The emergence of science hacking in Madagascar

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Science Hack Day Madagascar opening event
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Science Hack Day Antananarivo
Science Hack Day Tana

This article was originally published on Boing Boing and has been reposted here.

Descending into Madagascar at night is an experience. I was enveloped in and captivated by the darkness. The expected sight of bright lights, distinguishing cities, small towns or even an airport runway, slowly dissipated as I pressed my face against the plastic Air France window. Occasionally, the plane would pass over a handful of small lights - almost like looking at the few stars you can see on a clear night in New York City. There is, for a moment, a quieting calm. Stepping onto the runway and into the immigration hall, the silent darkness ends abruptly. Bright florescent lights beamed down as I squinted and was herded into an over-crowded cattle pen of people pushing in every direction to hand off their landing cards and passports for inspection. People clamored over each other, extending their passports over the shoulders of others, climbing over children to get to the front of the crowd. No lines, no waiting, no calm, no conventions, no personal space. It was an exhilarating rush of city-like urgency, if not overwhelming. The lack of a distinctive electrical grid and the country's self-declaration as a land of "mora mora", a Malagasy phrase meaning to take life slow, could easily mislead one into thinking that this island of 22 million people prefer to kick-back and watch the world go by. Not so. As Science Hack Day Antananarivo was about to show me, Madagascar is pulsing with an insatiable liveliness for science and technology – a cybernetic horse champing at the 8-bit.

The next morning, I met with the Science Hack Day organizers who were darting around to get the venue ready for the arrival of Madame Rasoazananera Marie Monique, the "Ministre de l’Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche Scientifique", who I learned was a very notable figure within the government when everyone abruptly stood up upon her arrival. She and other officials spoke of how it wasn't enough to just have the people of Madagascar get PhD's and write scientific papers - that what Madagascar really needed was more people who were actively involved in experimenting, creating solutions and prototyping ideas with science. I was pleasantly surprised to hear this. It's rare for me to encounter government officials that recognize from the get-go that simply raising the percentage of people who acquire PhD's in your country does not necessarily equate to seeing science in action or having a country of empowered people who can build real-world solutions. I could tell just how meaningful this Science Hack Day was for proving to the newly internationally-recognized Madagascar government (that came into power just this year to mark the end of the widely-condemned coup that happened in 2009) that people from all backgrounds can make amazing things with science.

It's easy to see why the government is wanting to move science into a more active role in Madagascar. Madagascar frequently ranks in the top ten poorest countries across the entire world, sometimes as high as the top five based on varying data points. 75% of the country is considered to be living in poverty, with over 90% of the country living on less than $2 a day. The wildlife, which Madagascar is internationally known for, have been deeply exploited. Approximately 90% of Madagascar's plants and animals exist nowhere else on Earth. From the 1950's to 2000, the country lost approximately 50% of its forests. Lemurs, which exist naturally only in Madagascar, have been deemed the most threatened mammal on Earth - meaning they are the most likely mammal to go extinct in the near future (the Northern Sportive Lemur, for example, has less than 20 individuals of its species in existence today). The biodiversity in Madagascar has also made its plants a target for excessive exploitation via pharmaceutical companies, which hurt not only the plants themselves, but also the local economy which rarely receives profit from these outsider operations. As a knock-on effect, a few scientists I spoke to in the region said they sometimes avoid knowledge-sharing due to a reasonable paranoia over companies regularly exploiting Madagascar for all its worth. Amidst all these unfortunate facts, there are glimmers of hope to be found in an emerging community of science hackers.Andriankoto 'Harinjaka' Ratozamanana, the lead organizer of Science Hack Day Antananarivo, runs Habaka, a tech innovation hub in Madagascar. Habaka has become a central hangout place for the geeks of Antananarivo. Harinjaka has a tenacious quality about him - taking initiative to drive a tech/science community in Madagascar forward in the face of many challenges. His drive has a contagious effect, inspiring many others to follow his lead. The Habaka space is co-run by a small scrappy group of locals who are passionate about facilitating a space for tech and science in Madagascar and want to elevate their community to be recognized on the world stage. The success of Kenya's tech incubator, iHub, is a great example of a space that has brought a community together to collaborate and build great things in Nairobi. But iHub's success often outshines other tech/science hubs across Africa to journalists who carelessly like to lump the entire continent of Africa into one single place. There are, in fact, dozens of these spaces and initiatives across the continent, some of which are cataloged by the community network AfriLabs.

Chris Corbett, a Bay Area expat now residing in Antananarivo, is a regular collaborator of Harinjaka's, having helped him put together the Science Hack Day and run the Habaka space. In addition, Chris runs an endeavor called "Human Development League", a non-profit that teaches life skills and character development through amateur sports to many of the children who live on the streets of Antananarivo. Chris has a hugely endearing nature to him; a person that exudes kindness and a desire to help people in any way he can. He told me how he came to Madagascar for what was supposed to be a five-day trip and immediately decided never to leave, turning his trip into a four month stay and a Visa process to reside in the country. As I walked around crowded markets and out-of-the-way restaurants across the city, seemingly everyone knew Chris and greeted him with hugs and smiles.It's amazing to see what both Harinjaka and Chris have been able to accomplish with very little, if any, funding for these initiatives over the years. They've navigated in-kind donations and support networks to help build out their visions thus far and now hope to find grants and sponsorships to ensure a bright future for their projects. For Science Hack Day Antananarivo, Thomson Reuters EndNote provided sponsorship for the event, helping make it the largest event that Harinjaka and Chris had put together - proving that there was a proper budding science hacker community that was just waiting to be tapped into action.

It was also fascinating to learn that one of the largest obstacles to hacking/prototyping in Madagascar was not lack of income, but the fact that hardly any companies ship to Madagascar. Before traveling to Madagascar, it's common to have local friends ask you to buy phones, laptops and other devices for them because there is no way to get them shipped over. Many of the Science Hack Day attendees had learned about Arduinos inside and out, but had never seen one in person because there was no company that would ship them there. The few donated Arduinos I had brought were quickly snatched up as large teams formed around so that everyone could get a chance to play with them. My partner and Science Hack Day collaborator, Matt Biddulph, led an impromptu Arduino class and found himself in the middle of an Arduino-frenzy as everyone crowded around with questions about various sensors and code. My heart broke a little as numerous people came up to me saying they'd be happy to buy an Arduino if we could somehow get them shipped to the country. Getting more sensors, devices and computer/data science literacy to Madagascar could actually be critical in the fight against deforestation.

The attendees of Science Hack Day Antananarivo were some of the most endearing, excited and inventive people I've met. The type of people that you could never possibly be in a bad mood around even if you tried. Most worked in large teams, figuring out how each person could contribute to hacking together a concept. The hacks that emerged were highly influenced by the ubiquity of sensors for the real world. One team prototyped a concept for producing happier, fatter chickens in short timeframes by creating "smart farms" that could play calming music as well as control temperature, sound and light. The project was called Akouzen (essentially, "zen chicken"). Another team proposed using radar and ultrasound to detect and kill locusts that regularly ravage Madagascar's crops. Perhaps for the best, there was no live locust-killing demo. The largest team worked on two prototypes: a robot security dog and an emotion detector based on measuring skin resistance. One of the journalists who came to cover the event became so excited by it that she stuck around and created a prototype of her own: a solar stove that could cook basic meals without the need for gas or electricity

.It was the end of Science Hack Day Antananarivo that was the best. All the attendees, despite their tired state, clamored over each other to take as many ridiculously fun group photos as they could, showing off their awarded science medals and certificates, making huge group hugs, and grinning from ear to ear. Harinjaka and Chris were in an exhausted euphoric state that I know all too well as a Science Hack Day organizer. When I had organized the first Science Hack Day San Francisco in 2010, I remember barely being able to keep my eyes open but feeling like it was the best thing I had ever done. Putting together an event that brings people excitement and laughter and unconstrained creativity and experimentation is simply awesome. After the event, a retired astrophysicist dropped by Habaka in jubilation. He had read about the Science Hack Day in the local newspapers and was excited to find other individuals who were trying to make science an active pursuit in Madagascar. He regularly spoke to schools and the government about how Madagascar should invest in a small satellite and how it would have a huge impact on both education and policy. He talked of how isolated he had felt in his endeavors and now after connecting with Harinjaka and the Habaka hub, he no longer felt alone.

Some might say that Madagascar has a long road ahead to restore the many exploitations and grievances endured by their environment, government and people. While that is likely true, and many more people, policies and financial aid is needed to rebuild, Madagascar has what are likely to be the first responders in rehabilitating and improving the country: the science hackers of Antananarivo. 

Ariel Waldman is the global director of Science Hack Day, a 48-hour-all-night event where anyone excited about making weird, silly or serious things with science comes together in the same physical space to see what they can prototype within 24 consecutive hours. Anyone can organize a Science Hack Day in their city -- a how-to guide is available at http://sciencehackday.org/howto.

Adults Are The Future

This thought was originally written for the Pastry Box Project and has been reposted here.

As someone who has publicly stumbled into a career in space, I often get asked about my interest in space as a little girl – if I had dreams of being an astronaut growing up, if I begged to go to space camp. These questions often bother me, not for being asked, but in the way they’re asked. In a sense, they’re not even questions. The interviewer is throwing me what they believe to be a softball question, assuming with almost certainty that I’ll have a quaint heart-warming story about how I now have achieved what I always dreamed about as a kid. The reality is that I don’t have any stories like that. Space and science barely registered on my radar growing up – not due to bad schooling or uneducated parents (both were great) – but probably because I had already found a love in art and design. From the time I was an early teenager, I was obsessed with one day becoming an “Executive Creative Director”, and spent the next eight years of my life dedicated to that one goal; working my way up the corporate ladder at an interactive agency and attending art school. It was only through serendipity (i.e. unexpectedly landing a job at NASA) five and a half years ago that I awoke to my obsession with space exploration. Prior to that, I was not a space geek. I did not follow NASA news. I didn’t tweet or blog about anything in a way that would’ve made me easily identified as someone to target with science outreach efforts. And yet, had you asked me if I would love to work at NASA, my answer would have been a resounding “fuck yes, of course!”. I suspect there are many people reading this who also don’t identify as space geeks and yet would exclaim the same answer.

There are very few endeavors focused on involving adults in science. The vast majority focus on getting kids into science, as they absolutely should. But, these endeavors view converting children into a career in science as the ultimate horizon goal. There’s a complete void when it comes to adults. Once you’ve chosen a career outside of science, you are forever lost to the science world. The focus on you ends. You’re considered an unfortunate statistic. Somehow overnight you went from being “the future” to being a “loss” on the science scoreboard. We abandon those supposed “futures” the moment they choose a career outside of science and continue to overlook them for the decades to come.

If an adult asks what they can do to get involved in science, the answer is almost always a simple “go back to school”. I actually got a chance to ask this to the late Sally Ride in 2009 and sadly received the same answer. I find this to be an incredibly cheap answer. It implies that you as you exist right now, with your unique experience, skill-set and way of looking at the world, are useless to the world of science. It implies that if you chose a career outside of science, then you chose the lesser career. This implication is amplified with women – examples of women choosing science over, say, fashion design, are touted as a huge success. These “other” careers are often mildly demonized as being shallow or a submission to gender-conditioning in society. While the public message is celebrating people choosing science as a career, the unintentional underbelly of the message is that those who didn’t chose the lesser path.

Last week, I attended an event by NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts, a small program that funds some very cool science-fiction-esque prototyping, keynoted by Mythbusters’ Jamie Hyneman. Jamie seemed surprisingly nervous to talk to a group of rocket scientists, but he urged the importance of non-linear thinking and experimenting. Most people I’ve encountered in the science community applaud Mythbusters and look up to them, but they still tend to (wrongly) relegate their work and message as being intended for children, rather than for people of all ages.

Of the programs that explicitly target adults, most focus solely on improving science literacy, which is a worthwhile and important pursuit. But engaging adults in simply being informed about science, so that they may become better-educated voters, is lackluster in my eyes. In 1998, a National Science Foundation report made a remark that begins to hit the mark a little closer:

“It is important to understand how individuals assess their own knowledge of these subjects. For many purposes ... it is the individual’s self-assessment of his or her knowledge that will either encourage or discourage a given behavior.”

This starts to tear down the wall of judging people based on how “well-informed” or “attentive” they are (terms that permeate these statistics reports) to science, and instead places more significance on an individual’s assessment of themselves. To go further, I’d argue that “knowledge” isn’t as telltale of a measurement as “experience”.

We engage kids in hands-on learning activities to increase their confidence and strengthen their knowledge via direct experience, rather than observation. Direct experience has a profound effect on how people assess themselves and their willingness to learn more. And yet, so many programs that “engage” adults in science rely on passive media consumption: reading, art gallery exhibits, documentaries. Many institutions seem to fully support the idea of children playing with science, while at the same time not grasping the importance of continuing “play” with adults. In a sense, kids are encouraged to be independent explorers/learners while adults are not. Somewhere along the line, the removable training wheels of our youth became bolted on for our adulthood.

All of this frustration folds in to my work on Science Hack Day. Science Hack Day is a 48-hour-all-night event where anyone excited about making weird, silly or serious things with science comes together in the same physical space to see what they can prototype within 24 consecutive hours. Designers, developers, scientists and anyone who is excited about making things with science are welcome to attend – no experience in science or hacking is necessary, just an insatiable curiosity. People organically form multidisciplinary teams over the course of a weekend: particle physicists team up with designers, marketers join forces with open source rocket scientists, writers collaborate with molecular biologists, and developers partner with school kids. Science Hack Day is inherently about mashing up ideas, mediums, industries and people to create sparks for future ideas, collaborations and inspirations to launch from.

It is not my goal to convert people to a career in science, nor is it my aim to increase scientific literacy. Both of these can be a result for some people, but that’s not my focus. My focus is to change people’s relationship with science, from one of observation to one of active contribution and participation. Having adults play with science, despite lack of understanding or knowledge, is the most empowering form of science engagement. Being able to walk away from a weekend and tell others that you experimented with biotech, explored neurological phenomena,sonified subatomic particles, or designed a website about satellites, creates a mental locket – a keepsake that affirms your ability and your right to talk about, play with, and question science. You may not still know about the inner workings of biology, neuroscience, particles or spacecrafts, but you’ve tinkered with it. You now know that if you’d ever like to tinker with science again, that there’s no barrier to entry. You didn’t need permission, you didn’t need a degree, you didn’t need l33t hacking skills, you didn’t even need a MOOC. Science shifts from being Fort Knox to being just another available material you can manipulate.

The science industry suffers in immeasurable ways from not recognizing the potential of actively working with people outside of the science community. By having a fresh set of eyes from those who solve different types of problems across a variety of industries, new concepts often emerge and go on to influence scientific processes, communication and discoveries in unexpected ways. Ivory towers can absolutely get by in continuing to stay tunnel-focused, but the forfeiture of countless clever approaches made by maintaining such a narrow path is reckless.It’s not very different from visiting a foreign country, if only for a short time, as opposed to only having observed it in books and on television. In this case, the remote island is science, and like many places, you don’t need to speak the language in order to get by and explore. By empowering adults to play, you’re building an army of the future. The loudest advocates are not ones who are simply literate – the loudest are the ones who can proclaim that they’ve been to this island of science, they’ve talked to the locals, they’ve questioned the rituals and they’re dreaming of when they can one day visit again.

Newly published instructions on how to organize a Science Hack Day

When I first wrote up instructions on how to organize a Science Hack Day, they were rather verbose. I was vacationing in Spain at the time and was probably a little too relaxed to get down to a brass tax quick-start guide. With a total of 28(!) Science Hack Days having taken place all around the world, I decided it was due time to revise the instructions and get to the most important steps that will help a soon-to-be organizer get started. Check 'em out and get to adding your city to the front page of http://sciencehackday.org!Instructions on how to organize a Science Hack Day in your city: http://sciencehackday.org/howto10047447566_f23111a11d_cScience Hack Day SF 2013 by Matt Biddulph