Doing the Impossible

Yesterday’s guest speaker at AGC’s Opening Session was Mick Ebeling, an innovator, a change maker and an inventor. Prompted by his fascination with concepts considered impossible and his desire to, as he says, "make them not," Ebeling is changing the world through technology. 

After meeting a young artist diagnosed with ALS who could no longer speak, let alone write or draw, Ebeling was compelled to create a low-cost, open-source device that would give this young man his creativity back. By gathering a team of engineers and hackers and buying a cheap pair of sunglasses from Venice Beach, California, Ebeling developed the Eyewriter, a program that allows artists to draw with their eyes. For the first time in seven years, that young man drew again.

 

From there, Ebeling founded Not Impossible Labs, a company with the philosophy of "Help One. Help Many." By creating affordable innovative solutions to seemingly impossible problems, Ebeling "sparks a bigger fire" and opens the door for others to follow suit. Thus, by him helping one, he's helping many.

 

Not content to stop at Eyewriter, Ebeling and his team went on to develop affordable prostheses, produced using a 3D printer, for amputees in war-torn countries. And, now that he's done it, others can too. 

As Ebeling puts it, everything was impossible until it became possible.