Danny's Game-Changing Makeathon From: Abilities.com By: Stanford Stickney "In my senior year at UC Berkeley, I took a graduate class in Critical Making, where I met fellow students Tomas Vega and Oscar Segovia. Tomás shared with me his passion for creating technology for people with disabilities. Tomás and some of his friends including Pierre Karashchuk and Kelly Peng were working on a project to be submitted to Berkeley Big Ideas Competition. Excitedly, I shared my brother's passion for technology and his belief that through technology anything could be accomplished; Daniel has cerebral palsy and a cortical vision impairment." "The team started to work with Daniel, to design a mind-controlled machine, i.e. a thought controlled wheelchair. Collaborating with Daniel, they found many things that worked but also assumptions that did not. It was a formative and empowering experience for everyone involved. The team ultimately placed first in the Berkeley Big Ideas Competition but that is not where the story ends, but rather where it begins." "This process of love and creativity while visiting Daniel continued until Pierre came up with an interesting idea in which he proposed that a group of friends observe and live with Daniel for a period of a week. This laid the foundation for our weeklong Makeathon from August 14-21, 2016. A Makeathon is where a group of individuals come together to collaborate and solve a specific challenge." "At first it was Tomás, Pierre, and Kelly, but then it started to expand. Tomás is a cofounder of Assistive Labs, which builds assistive technology for special needs in developing nations. Another cofounder Stephanie Valencia heard about the Makeathon and was very excited in participating. Stephanie is a fellow at the Technology and Innovation Lab at Yale University Child Study Center. She booked a ticket and flew across the country to participate in the Makeathon. Kelly invited Ryan Sternlicht and Tomas invited Oscar Segovia, masters in mechanical engineering, and later Corten Singer. What started as an idea by one had manifested into a team of seven." "For over one week our living room was transformed into a Laboratory. With soldering devices, multiple 3D printers, each engineer bringing their own equipment and technology. The first few days engineers observed Daniel, doing everything with him from tucking him into bed, going to the store and eating dinner, which we did as family every night." Read the entire article and view a video (5:58) at: http://www.abilities.com/community/makeathon.html