Cherryflava

Design Indaba: Reggie Watts moves the crowd

Posted on 26. Feb, 2007 by Jonathan Cherry in Uncategorized

Call us a little shallow and perhaps easily influenced by big ‘fros and beat box machines, but we were moved by what Reggie Watts had to say.

Although having nothing to add to three days of conversation surrounding design, innovation and social upliftment – Reggie Watts is a public speaking god.
A supercomedian who combines vocal hip hop looping with comedy and abstract crack-head thinking in probably the most entertaining 30 minutes of your life.

Not to say that the other speakers at this year’s event were any less informative.

Alex Steffen – co-founder and executive editor of Worldchanging.com – was inspirational with his examples of how design will save the world from itself. Probably the most amazing is the ‘Land Mine detecting flower‘. A white flower, generically engineered to turn red in the presence of land mines.

Cameron Sinclair - the world-famous UK architect – in 2004 Fortune Magazine named Cameron Sinclair as one of “seven people  changing the world for the better”. Through a global collaboration with other architects and industrial designers, Cameron is pioneering the idea of open-source architecture. Instead of designing skyscrapers for big money, he’s housing 2.6 billion of the world’s poorest people.

Brian Eno – spoke about art being anything that we don’t have to do and that as humans, our competitive advantage is that we have ‘theory of mind’. Meaning that we have the ability to create other people’s minds within our own. [It made a lot more sense when you're actually there listening to the reasoning behind that one].

Niel Gershenfeld - the nutty professor – is the Director of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms. His unique
laboratory investigates the relationship between the content of
information and its physical representation, from molecular quantum
computers to virtuosic musical instruments.

MIT is working closely with the SA government to develop local talent through their Fab Labs. It’s basically a complete fabrication laboratory which allows anyone to design and manufacture anything that they want to create.
There’s one in Cape Town at 75 Harrington Street, which we’re keen to go check out. We’ve got a loose blue print for a Terminator machine, which can be set to work making coffee and firing live rounds at the annoying neighbourhood cat.

All world-class speakers at the top of their game, but if ever you get the chance to hear Reggie Watts live – do yourself a favour and make sure you attend.