What is a Make-a-thon and where did the idea come from
Thank you for asking. I run a group called The Make Good Collective. We make things that make the world a better place. Many years ago I went to several health hack-a-thons. I made pitches at four and each time we formed a group of interesting people and over the next 36 hours came up with a prototype.
These were wonderful experiences. And to top it off each time we won an award! Now those who know me know that I'm not prone to false modesty but even so it was clear to me that I could only take a tiny bit of the credit for these wins.
The truth was there are a lot of great ideas out there. There are also a lot of very bright, inventive, skilled and experienced people in the world. These were great and I wanted more of it. So I started asking people to help me with some projects. Believe it or not most of the time they said yes! Hence the birth of The Make Good Collective.
I have also enjoyed the fact that Dale, Bob and the patience of many GoTech(An amazing monthly meeting of makers in Ann Arbor,MI) attendees have allowed me to present three ideas most months for over ten years.
I wanted to combine parts from the hack-a-thons, the GoTech meetings and the unconference movement. After getting input from dozens of people over the years the Make-a-thon is what I came up with. It includes the crowd sourcing aspects, the short, quick presentations, interesting discussions with brilliant people and the community of working together both in-person and remotely to make things.
The basic form (at least to start with) will be
1. A series of short (5 min.) presentations
2. followed by breakout sessions. Each presentation will have a somewhat structured small group discussion
3. Short reports back from each group
4. group ranking of the ideas
5. selection of the best ideas
6. formation of working groups around the best ideas
7. signing up to join one or more working groups
8. A week or two break to have time to do research, order parts, design and make parts, order and assemble PBCs etc.
9. A build day.
10. Repeat next month.
