IDDS (!)

The Charcoal Crushing group takes a late afternoon break for ice cream, cookies and conversation.

Sumit attempts to fly around D-Lab like a chicken...

Sunil gets serious by putting a lab coat on.

Charcoal Crushers casting concrete rollers.

Preview of the concrete rollers variations.

IDDS is full of too much stuff to do. So much knowledge to take in. More interesting people than I have time to get to know! Today we had a presentation by Kurt Kornbluth that was a little bit about the design process, a little bit about his work at UC Davis, and lot of spilled water everywhere. The projects he presented on lighting and energy storage were awesome enough to get me thinking I might have to work on a Masters at UC Davis to try and be part of them. Four tips for design; build often and early, quantify results, will it pay for itself, and 'sure, you'll sell a million, but how are you going to do that?' 

The middle of the day had presentation by Kate Lessard of Foundation Relations at MIT. She informed participants about the different avenues to pursue for funding projects and went into detail about how to work with Foundations for funding charitable organizations. Her basic list went something like this:

1. What problem will you solve?
2. Who will be served?
3. How many people will be served?
4. Why now?
5. How will you measure impact?
6. How will you sustain the project (what will happen in the long run)?
7. What is your budget?

Something that wasn't on the list, that is very relevant though, is that it is good to develop a relationship with the Foundation you're working with. This helps to make sure both yours and the Foundations goals are aligned, and assist to maximize the projects potential.

Finally, in the evening, there was a presentation by TIE Boston, Social Entrepreneur division on Global Crisis for Water and Sanitation. It had panel speakers from Coca Cola, Oxfam and an MIT professor, and was moderated by Lotika Paintal. I found Lotika's presentation on her newly formed venture, Water Centric to be most interesting.