Bart Weetjens: How I taught rats to sniff out land mines

Time: 17:30-19:30, Sunday, Oct 16 2011
Venue: Xindanwei, 50 Yongjia Rd.
Cost: 30 rmb/person

Bart Weet­jens is developing a new approach to the land ­mine detection problem: train­ing giant pouched rats to detect explosives in minute amounts.Bart Weetjens works with locals in Morogoro, Tanzania to run a world-class facility that trains rats to do something astonishing: sniff out land mines. (The African giant pouched rat, the species used in the project, is wide­spread in the region.) The rats that pass the train­ing — and the same rigorous testing applied to land mine-sniffing canines — become what Weetjens calls “HeroRATS.”

please see: http://www.ted.com/talks/bart_weetjens_how_i_taught_rats_to_sniff_out_land_mines.html

Registrered users for this event:

toeshoe

xavierwang

promiseonion

xindanwei

Neo

yy211

hongxuanqing

cr0083

calvin

cloe

platobungee

(in total 11).

3rd Ring Out: China

A talk and discussion at Xindanwei featuring UK artists Zoë Svendsen and Simon Daw, Co-Directors of 3rd Ring Out – an innovative project which uses art to explore climate change

Time: Saturday 9 July 2011, 14h00-17h00
Venue: Xindanwei, 50 Yongjia Rd., Shanghai
Language: English & Chinese
Cost: FREE and invitation only – with fresh coffee, tea, fruit and snacks provided
Organizers: 3rd Ring Out, Metis Arts, British Council China, Connections through Culture, Xindanwei

Are you an artist? Are you interested in climate change?

Zoë Svendsen and Simon Daw are UK artists and co-directors of 3rd Ring Out.  This unusual and innovative multi-media performance and installation toured the UK in 2010 and 2011, engaging with audiences to enable them to make decisions on how to respond to scenarios of a climate-changed future in 2033.

In partnership with Xindanwei, Zoë and Simon want to invite artists, environmentalists, climate scientists and people working at the intersection of these disciplines to an event which looks at the way in which art can address, explore and mediate questions triggered by climate change.

Please ‘save the date’ and join Zoë and Simon at Xindanwei on 9 July to hear more about 3rd Ring Out, and to share ideas and views on the relationship between art and climate change in China.

Schedule:
The event will use ‘open space’ methods to encourage self-directed group discussion, normally three or four groups. Time will be allowed for each of the groups to feed back towards the end of the afternoon.

Important: This is an invitation only event.
Zoë and Simon are keen to meet a broad cross section of people who have an insight into:
· Climate impacts in China – and their impacts on cities/urban living
· Planning issues around adaptation and change
· The cultural perception of climate change in China
· Emergency planning
We are also keen to meet artists and potential collaborators across the following disciplines, who might be interested in working on a Chinese version of 3rd Ring Out in 2012 as part of British Council China’s UK Now Festival:
· Writers
· Sound artists (composers and/or with experience of computer sound design)
· Video designers
· Interactive computer media creators
· Performers/live artists (especially if they also have one of the above skills and/or make their own work)

The focus of the event is on researching climate science and climate change. If you are interested by the subject and can connect with and contribute to some of the ideas behind 3rd Ring Out, please send an invitation request to us by calling 021-34280783 within office hours (9h30 – 18h00) or by sending an email to xindanwei@gmail.com with the following information provided:
- Your full name
- Your occupation and specialized area
- Which company or organization do you work for?
- You email address
- Your mobile number (Optional)

Thank you for your collaboration!

About 3rd Ring Out: China
3rd Ring Out: China is being developed by Metis Arts in partnership with British Council China. Zoë Svendsen and Simon Daw’s visit to China in July 2011 has been supported by a Connections through Culture Development Grant.

Check out event pictures on Flickr!
http://www.flickr.com/groups/xindanwei/pool/

Time: 30th June , 2011  7:20 – 9:15 PM
Venue: Xin Dan Wei – Yongjia Road 50, Xuhui District, Shanghai, CHINA
Organizer: MakeSense.org, MGT Engineering

Another MakeSense Hold-up at Xindanwei in June! This time we are trying to solve the challenge of MGT Engineering, creator of the city green vehicle of the future!
The number of participants is limited to 10, so don’t forget to reserve with us!

WHO IS THE ENTREPRENEUR YOU WILL BE ABLE TO MEET?

ABOUT THE EVENT:
After 3 successful workshops organized at XinDanWei with over-motivated participants, we would like to invite you to a new creative workshop using original means to get the best ideas out of you!
This time, the challenge for you will be to imagine how MGT Engineering invention could become the vehicle of the future in your city!
Don’t worry, we will not let you do it alone : we will be there with some cool methods to help you find the best ideas.
Indeed, this new kind of creative workshops will be hold in a friendly atmosphere with 10 other fellows (just like you!) with who you will have the occasion to experience among others:
- “Brainstorming” Session
- Videoprototyping
So if you are interested in green transportation means, like to ride your bike or just want to meet an innovative entrepreneur, we hope you will definitely join because if it’s the case, we can already bet some of you will like to share their creations with their friends after the event !!

AGENDA:
The creativity workshop will be organized as follow :
- 3 minutes : Presentation of Bamboo Treecycle
- 5 minutes : Explanation of the challenge / organization of the session
- 30 minutes : Brainstorm – foolish ideas !
- 10 minutes : Break
- 30 minutes : Brainstorm – concepts videoprototyping !
- 30 min : Concepts Trial
- 5 minutes : volunteering interviews

The workshop will be animated in English and Chinese by 2 cool Makesense members.

Design2Change – Fourth Edition : Sustainable Design Series
No.1 “Healthy homes in Chinese Urban environments”
Curated and Hosted by GoodtoShanghai; Xindanwei
Time: 14:00 – 17:30, Saturday Jan 8, 2011
Location: Xindanwei, 50 Yongjia Rd
Language: English
Cost: 30RMB/person (including various kind of yummy organic fruits provided by local organic farmer, fresh ground coffee and tea)

Event Schedule:
14:00 Visiting Exhibition
14:30 Introduction to Design2Change and Sustainable Design Series by Liu Yan(Xindanwei) and Susan Evans (GoodtoChina)
14:50 Students’ presentations: Healthy Homes Chinese Urban environments
15:30 Q&A
15:45 Break
16:00 Fast Prototyping Session “Designing Healthy homes” led by Aram Armstrong (IDEO Design)
17:00 Networking/Visiting Exhibition
17:30 End

About the Event
We believe that change happens when we design better, together. Design2Change is a platform to make that collaborative change happen. It is to connect people who want to explore ways that design and technology can positively impact our communities – ways that are thoughtful, informed, creative and responsible. Our mission is to bridge designer and technologist communities with social entrepreneurs by providing an open ground for collaborative innovation.

The sustainable design series originates from a social need. The series will start with Healthy homes in Chinese urban environments and will be followed in March 2010 by Safe/Eco foods in Urban China.

The exhibit and opening event from GoodtoSH sustainable design series, will be followed through active prototyping at Xindanwei’s space, as we invite participants to return to develop specific concepts. The space at Xindanwei provides an open platform for motivated, curious, creative and talented individuals to share their expertise through prototyping great concepts as developed through the “sustainable design challenge”.

GoodtoSH and Xindanwei will work together to share concepts through exhibits and then to develop these further in a shared space: Concept to market activities.

This series of design concept, is developed over an intense, short, development period with various universities and design institutes in Shanghai. Where MA and final year student’s work on a sustainable design challenge. These challenges include cross discipline input and collaborative workshops with some of the best design groups. The exhibit brings together 3 different ideas brought to us from international MA/MSc students that are currently studying with Tongji University and Politecnico di Milano – MSc Product Service System Design -Politong double degree. Their thinking has been developed over 6 weeks of course work, starting from the development of in home & desk research, through a series of design “tools” and finished with a half day workshop with experts and IDEO fast prototyping session at the “Designing Healthy homes” Shanghai weekend.

Concept development can be viewed on line at
http://healthyhomessh.weebly.com
http://good2sh-healthyhomes.weebly.com/about.html

Registrered users for this event:

liuyan

aaajiao

parisyxc

chenxu

lijun

judyaini

sophievoyage

(in total 7).

Design2Change-Third Edition
: Social media for social change
Speaker: Victor d’Allant

Time: 6:00pm, Nov 10th, 2010
Location: AC3-105, CEIBS campus, 699 Hongfeng Road, Pudong
Cost: free (please send your name, title and organization to xindanwei@gmail.com before Tuesday 9 Nov so that we can arrange a pass for you to get into the CEIBS campus)

Victor d’ Allant, Executive Director of Social Edge @ Skoll Foundation is going to give his presentation, Social Media for Social Change, as the third edition of Design 2 Change, in CEIBS.

We believe that change happens when we design better, together. Design2Change is a platform to make that collaborative change happen. It is to connect people who want to explore ways that design and technology can positively impact our communities – ways that are thoughtful, informed, creative and responsible. Our mission is to bridge designer and technologist communities with social entrepreneurs by providing an open ground for collaborative innovation.

In the third edition, we introduce you to Victor d’Allant, the executive director of Social edge, a program of SKOLL foundation. His bio can be found at http://www.socialedge.org/about-us/social-edge-team His talk covers how they use social media to deliver social change, taking the example of Social Edge and how it has been contributing to building the field of social entrepreneurship. He was invited several times to speak at Stanford, Berkeley, NYU and his presentation has been well received.

This event is realized with the support of CSR club of China Europe International Business School and Collective Responsibility (http://www.collectiveresponsibility.org/)

Registrered users for this event:

Joyce

parisyxc

fenffenf

Yingeli

lawrenceyeah

alafish

stupid77

tifa

disneyshen

(in total 9).

Design2Change – Second Edition
Better Toilet, Better Life
Speaker: Jack Sim, founder of World Toilet Organization (WTO) and the World Toilet College (WTC), Ashoka Fellow

Curated and Hosted by Xindanwei
Supported by ASHOKA

Time: 2pm-4pm, Oct 24, 2010
Location: Xindanwei, 50 Yongjia Rd
Cost: 30RMB(including coffee, tea and snacks), free of charge for Xindanwei monthly and yearly member
Language: English (Chinese translation provided for Q&A session)

Important Notice:
-This is a reservation only event, seats are limited to the first 40 people who are registered at the event page of Xindanwei website.
- Transportation: We highly recommend you to take public transportation instead of driving, for we are conveniently located next to Metro line 1, 10(Shaanxi Rd South Stop) and Metro 9 (Jiashan Rd stop) as well as bus line 96, 104, 911, 167，42，920，926，128，146，24

About the Event
We believe that change happens when we design better, together. Design2Change is a platform to make that collaborative change happen. It is to connect people who want to explore ways that design and technology can positively impact our communities – ways that are thoughtful, informed, creative and responsible. Our mission is to bridge designer and technologist communities with social entrepreneurs by providing an open ground for collaborative innovation.
In the second event of “Design2Change” series, Xindanwei brings to you the leading Asian social entrepreneur, the Hero of the Environment for 2008 by Time Magazine, Ashoka Fellow Jack Sim from Singapore.

Jack is a wonderful speaker and his work is highly inspiring. In 2001,after a successful career in the construction industry, Jack started asking himself probing questions. Couldn’t he be doing more for society? At that time, public debate over the cleanliness of Singapore’s toilets was daily news, and Jack found his calling in the improvement of sanitation worldwide. Globally, about 2.6 billion people still live without access to improved sanitation, leading to the deaths of nearly 6,000 children every day. To tackle this problem, Jack founded a pair of global initiatives, the World Toilet Organization (WTO) and the World Toilet College (WTC) to provide sanitation for everyone.

The World Toilet Organization (www.worldtoilet.org) is a membership organization of citizen groups, academia, and government agencies around the world whose work proves that progress on sanitation is possible. With 130 members in 51 countries (6 in China), WTO aligns citizen groups, budgets, and government agendas to underscore the urgency of proper sanitation, decouple sanitation and water for the purposes of funding, and direct earmarked funds to citizen sector and public-private partnerships.

On this trip to China, Jack hopes to share his experience of improving sanitation around the world, as well as find potential partners to further WTO’s work in China— where 650 million, approximately half of total population, still lack access to clean sanitation.

Jack Sim is supported by Ashoka, the global association of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs. Ashoka aims to identify similar entrepreneurs in China whose goal is to be of service to society, and provide them support to make their plans a reality. To do this Ashoka needs to develop a wide network of supporters. Ashoka’s ultimate vision is to create a world where every individual has the freedom, confidence and societal support to address social problems and drive change. More about Ashoka, please visit: www.ashoka.org

About Jack
Jack Sim was born in 1957 in Singapore. His life is a rags-to-riches tale with a surprising twist. When Jack was young, he did not do particularly well in school. He lacked the attention span and were too playful for the classroom. Following in the footsteps of his entrepreneurial mother, Jack later developed his own successful construction business, and credits his business success to the need to devise creative solutions. In 2001, when Jack had enough money in the bank to retire, his “real” life began. Jack followed his motto ‘Live A Useful Life’, and started asking himself probing questions. Couldn’t he be doing more for society, finding a more beneficial outlet for his creativity and rebellious nature? At that time, public debate over the cleanliness of Singapore’s toilets was daily news. That was when he found his calling, a calling which in time led to his being awarded the Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneur of the Year in 2001, and elected as an Ashoka Global Fellow in 2007.

To learn more about Jack and his work, please see the attached English and Chinese profiles. Alternatively, you can also have a look at these videos:

http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/tVg2RaRk40w/

(An interview Jack did with Bloomberg TV about world toilet day 2009)

http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/FVX2uzIFgLo/

(An interview with Jack at Ashoka’s Tech4Society meeting, February 2010)

Registrered users for this event:

sophievoyage

alexmok

inja

aaajiao

yuago

iamhs

mklosek

wibur

lanselo

ryanlv

marcginestet

歪歪

Charlygreen

yqz

tormorseth

napoleon

(in total 16).

Design2Change – First Edition
DESIGN FOR DISADVANTAGED: The Creative Care from the North

Speakers: Adam Hagman(SWEDEN), Rune Rex(DENMARK)
Curated and Hosted by Liu Yan (Xindanwei) and Søren Bo Steendahl (Kadaver)
Time: 2:00pm-4:30pm, Oct 10, 2010
After Drink: 4:30pm-7:00pm
Location: Xindanwei, 50 Yongjia Rd
Cost: Free of Charge
Language: English

Important Notice:

-This is a reservation only event, seats are limited to the first 40 people who are registered at the event page of Xindanwei website.

-The event will be followed by a network after drink to connect Nordic and Chinese designers and social entrepreneurs and to celebrate the grand opening of Xindanwei new space.

We believe that change happens when we design better, together. Design2Change is a platform to make that collaborative change happen. It is to connect people who want to explore ways that design and technology can positively impact our communities – ways that are thoughtful, informed, creative and responsible. Our mission is to bridge designer and technologist communities with social entrepreneurs by providing an open ground for collaborative innovation.

In the first event of “Design2Change” series, Xindanwei brings to you the robot developer and product designers from Nordic countries who help those with (physical or mental) limitations to express themselves, to make (and keep making) their own choices, stay independent and participate fully in the information society.

This event is realized with the generous support of ROBOT DALEN “The Robot Valley” from Sweden and KADAVER – the project team of THE CREATIVE NORTH. For more innovative and creative examples of the design products and services and the process which plays a significant role in the Nordic welfare system, please visit THE CREATIVE NORTH exhibition in Nordic Lighthouse and attend a special reception on Oct 11, 2010, please confirm your attendance by sending a mail to thecreativenorth@gmail.com or visit www.thecreativenorth.com for more information.

Wait, there is more …

Forthcoming Design2Change Events:

- Better Toilet, Better Life
by Jack Sim, founder of World Toilet Organization(WTO), Oct 24, 2010

- Social Media for Social Change
by Victor D’Allant, Executive Director of Social Edge, a program of Skoll Foundation, Nov 13, 2010

Speakers:
Adam Hagman, Robotdalen “the Robot valley” from Sweden.

Adam is the business developer of Robotdalen’s Health Robotics operations.
 His background is M.Sc. of Mechanical Engineering but in his heart he is an entrepreneur. He has started several companies and helps startups to create successful companies. He is very focused to make sure that robots developed in Robotdalen are made with the user in main focus. He will address how IT plays an important role in the demographic change we see in society, how IT can help address the aging population and what possibilities there are within the future of IT.

Robotdalen is a Swedish robotics initiative enabling commercial success of new ideas and research within robotics and automation. Robotdalen focus mainly on solutions for the industry and health care sector. Research and development projects are implemented by small and medium-sized companies, hospitals, global companies like ABB, Volvo, Atlas Copco and ESAB, and Swedish universities such as Örebro University and Mälardalen University.http://www.robotdalen.se/

Rune Rex (Sometimes Lune Lex) – Industrial Designer and Entrepreneur

Medical Packaging for All that focused on user centered product development in an industry that is close to unchangeable

About Rune Rex:

He described his core competences as high drive/enthusiasm for design, super sonic learning curves, to work in/WITH pink. He studied industrial design, visual design and interactive design in Denmark and has won numerous awards in Denmark and worldwide. He is the cofounder and Industrial Imaginator of project brand MAIK, cofounder and visual designer of Berggreenandersen& Design Studio. More about Rune Rex, please visit: http://runerex.com/

Registrered users for this event:

vc85lifegoeson

parisyxc

pbodq

hanneshelander

halida

mountain

Chalkman

linggu

lynndancsc

aaajiao

sachielyuu

raymond_p

stacy116602

oasis_shang

shane1004

jessica

Yue

gloriapanpan

dgjmartin

Moonlight

a2fish

betty

Yvette

danecurrey

inja

Stefff

ooaven

cj

caomaodou

imacma

maggiezhai

Nix

xcsky

tigeryzy001

PeterYao

Yolanda

curemiemie

canda

crystalion

Lan

swordsp

etet198487

lara007neo

marcginestet

(in total 44).