event

Ashoka and The Lemelson Foundation convene the world's leading social entrepreneurs in invention, technological innovation, and science education in Hyderabad, India in February 2010. Produced by Cory Wilson / http://corywilson.net

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Here's an upcoming event, put on in part by Ashoka and Changemakers:

Ashoka hopes that you can join us on January 24, 2010 for the kick-off of Sci Ed Innovators in New York City.  This event is bringing together a dynamic group of innovative people and organizations to plan an exciting initiative to transform the teaching of science education in the United States.

Charlie Brown, Director of Ashoka's Changemakers, spoke this Tuesday at the 2009 UX (User Experience) Week about how the new Changemakers site was redesigned around the Changemakers community. By the way, they are now inviting people enter the Rethinking Mental Health competition!

While I was reading the UX schedule of speakers and workshops, I realized that most of the event's topics are also really hot trends in the social sector: mapping data online, experiential design at events and public spaces, disabilities and design, and mobile literacy.

If you are coming to Thievery Corp's gig this Saturday, be sure to stop by the Ashoka booth. Ashoka staff will be there asking people how they are changemakers and our favorite answers will be on the web.

For the full details of the event, click here.

Live TV by Ustream

The Danish 2009 INDEX Award selects the best products in the world for their "design to improve life," like the fetal heart monitor which uses "human energy" to generate it's own electricity. Pretty cool.

Ashoka's Valeria Budinich, who directs Ashoka's Full Economic Citizenship Initiative, presented the award for the Home category (you can see her at minute 26 of the video of the award ceremony). The Home category award was given to Chula for their creative design of a build-it-yourself" biomass stove ideal for low-income homes (as shown in the video above).

It all started with an email from Aman Bhandari inviting me to a happy hour of some like-minded global health +technology professionals in the DC area. If you don’t know Aman, he is one of the fantastic authors of the Global Health Ideas blog. In my humble opinion, it is one of the best sites out there focusing on global health, technology, and development. You can (and should!) follow them on twitter.

I arrived, and was immediately inspired by this group of young, energetic global health enthusiasts. Some of the attendees work daily in the global health field; others were social entrepreneurs preparing to launch new start-ups in the global health/technology arena. Some worked at large organizations such as the Pan-American Health Organization, and others were recent MPH graduates looking to network with new people. Regardless of background, everyone was excited about what they were involved in and even more excited by the great conversations and connections being made. It was probably one of the best professional happy hours I had been to in a long time.

Ashoka and the Lemelson Foundation are celebrating the selection of 100 Ashoka-Lemelson Fellows on February 2010. Get the full scoop here.

Bicycles are an obvious alternative to owning a car and the solution to our ever-increasing pollution problem; so why aren't more people biking on a daily basis?

This year, the Taipei International Bicycle Design Competition (IBCD) attracted over 900 entries from around the world. The design solutions aim at increasing the usability of bikes (see pictures of the finalists' designs here).

Simon Páez, a Colombian citizen who won the competition's 2009 Merit Award tells us about his rationale behind TRIBO, the design concept that he submitted for this year's IBCD:

"In Bogota we have the largest infrastructure of bike lanes in South America, yet only 4% of the population ride their bikes to work every day. The city of Bogota developed bike lanes all around  the city to decrease the traffic caused by the vehicular congestion, but this has not happened because vehicle users find bicycles unfit to move around the city. After investigating, I found that people weren't comfortable enough, and that they didn't feel safe enough to ride their bikes in a city like Bogota. TRIBO meets needs like safety and comfort to encourage people to use the 350 km infrastructure of bike lanes in Bogota and thus decrease the social and envionmental impact made by vehicular congestion"

photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/juliettecezzar/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Amory Lovins and Bill Moggridge will discuss the future of technology and sustainability during the Design X Tomorrow event held at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. Lovins, a MacArthur Fellowship recipient, is Chief Scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute. Moggridge is credited with helping to design the first laptop, and currently heads Silicon Valley-based design firm IDEO. According to the event details, which can be seen here, "Moggridge and Lovins will discuss the symbiotic relationship between technology and sustainability and the impact of both upon the future." The program is free to the public.