a few years ago I had this big Epiphany
how do we shift from just something
we’re building together to all of these
ways that we could be exploring together
for building the largest ocean
observation network in the world and
we’re doing it with other people
it’s powered by citizen ISM I’m gonna
start my story four years ago I met this
amazing person named Eric Stackpole and
he told me this wonderful story about
this underwater cave that was filled
with gold supposedly and he told this
whole story of treasure hunters who had
tried to find it and then he showed me
this little underwater robot that he was
trying to build to explore him it’s
called an ROV a remotely operated
vehicle and how it works as it goes down
underneath the surface it’s got a camera
it sends live video of a thin tether to
the operator on the surface who can see
what it’s seeing and driving I was
captivated by Eric’s story we didn’t
have any money to buy one of these our
Ovie’s ourselves and unfortunately we
also didn’t know how to build one
ourselves we had an early prototype but
it didn’t work so we did what anybody
would do in our position we asked the
internet for help we created a website
called open ROV comm and we started
asking people to critique our designs
and help us improve it at first it was
just me and Eric asking questions to
each other about buoyancy and and basic
engineering and slowly people began to
add feedback and give us advice I think
they just took pity on us but eventually
we got to the point where the robot was
good enough to take to the cave so we
got our friends together we mounted a
little expedition and we sent the robot
into the back of the cave and it went
down down and we found millions of
dollars of gold actually we didn’t
we didn’t find anything but we learned a
lot and that was the important thing and
one of the important things we learned
was that this low-cost
underwater robot kit was something that
other people wanted and so we decided to
put it on Kickstarter and we raised a
hundred thousand dollars this was back
in 2012 and that was a lot of money on
Kickstarter and it was certainly more
than we expected and it caused us to
really quickly outgrow our garage
operation I remember the day when the
boxes showed up and I was thinking oh my
gosh but we got him together and we got
him shipped out in over the past three
years we’ve shipped thousands of these
things to every corner of the globe
they’ve gone to the bottom of the earth
and Antarctica they’ve gone to the top
of the earth I got this photo last week
from Explorer who is studying glacial
lakes in the Himalayas these are schools
in Auckland these are communities in
Papua New Guinea we have people who are
discovering glass ponds reefs in British
Columbia we have people who are creating
3d visualizations of habitat for
Caribbean monk seals I mean the
community just continues to surprise us
this was from last week and we were up
at Lake Tahoe we found a shipwreck got
120 meters and we were streaming it all
live to Facebook and Ustream and twitch
TV it was pretty exciting moment for us
last week our latest design is the
Trident so we took all the things that
we’ve learned over the past three years
and we put that into a new design for
underwater robots that we think is an
evolutionary step forward for low-cost
underwater drones this thing is fast
it flies like a fighter jet but it’s
also super maneuverable and still costs
less than $1,500 so other people wanted
this too and so we raised eight hundred
and ten thousand for this on Kickstarter
last October and we’re preparing to ship
it in the fall of this year so we’re
really excited about that I think this
is pretty amazing in just a few years
two guys in a garage have turned into a
global community of ocean explorers
we’re building the largest ocean
observation network in the world and
we’re doing it with other people
it’s powered by citizens this is Laura
James she was one of the first people to
notice that sea stars were dying around
the Puget Sound and she notify
scientists and they confirm that it was
part of this widespread die-off that was
going on around the Pacific coast called
sea star wasting syndrome they didn’t
know what was causing it and laura was
not content with that answer so she
started a citizen science project to get
people to notice and contribute data
that data was then part of the Peter
amantes work at UC Santa Cruz and they
did this amazing PBS story about Laura
and her citizen science project and all
the people that are contributing and a
congressman saw that and decided to
introduce the emergency marine disease
act and so there’s this bill in Congress
right now you can call and help push it
along but I love this story because this
is it you know this isn’t just a
headline that sea stars are dying this
is people who are getting involved this
is Congress people who are taking notice
and action is happening Laura and her
team are still out there now they’re
monitoring stormwater runoff to see if
that’s the problem they’re looking at
urgence to see if the virus is spreading
it’s the scientific method actually
becomes the message there’s this whole
architecture for participation that’s a
big deal so I don’t want to go into the
details of what’s going on in Flint it’s
an ongoing disaster and all of you know
about it but I do want to point out that
that too was a citizen science project
professor Mark Edwards at Virginia Tech
was sick of the institutional failure so
he gave out 300 kits to the community
and said you guys need to start testing
your water and take action and they did
it was a fantastic piece and wired my
favorite paragraph was towards the end
it said this kind of citizen powered
apocalypse averting science is spreading
anyway not to list a whole host of
citizen science projects that we’re
doing similar work at the end of that
paragraph I love this line I’m going to
read it
researchers are learning that there’s a
difference between publishing results
and actually you know getting
and so that’s where we are that’s what’s
going on the tools are getting really
good really fast all of the
microcontrollers and sensors and cameras
and GPS are now building blocks that
makers can use and all of these maker
spaces are popping up all over the world
in classrooms and museums and libraries
and in just in neighborhoods it’s
profound and people have access to
powerful digital fabrication tools like
laser cutters and 3d printers it would
been impossible for Eric to do what we
did just five years ago we’re really at
the very beginning of this this is our
same garage this is a our roommates at
the time and they had this idea to
create low-cost satellites using these
same components and so they prototype
this satellite in the garage and they
have since started a company raised
hundreds of millions of dollars and
launched a constellation of hundreds of
satellites they’re now getting an image
of every location on earth every day
it’s a big company and they’re doing
important work this is an illegal gold
mining operation in Peru that they found
encroaching on this River it’s really
extraordinary I mean this used to be the
stuff of nation-states and now it’s our
remains starting this in the garage
it’s extraordinary this is not just a
Silicon Valley store either these are
DIY drones being used in Indonesia for
conservation 50 cent microscopes tens of
thousands of people are exploring the
micro cosmos creating DIY geiger
counters to monitor the radiation after
Fukushima there’s all sorts of low-cost
DIY bio equipment they’re being used to
power garage labs and community bio labs
across the world the list goes on and on
we need everyone to see themselves as
explorers we need everybody to recognize
that they have the agency to be curious
to ask questions because I promise you
when you give people the tools to ask
questions they will surprise you with
what they ask and with what they
discover thank you
we’re in the northern part of the Red
Sea and the reason we’re here is we’re
trying to test out our squishy robot
fingers for the for the first time in a
real
how do we shift from just something
we’re building together to all of these
ways that we could be exploring together
for building the largest ocean
observation network in the world and
we’re doing it with other people
it’s powered by citizen ISM I’m gonna
start my story four years ago I met this
amazing person named Eric Stackpole and
he told me this wonderful story about
this underwater cave that was filled
with gold supposedly and he told this
whole story of treasure hunters who had
tried to find it and then he showed me
this little underwater robot that he was
trying to build to explore him it’s
called an ROV a remotely operated
vehicle and how it works as it goes down
underneath the surface it’s got a camera
it sends live video of a thin tether to
the operator on the surface who can see
what it’s seeing and driving I was
captivated by Eric’s story we didn’t
have any money to buy one of these our
Ovie’s ourselves and unfortunately we
also didn’t know how to build one
ourselves we had an early prototype but
it didn’t work so we did what anybody
would do in our position we asked the
internet for help we created a website
called open ROV comm and we started
asking people to critique our designs
and help us improve it at first it was
just me and Eric asking questions to
each other about buoyancy and and basic
engineering and slowly people began to
add feedback and give us advice I think
they just took pity on us but eventually
we got to the point where the robot was
good enough to take to the cave so we
got our friends together we mounted a
little expedition and we sent the robot
into the back of the cave and it went
down down and we found millions of
dollars of gold actually we didn’t
we didn’t find anything but we learned a
lot and that was the important thing and
one of the important things we learned
was that this low-cost
underwater robot kit was something that
other people wanted and so we decided to
put it on Kickstarter and we raised a
hundred thousand dollars this was back
in 2012 and that was a lot of money on
Kickstarter and it was certainly more
than we expected and it caused us to
really quickly outgrow our garage
operation I remember the day when the
boxes showed up and I was thinking oh my
gosh but we got him together and we got
him shipped out in over the past three
years we’ve shipped thousands of these
things to every corner of the globe
they’ve gone to the bottom of the earth
and Antarctica they’ve gone to the top
of the earth I got this photo last week
from Explorer who is studying glacial
lakes in the Himalayas these are schools
in Auckland these are communities in
Papua New Guinea we have people who are
discovering glass ponds reefs in British
Columbia we have people who are creating
3d visualizations of habitat for
Caribbean monk seals I mean the
community just continues to surprise us
this was from last week and we were up
at Lake Tahoe we found a shipwreck got
120 meters and we were streaming it all
live to Facebook and Ustream and twitch
TV it was pretty exciting moment for us
last week our latest design is the
Trident so we took all the things that
we’ve learned over the past three years
and we put that into a new design for
underwater robots that we think is an
evolutionary step forward for low-cost
underwater drones this thing is fast
it flies like a fighter jet but it’s
also super maneuverable and still costs
less than $1,500 so other people wanted
this too and so we raised eight hundred
and ten thousand for this on Kickstarter
last October and we’re preparing to ship
it in the fall of this year so we’re
really excited about that I think this
is pretty amazing in just a few years
two guys in a garage have turned into a
global community of ocean explorers
we’re building the largest ocean
observation network in the world and
we’re doing it with other people
it’s powered by citizens this is Laura
James she was one of the first people to
notice that sea stars were dying around
the Puget Sound and she notify
scientists and they confirm that it was
part of this widespread die-off that was
going on around the Pacific coast called
sea star wasting syndrome they didn’t
know what was causing it and laura was
not content with that answer so she
started a citizen science project to get
people to notice and contribute data
that data was then part of the Peter
amantes work at UC Santa Cruz and they
did this amazing PBS story about Laura
and her citizen science project and all
the people that are contributing and a
congressman saw that and decided to
introduce the emergency marine disease
act and so there’s this bill in Congress
right now you can call and help push it
along but I love this story because this
is it you know this isn’t just a
headline that sea stars are dying this
is people who are getting involved this
is Congress people who are taking notice
and action is happening Laura and her
team are still out there now they’re
monitoring stormwater runoff to see if
that’s the problem they’re looking at
urgence to see if the virus is spreading
it’s the scientific method actually
becomes the message there’s this whole
architecture for participation that’s a
big deal so I don’t want to go into the
details of what’s going on in Flint it’s
an ongoing disaster and all of you know
about it but I do want to point out that
that too was a citizen science project
professor Mark Edwards at Virginia Tech
was sick of the institutional failure so
he gave out 300 kits to the community
and said you guys need to start testing
your water and take action and they did
it was a fantastic piece and wired my
favorite paragraph was towards the end
it said this kind of citizen powered
apocalypse averting science is spreading
anyway not to list a whole host of
citizen science projects that we’re
doing similar work at the end of that
paragraph I love this line I’m going to
read it
researchers are learning that there’s a
difference between publishing results
and actually you know getting
and so that’s where we are that’s what’s
going on the tools are getting really
good really fast all of the
microcontrollers and sensors and cameras
and GPS are now building blocks that
makers can use and all of these maker
spaces are popping up all over the world
in classrooms and museums and libraries
and in just in neighborhoods it’s
profound and people have access to
powerful digital fabrication tools like
laser cutters and 3d printers it would
been impossible for Eric to do what we
did just five years ago we’re really at
the very beginning of this this is our
same garage this is a our roommates at
the time and they had this idea to
create low-cost satellites using these
same components and so they prototype
this satellite in the garage and they
have since started a company raised
hundreds of millions of dollars and
launched a constellation of hundreds of
satellites they’re now getting an image
of every location on earth every day
it’s a big company and they’re doing
important work this is an illegal gold
mining operation in Peru that they found
encroaching on this River it’s really
extraordinary I mean this used to be the
stuff of nation-states and now it’s our
remains starting this in the garage
it’s extraordinary this is not just a
Silicon Valley store either these are
DIY drones being used in Indonesia for
conservation 50 cent microscopes tens of
thousands of people are exploring the
micro cosmos creating DIY geiger
counters to monitor the radiation after
Fukushima there’s all sorts of low-cost
DIY bio equipment they’re being used to
power garage labs and community bio labs
across the world the list goes on and on
we need everyone to see themselves as
explorers we need everybody to recognize
that they have the agency to be curious
to ask questions because I promise you
when you give people the tools to ask
questions they will surprise you with
what they ask and with what they
discover thank you
we’re in the northern part of the Red
Sea and the reason we’re here is we’re
trying to test out our squishy robot
fingers for the for the first time in a
real
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