Makeweekend

For 2013, we eased in to the new year by hosting the Makeweekend Ideation Workshop. The workshop is to support Microsoft and Asian Development Bank’s  Apps for Asia competition, where contestants use technology built on Windows Azure to solve problems faced by organisations in the social sector.

Our workshop supports the participants in two ways. First, we train the participants in design thinking, a system to identify problems, generate solutions and create prototypes rapidly. Second, we give them insights into the social sector, by inviting experienced mentors from social organisations who give insights into key challenges in their area, as well as provide feedback on their prototypes.

We were privileged to have people like Reita from Gerai OA, Prakash from Komas, Ngai Yuen from KakiSeni and many more distinguished members of their respective fields, with 16 mentors in total. They have been generous with their time and knowledge, which proves that for the mentors, passion is more important than reward.

As Apps for Asia’s goal is to help tackle social problems in Asia, it is inspirational to see people, both mentors and participants, being passionate about solving  social problems.

Know thy problem

“If I had only one hour to save the world, I would spend fifty-five minutes defining the problem, and only five minutes finding the solution.” – Albert Einstein

If you don’t know why something happens, you can’t solve it. At Makeweekend, we guide participants to go to the problem’s core and  identify the exact reason for a problem, to ensure the solution is accurate and creates the biggest impact.

For example, if children in a certain area lack basic reading and writing skills, what is the reason behind it? Are there inadequate teachers? Are the teacher’s capable? Are there inadequate teaching materials? If the area is rural, do the children have to spend their free time helping their parents, so they don’t have time to read? Or do a majority of the students suffer from dyslexia?

Once you’ve identified the exact reason(s), only then can you start generating accurate solutions.

In the idea generation portion, we encourage participants to brainstorm and come up with as many ideas as possible, by putting down every thought on a post-it note without judgement. Once the thought flurry is complete, only then are the suggestions curated, linked together and then built upon to create a solution.

Once a solution has been worked out, the participants move on to prototyping by creating a draft of it on paper. They then ask for feedback from mentors on their draft, use it to improve their draft, and then repeat it again.

We then moved on to the final session, pitching, where participants took turns giving out a short pitch on their prototype. This allows the participants to get even more feedback, as well as to train them in idea pitching.

At the end of the day, there were so many ideas exchanged and we definitely learned as much as the participants themselves! It is also interesting to note that the participants were well represented by many different age groups.

The Ideation Workshop is just one of many Makeweekend workshops for the year, with our next one in March. Stay tuned!

It’s the new year, and the Makeweekend team is cooking up something delicious to fill your weekends with for 2013.

New year, new team, new goals, and bigger, better weekends! Watch this space and follow our journey!

So you’re from the Klang Valley, and you’ve been hearing a murmur pass around the country about this thing that’s been happening called Makeweekend. Maybe you’ve seen someone post about it online, or you’ve read about us in the newspapers. Or maybe you’ve long heard of this, and have been following the team through our blog/Twitter/Facebook as we cross state boundaries and leave a trail of awesomesauce around Malaysia.

All twelve states of the country, to be precise – save for Selangor. The Makeweekend series 2012 is coming to a wrap for the year with our final and grandest rendition of the workshop that will change life for you as you know it.

As they say – “If you’ve been waiting for a sign, this is it.”

Here’s your sign.

Are you a passionate environmentalist – aspiring to save the planet from environmental catastrophe? Or it could be a childhood dream of yours to make an impact on the global effort to eradicate poverty. Or maybe you just think that there’s a better way to design the flower pot. Here is your first step to empowerment – a crash course in taking things into your own hands and building your own solutions.

Take things into your own hands – literally

The final quarter of the year so far has been a hectic one for us, with Makeweekends stacked back to back against other Makeweekends. The team has spoken to students in Penang, spurred creativity in Terengganu, brought insight to participants in Johor, and made a presence for the first time ever in many states, including Sabah, Sarawak, Perlis, and so on.

We want you to join Malaysia’s largest community of makers and doers!

We are thrilled to announce that Makeweekend Klang Valley will be happening very soon.

When? In the next few weeks, but sooner rather than later.

That’s all we will say for now. If you’ve been waiting for your chance to experience the weekend movement – or even if you’re just a little curious – then sit up, and watch this space for more details, coming up soon!

If you’re keen on attending, do RSVP for Makeweekend Klang Valley with us at weekend.my/register!

This weekend, we’re trying something a little different: peer feedback. Typically, project feedback comes from mentors, judges, and ourselves. We thought: what of we got the whole group to provide feedback and the projects and we did it earlier in the process?

The results were great. The participants gave each other some pretty thoughtful feedback and the teams benefited from the collective experience of the room. In a couple of cases, people had seen solutions to problems elsewhere the team hadn’t seen.

I think this also enhances the impact of the feedback. If comments only come from a couple of people, they have a smaller effect than if a large group of people give feedback.

In this case, each of the feedback items was colour-coded to represent the overall sentiment: great, mixed, not so sure about this one.

The Makeweekend van (and SparkMobile) have arrived in Jeli, Kelatan for this weekend’s Makeweekend!

It’s a been a long drive but we discovered a couple of things. First, there are elephant crossing signs up here! Second, there big swaths of the road up to Kelantan that have no mobile coverage – not as fun if you’re trying to send out some emails. Third, never doubt it can rain more.

As we stopped for dinner, torrential rains started. Just when they seemed they couldn’t get more torrential – they did. It got to a point where we couldn’t hear each other across the table. Here’s to the monsoon entertainment weather.

The view on the campus is super nice this morning.

After a long productive weekend sowing the seeds of a great business plan, it certainly would be a waste if the seeds are not taken care of.  It’s time to move forward with your ideas and make them into businesses!

Listed below are the few places you can check out to “fertilize” your ideas!

1) The Foundry: The Foundry is a group of people who help further the commercialisation of projects that originate from the Weekend Movement. Under Tandemic, the Foundry may also provide additional assistance as a home for the projects. If you want to be connected to the Foundry, email Makeweekend at make@tandemic.com

2) Hackweekend: This event brings talented programmers together to come up with awesome apps and software that would benefit the community and make an impact to the society! If you are interested in programming, check out hack.weekend.my

2) Makerbot: This place provides you the necessary equipment for your prototype. Yes, this is a 3d printing machine. Check them out and see how you can make almost anything with this awesome machine!

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3) Quirky.com: Have the brain but not the resource? Quirky is a great place for you to post your ideas! The community and professionals can bring your ideas to life and together, you could be partners in selling your products!

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4) Threadless: This is a great place for you to visit if you have ideas for t-shirts and you want the world to wear them! Put your design online to compete with fellow designers and get your design out to the world!

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5) Kickstarter: Okay, so you have a great idea but don’t have the money. So what? That doesn’t mean your ideas have to sit by the shelf collecting dust. Put it on kickstarters instead and get the community support to jumpstart your ideas!

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Now that you have all these resources to get your business started, what are you waiting for? Contact us if you want to be connected to the Foundry at make@tandemic.com, or click on the links above to find out more!

Hakim has this thing for cow crossing signs. He points out to each cow crossing sign he sees regardless of where he is, and he shouts out “cowspiracy”!

During our trip up and down from Kedah and Perlis (mind you, these were two separate trips), Hakim would drive (or sit in the passenger seat) and point out these cow crossing signs. He wasn’t very consistent in pointing out the existence of these cow signs or the cowspiracy until our drive down to Johor for the Spark Session at UTM.

It was 6.45 am when the countdown began. Hakim was determined to point out all of the cow signs along the North-South Highway from Kajang to Skudai.. and we did.

There are 32 cow crossing signs from Kajang to Skudai and back, all along the North-South highway.

Is this a sign.. or is it a “sign”?

“One or two signs is fine. 32 signs… that’s a certified cowspiracy,” claims Hakim, convinced that something out of the ordinary must be in the works from our four-legged friends.

If there is something going on, you’ll be the first to know, and we’ll be the first to tell you.

Makeweekend Melaka was recently completed, and what fun we had interacting with the students!

This time we had participants from Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka (UTEM) as well as Multimedia University (MMU) Melaka, and it was extremely exciting to watch as the teams progressed from coming up with problems, solutions, and finally a prototype for their solutions.

Our team was impressed with the kind of ideas and prototypes that came out of this weekend, as well as the level of dedication and effort put in by these students. We were worried that our Muslim participants would have difficulties or not want to participate at all due to us having Makeweekend Melaka during Ramadhan, but they prove us wrong and soldiered through, coming up with really cool prototypes.

After two and a half days of ideating, problem solving and prototyping, the teams finally presented their final prototypes to our mentors. We had 15 projects in total, with a good mix of projects focusing on technology, clean energy and other day to day solutions.

While all the projects had elements of coolness to them, only one team could take home the State Innovation Award, and that team was Cranium Krusherz, who worked on a prototype called SABOX, a Safety Box to make motorists more visible by adding extra lights at the container box on the back of motorcycles. It also adds indicator lights which can be clearly seen from a further distance. It increases the range of visibility of the motorists to other vehicles from 6 seconds to 20 seconds.

Cranium Krushers with En Kamel Mohamed from MOSTI

Other prizes that were given out were the Best Prototype Award that went to team Guns n Roses for their rotary device for cooking lemang, People’s Choice Award that went to team Go Green that came up with an alternative to solar cells, and the Most Online Feedback Award that went to team Python, who came up with an eye tracking system that helps paralysed and disabled people use their eyes to control their devices.

Team Guns n Roses, winner for the Best Prototype Award

Team Go Green, winner for the People’s Choice Award

Team Python, winner for the Most Online Feedback Award

Thank you UTEM for being a wonderful host, and thank you to all the participants for your commitment and enthusiasm! Congratulations to all winners, and be sure to recommend your friends to join us for our next Makeweekend in Johor at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM)!

Car parks are the birthplace of many horror and suspense movies. You have your typical scenario of a late-night worker returning to their car in a dimly-lit parking lot only to be ambushed and abducted by a gang of villains seeking out to harm. Does art imitate life or does life imitate art? Whatever the out-cause, this latest nightmare has splashed itself all over the news of late. Communities are at unrest when they visit their local shopping malls out of the fear of being attacked violently by individuals who seek to do harm.

The first prominent case was in 2003 when IT Analyst Canny Ong was abducted in a well-known shopping mall and brutally murdered in the vicinity. News on papers and social media of late have reported nothing short of the women and elderly attacked in malls with more gruesome acts of rape, abduction and robbery being attempted. Where does this all start?

THE PROBLEM

Most malls are equipped with the bare necessities of a few strategically-located CCTV cameras monitored from a control room and an adequate amount of security personnel patrolling every few hours. Security at malls are not pro-actively designed to react and combat to greater violent crimes such as abduction, rape and assault – All which are becoming increasingly commonplace. A typical day for a security personnel would be no better than keeping a keen eye on the surveillance and making rounds to make sure there’s no suspicious activity brewing. More CCTVs are being installed and more security personnel hired and trained better following recent crime coverage. But are these cosmetic efforts enough to putting a plug on crime?

INITIATIVES

The recent exposure towards violent attacks in mall parking lots have drawn mixed reactions from the community. While certain parties have attributed this scare to perceived media exposure whereas in reality crime rates are actually lower than reported, this does little to appease to scared citizens. Of late, several initiatives have emerged to combat this rising issue:

• Installation of wireless panic buttons in mall parking lots that will alert relevant authorities in a time-span of less than 10 seconds.
• Real-time CCTV feeds to a wireless network employed throughout the city of Johor Bahru. The feeds can be accessed nationwide and is placed in strategic hotspots.
• Security-rating system to malls. The rating level will determine the amount of attention given to reinforce security.
• Professional training module for 25’000 mall security personnel for 330 malls nationwide.

While not a recent innovation, a smartphone application called Malaysia Crime utilizes open-data and crime reports to chart crime hotspots nationwide that may prove useful for both the public and authorities to push a crackdown on crime and its patterns.

AROUND THE WORLD

In countries where crime rates are significantly lower than Malaysia’s, we look towards Switzerland where the exceptionally low crime rates are attributed to its highly cohesive and disciplined society. All men in Switzerland own firearms and are trained annually on responsibly handling it.

In America, various districts form neighbourhood watch groups that are met with high success due to a high level of cooperation between both community and the police force. It is noted that in these areas, it is the community that steer the direction of safety with guidance and assistance from the police.

The Mall of America in Minnesota maintains a high level of security presence by having their security personnel walk around and talk to patrons alongside installing high-functioning CCTV cameras in every area of the mall. The logic behind security presence is to deter any would-be offenders as well as give patrons a sense of security.

FUTURE INNOVATIONS

Technology is pacing itself at longer strides to meet our needs, with better CCTV systems and more high-tech crime-busting inventions such as crime databases rolling out from both public and private sectors. As part of the community, what would you innovate with existing technologies like open data to make the World around you a safer place? After all, the responsibility of safety is a shared one.

When one mentions Tronoh, one can only think of Universiti Teknologi Petronas – probably because that’s the main thing they have here. While many have raved about the quality of students and how good the educators are here, we rarely hear people raving about the super cool buildings that this university has, which is interesting because in addition to their amazing students, they have some pretty cool buildings too.

Exhibit A: UTP’s library

UTP’s library

Exhibit B: The Undercroft

Makeweekend in a spaceship

Exhibit C: The Chancellor’s Complex

.. So where’s the chancellor?

Exhibit D: The Roof

The sunset is actually better looking than the roof

So yeah, UTP’s a pretty cool university to be at!

A while ago, we bought a bunch of prototyping materials to assist the teams at Makeweekend to come up with better prototypes by the end of the weekend.

In the event that someone wanted to use real wood to prototype a new kind of bookshelf, we bought saws.

Yes ladies and gentlemen, we have saws in the house. Because sometimes your trusty scissors and blades might let you down, and that’s where the saw comes in.

UniMAP students sawing their way to their prototype

It’s always very inspiring to watch engineering students build prototypes, because those kids can really build! Every time we have engineering students at Makeweekend, we’re bound to have some really cool physical prototypes.

Looking forward to seeing how this team’s prototype turns out tomorrow!

The first set of demos has started for Makeweekend Negeri Sembilan. This is a kind if practice demo ahead of the final demos at the end of the weekend. All of the teams have built something and their prototypes are quite far ahead.

Above is a team working on an interesting project to make any surface a writing surface using digital laser projection. Have you seen laser-projected keyboards? This is a much cooler application of that technology.

Of course, wild ideas are encouraged at Makeweekend. The team below has been working on ways to attach parachutes to airplanes to reduce the likelihood of a crash.

This morning, I went to Mamak wearing a white shirt. As sure as the sun rises and falls every day, white shirts attract flying things that make stains. With all the curry in Malaysian food, I’ve had too many cases where this has happened, I haven’t had the time to clean the shirt in time, and then the stain became permanent.

Thankfully, we have two groups today at Makeweekend Negeri Sembilan who are working on approaches to improving the way we keep our clothes clean. One (seen above) is working on the concept of “cleaning pens,” which help you selectively clean up stains on-the-go rather than washing the whole shirt.

The other group is looking at approaches to replacing SLS, the chemical agent used in soaps to make them foam, with alternatives.

We just finished the first day of Makeweekend Negeri Sembilan and we’re super excited about the ideas that have come out.

We had 25 pitches on ideas from dealing with medical waste to laser projection writing!

The team is now having breakfast. We’ll be going over prototyping approaches with the teams.

Ever thought of having a Makeweekend or Hackweekend in an indoor stadium?

Yeah, neither did we. Then we visited Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM) at Nilai, Negeri Sembilan and were presented with the option to having it in a stadium nearby.

Pensive floor manager. "That's a lot of floor to manage..."

Yes, of course there was a more practical venue (that we’re crossing out fingers we’ll get), but how awesome would it be to have a Makeweekend in a stadium? There would be a lot of running around and a lot of happy, tired students by the end of the day.

Makeweekend Negeri Sembilan is NEXT WEEK! 18th to 20th May, with super cool mentors from UEM. Rhythm and Hues, MDEC and Social Enterprise Alliance. If you haven’t registered, head over to weekend.my/register and hook yourself up with some awesomesauce.

Had some time to kill with Nicholas so we decided to explore Alor Setar for a little bit. Now the one thing that you can see from super far away in any direction would definitely be “Menara Alor Setar” this needle pointing out from the otherwise fairly flat state ( in the sense there are no mountains)

For RM6 I’d say for anyone that hasn’t checked it out yet and if you have half an hour to spare you should check it out.

Some picture highlights

What do you do in Kedah? Foursquare.com has no idea and all of the map apps we use leave us with a blank page for the most part. The party is at langkawi tripadvisor.com tells us, but if we venture to the island it means we need to get back by the time last ferry leaves (7pm) and it cost a pretty penny for an afternoon of giggles.

Help!
Nick and Hakim

What fun we had with the participants at Makeweekend Penang! We were thoroughly impressed with all the projects that came out from the weekend, as well as the participants’ energy and enthusiasm. They were super determined to build something over the weekend, and build they did! One team even built several prototypes because they had so many ideas and wanted to execute all of them. Kind of reminds me of this guy:

But of course, it would be much better if teams focus on one prototype they would like to build and focus on the most basic feature that would make their prototype work. It was still cool to watch the teams build, take apart and rebuild all the prototypes though.

So here’s what went down:

-       We had 78 participants

-       8 projects

-       3 prizes.

.. and we’ll let the photos tell you the rest of what happened because we know y’all are more keen on looking at photos:

Registration team ready to welcome participants

Teams brainstorming

Pretty problems

Ideation: Putting up problems on the wall

One of the teams formed during the first day

Teams prototyping.. or discussing on what to prototype

More prototyping!

Audrey Foo, mentor from CitiGroup talking to the teams

Team G2H demonstrating their prototype

Team F=ma demonstrating the Running Sphere

team Super Jumper received the most feedback - and got a cake too!

Team G2H won the Best Prototype Award!Team F=ma won People's Choice and the State Innovation Awards!Awesome group photo is awesome

Let’s not forget the people who helped us make this happen, the super cool people from Universiti Sains Malaysia’s Innovation Office! We really could not have pulled this off without their help.

That was Makeweekend Penang – which state are you in? If this looks like something you’d like to be a part of, apply here

First working trip for the year 2012, and Tandemic sent over Nick and myself (hi, I’m Tasnim) to Penang (they didn’t actually *send* us, rather, they put us on a bus) to meet up with the people from USM’s Innovation Office to discuss in detail the roles and responsibilities for Makeweekend Penang.

I was excited because this was my very first business trip, and although I go to Penang every year without fail to celebrate Hari Raya with my family who are Penangites, I never get tired of it. It was Nick’s very first trip outside of KL (yea sure he’s been to Perth etc but that doesn’t count), and I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or to be nice when he expressed his surprise when I told him that Penang was an island. Poor thing.

We got there in the evening, checked into USM’s guesthouse (which was a hotel especially for guests who had official business with USM, which we had. We had official business. So cool), got some rest and ventured out for PENANG FOOD.

As Penang is the home of Nasi Kandar, Nick and I decided to try some of the infamous Nasi Kandar Line Clear on Penang Street. Or Chulia Street. Not sure, one of those streets. It’s nestled in between buildings and easily missed though, so don’t be shy to ask for directions.

Massive amount of food, soft rice and oodles of other stuff piled on top of my plate – it was like Nasi kandar heaven. Though after eating at four different nasi kandar places, I have deduced that I’m not a Nasi Kandar person. Sorry folks.. I just can’t tell the difference between a bad nasi kandar and a good one. I can tell the difference between a cheap one and an expensive one, though! Yay me.

Although people would normally flock to Penang for the food (which is completely understandable), we were there on business. So. First order of business: Checking out the venues at USM and meeting the people from USM!

Then we went to Wawasan Open University to meet up with Deehba, who gave us a tour of this lovely building

Wawasan Open U has an interesting course on Small-Medium Business Ownership and Technopreneurship, but couldn’t pledge students because the courses were still new Next time maybe!

We rewarded ourselves with not one but TWO bowls of this yummy Penang laksa.

This is how the shop looks like if you ever want to go:

This joint is across the road from the Chinese Girls’ School on Gottlieb Road/Street. SO WORTH IT.

That’s all for our Penang visit – was highly successful! We’re looking forward to having the first Makeweekend here in USM Penang and to having more delish Penang dishes!

Special thank you to Rizal Alwani who lent us his car, drove us around, fed us and made sure we left the island with at least 4 additional kilos tucked into our tummies. THANK YOU!!!

Love ya Penang, xoxo. See you soon!