope that answers the question. Very exciting. That's a really good cause. Thank you so much for talking about your project and your foundation. Awesome. Thank you. Alright. Thank you for the time and attention and we'll be back with the next talk in a bit.