Digee Made

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WoeLab is Turning E-Waste into Usable Technology for West Africa

“My Africa Is spoke with Sename Koffi Agboginou founder of Woelab, a maker space in Lome, Togo with the unifying goal of creating #lohightech that is accessible to the low-income consumer.”

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Make Tech Matter Feature | Jessica O. Matthews Makes Kinetic-Powered Energy Matter

Uncharted Play’s mission is to power a world in motion with motion.

The New York startup uses a proprietary technology called the Motion-based Off-grid Renewable Energy (M.O.R.E.) to power play products and provide clean renewable energy. Both its Soccket soccer ball and its Pulse jump rope generate energy as they are used. 

“Uncharted Play is consumerizing and individualizing power access by embedding our proprietary technology for motion-based, off-grid renewable energy (M.O.R.E.) into everything that moves.”

Kudos to Jessica and her team for identifying uncharted territory to provide a product of real value to the world!

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“How can we start coming up with new platforms, ideas, and approaches across disciplines and skill sets to solve some of the big problems that we’re facing today.”

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“Leadership requires two things: a vision of the world that doesn’t yet exist and the ability to communicate it.” - Simon Sinek

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We’ve been following the activities of Biolite since we discovered them last year as part of our 2015 Make Tech Matter Monday segments. This company is a model to follow in its approach to solving real world problems.

Today, they announced a 10-part series entitled The Road to Impact:

This is your journey too, and we think you deserve a full, unfiltered, behind the scenes look into the daily work of building a new kind of energy. With this in mind, I’m proud to announce The Road to Impact, a year-long 10 part series from BioLite in which our community will ride shotgun for each step in the process of building an impact business.

We’ll be following these videos and posting them to highlight the importance for companies to create business models that fit the open, connected and conscious world we live in today!

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Our store launching 🔜

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I stumbled on this motivational video today and thought it was very on point. When it comes to all of our everyday struggles - especially working in a startup - it’s important to know the root reason you’re doing what you’re doing.

KNOW YOUR WHY!

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#MakeTechMatterMonday | TJ Evarts and his team make sensor and bluetooth technology matter

SMARTwheel aims to make driving safer for everyone. With this goal in mind, the New Hampshire team has developed an intelligent steering wheel that uses motion recognition to monitor driving behaviour and records it to their mobile app while providing real-time feedback.

As outlined by the SMARTwheel team themselves:

We’re committed to developing novel technologies that solve safety problems on the road, in our homes, at work, and everywhere in between. We’re driving toward peace of mind for the parents of young drivers—and we’re keeping both hands on the wheel.

SMARTwheel has great potential, as evidenced by their invitations to present at the White House and in the Shark Tank! With car manufacturers getting smarter themselves, SMARTwheel’s feature flexibility will allow them to keep the streets safe by developing a slew of adapting features. Kudos to TJ and the team :)

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Make Tech Matter Monday | Ryan Green and his team makes gaming technology matter

That Dragon, Cancer is a game that was born after the game’s developers’ son was diagnosed with cancer at the tender age of 12 months. The empathy game is an immersive experience meant to prepare families and individuals to the lengthy and often devastating effects of living with cancer.

Here’s how the game is described by the game’s producers:

An immersive narrative videogame that retells Joel Green’s 4-year fight against cancer through about two hours of poetic, imaginative gameplay that explores faith, hope and love.

The game is available for pre-order now and will launch officially on January 12th, 2016.

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Make Tech Matter Monday | Sam Frons makes mobile technology matter

Addicaid is a social-recovery mobile app for the prevention and treatment of addiction. The Brooklyn-based startup is a data-driven platform that allows its users to have the support of a like-minded community while improving access to professional help.

Per Addicaid’s website, here’s a description of their mission:

Addiction is not a character flaw to be penalized or a behavior that can be modified by willpower alone. It is a chronic disease that requires community, compassion, and respect. Our mission is to help the people who need it most, and help the world learn more about the addiction spectrum.

Addicaid is available in the App Store and in Google Play. Check them out!

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Why we partnered with Sûrtab?

In November of 2014, I visited Haiti for a 2-week vacation. While getting some rest was the initial goal, the purpose of the trip took an unusual turn as I lived among the people in the capital city of Port-au-Prince.

To my surprise, I realized the country was still reeling from the impact of the 2010 earthquake. I made many realizations and made a few promises right then and there. I decided I would contribute to the socio-economic situation of the people in Haiti

Back in North America, I swore I would keep my promise. A few weeks later, I came across this tech venture that had an incredible mission: created much needed well-paid jobs to the people of Haiti. I was onboard right away.

Their value statement of Surtab is clear:

“Our priority is to be a socially responsible business within the community where we operate. To ensure this, sûrtab operates with the highest integrity and ethical standards and holds health and safety in the utmost regard. Above all, we pay our staff well, re-invest our earnings into expansion and are intent upon nurturing loyalty and equal opportunity (90% of our staff are women) within our company so as to create an inspiring work place. By fostering such an environment, we seek to give a voice to team members who speak their mind and offer solutions to problems that they witness on a day-to-day basis. Correspondingly, management and staff champion the company’s reputation, assets, and integrity.

Positive change isn’t just a result, it is a process.”

At Digee Made, we believe technology is the premier force for change in the world today. The match was made in heaven and we hope to get great things done together.

If you’d like to learn more about Sûrtab, get in touch with us!

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Make Tech Matter Monday | Michael Martin and Nick Horelick make mobile and telecom technology matter

RapidSOS is on a mission to make the world a more safe and secure place for the mobile era. The startup makes it fast and reliable to reach the appropriate first responders in the case of an emergency. It is the ‘911′ system for the 21st century!

When we need technology most, in mission critical, life threatening emergencies, we rely on an infrastructure that was originally developed for landlines. Despite all of the capabilities of our smart phones, only a small amount of data can be transmitted through this existing infrastructure.

In a time where national security is a growing concern for the the U.S. and the world in general, it comes as a surprise that no mobile system has been implemented to replace the archaic 911 infrastructure. Enter RapidSOS, check them out!

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Very excited to announce our partnership with Sûrtab. Sûrtab is a haitian tablet manufacturer that was founded after the horrific earthquake that hit the country in 2010. Together, we’re focused on one shared mission: create much-needed well paid jobs to the people of Haiti. We also hope to put the wealth of information that comes with the access to technology in the hands of its youth.

If you’d like to learn more, visit our sûrtab page or email me directly at [email protected].

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Make Tech Matter Monday | Eric and Alex Dolan make wearable technology matter

Meet Neutun Labs, the startup that’s building a seizure tracking tool for people living with epilepsy. The company’s software runs on existing smartwatches such as the Apple Watch and the Pebble Watch.

Their issues with the existing solutions were the following:

“What we found was that the big events were handled really well when we went to the hospital but the day-to-day stuff wasn’t managed,” says Eric. “A lot of the [management and tracking] solutions we were given were either pen and paper or, on the other end of the spectrum, where it would cost thousands of dollars.”

You can learn more about the health tech’s startup now by signing up on their website.

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State of Startups 2015

This is First Round's effort to provide an in-depth snapshot of what founders across the entire tech ecosystem are thinking and doing, what they're excited abo…

Here’s the State of Startups in 2015. Can we do better?

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Make Tech Matter Monday | Benjamin Hubert makes wearable and mobile technology matter

For the very first time in the history of our weekly #MakeTechMatterMonday instalment, we decided to give the nod to an ambitious idea and project, as opposed to a product currently on the market. We decided it was a relevant choice considering the 2015 Paris Climate Conference taking place this week.

Worldbeing is a wearable prototype that monitors your carbon footprint in real time as you go about your daily activities.

"One of the issues is that climate change or carbon footprints are very intangible concepts," founder Benjamin Hubert told FastCompany. “They happen over long periods of time, or you don't visually see them.”

In partnership with Carbon Trust, Layer Design hopes to change the world’s behavior by bringing a global issue closer to home. There are huge opportunities for startups looking to make a difference in climate change and Worldbeing’s approach is refreshing and full of potential.

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Make Tech Matter Monday | Matt Mahan and James Windon make mobile technology matter

Brigade’s mission is ambitious: ‘re-energize public participation in our democracy’. The Sean Parker-advised startup was create to fill the need created by two opposite characteristics of millennials - a digitally outspoken generation with low participation numbers in democratic processes.

The Brigade team hopes to make it easier and simpler for the population to express their collective opinion on important issues in a manner that will influence our elected officials. This solution comes as the slow and inefficient governmental machinery has been under much scrutiny these past years for its lack of 'user-friendliness’ and increasing amount of red tapes.

Take a look at what the Brigade team is up to and download their app today.