A Humble Hero Named Eva
Rude noises. Inappropriate comments. Snorting. Annnd spitting out food.
The current president of Diyode (Guelph’s Makerspace, talked about here) and I had exchanged very few thoughts before our first meeting. But somehow those four topics were amongst them. I knew from the outset that Eva and I would get along just great.
Eva Bodahelyi learned about Simon Clark’s Precious Plastics project this past July. Her interest was immediately piqued, because she’s always on the lookout for interesting new things.
Let me repeat that.
Eva is always on the lookout for interesting new things.
Exploring thoughts through dialogue (the word “conversation” seems inadequate in this case) with Eva is like watching a 3D printer in action — every layer of filament that cools and solidifies is a new thought, nuanced and unique; upon which a new layer of filament is built on top of, equally nuanced and you guessed it, unique. But with Eva, there is no pre-determined design or linear output.
What Eva’s building is internal, and it’s a beautiful and organic understanding of the expansive world around us. There is no blueprint for discovery or curiosity. It simply builds, thread after thread, layer after layer; and within Eva, it flourishes into greatness. Into genius. And it inspires her to make things that bring joy to others.
I suppose I shouldn’t be that surprised. The internet is full of references to the genius and greatness of makerspaces, afterall.
But the truth is, a makerspace is no greater than the sum of its parts. As ‘members run’ organizations, Greatness happens at a makerspace when some Great member makes it happen. Or, as Eva puts it,
“All people [at Diyode] have their own thinking patterns and ways of looking at and/or solving problems. Even reasons to not solve problems can be thought provoking. Anything to look at a situation in a different way could lead somewhere new.”
If putting constant effort behind understanding another person’s viewpoint isn’t the breeding ground of greatness, I don’t know if anything is.
Eva is not only a leader, she’s also a maker who has banded with Simon to help make the Precious Plastics project a reality. (It was never an intangible dream — it was always a possible reality that needed enough brute force behind it to make it happen, because that is the maker way.)
When you hear about Eva discuss her contributions to the project, she talks about deferring to others with more advanced knowledge or broader networks than her own (like Brennan McKillop, Natalie Schneider, Marc Ricke, and Jacob Botden); and she talks about helping those same individuals iterate through their ideas on the fly.
Eva talks about providing one of the most important factors in achieving greatness — the willingness to support and believe in others to make it happen— as though it were the smallest contribution in the world.
Because that’s how Eva is. And as one of the most curious people I’ve ever met, it makes sense to me that she’s also one of the most empathetic. It didn’t take long for us to make the conversational leap from “Isn’t that cool?!” and “Think of the application of that tech!” to, “Yah, what’s happening is atrocious…” and “If only more people cared.”
If only more people cared.
But how to make more people care?
It’s the problem of all problems. And there’s no single answer that is satisfactory. We can only all do our best to figure it out. And I think that’s exactly what makers are doing.
Makers are people who are driven to do their best, and makerspaces give them the spatial freedom to try. They’re people who are constantly thinking up cool things, practical things, top secret things that shall not be spoken of. They are people who are making an art out of tackling problems together, and out of making the best solutions together.
AND, makers like Cam Turner and Brent Wettlaufer (to name but a few of many) are taking it upon themselves to teach these skills to our children:
Of course makers deserve our support. Of course I want to do what I can to help them keep making.
Maker curiosity (something Eva describes as, “[t]he need to follow a thread of learning to some sort of satisfying result whether it be understanding of the general idea behind a concept, or to the completion of the project,”) isn’t the only force driving Eva to be so generous with her time and energy. The way she sees it, “[i]t’s great to see [other member’s] happiness and how excited they are explaining their solution.”
But even those two things combined, still aren’t what makes Eva, Eva. She revels in bringing people from different disciplines together. And I count myself as honoured to have basked in her unadulterated joy at the very notion.
See, when people with different training and points of view come together, new ways of solving old problems are born. This gives her hope that maybe, just maybe, we’ll figure out a new solution to the old problem of getting more people to care.
Brent Wettlaufer, a maker much wiser than myself, once told me that,“STEAM is the What. Maker Culture is the How. Innovation is the Why.”
He elaborated,
- STEAM — Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics, are the labels we use to describe the elements of creativity;
- Maker Culture is all about hands on process and iteration, and understanding how things fit together to work or not work;
- And innovation with the intention to better ourselves, is why it all matters.
Eva is an embodiment of that maker curiosity: hands on process and iteration, and the drive to understand how things fit together to work or not work.
All this can’t help but make me think. What if more people were empowered to create? What if more people picked up the threads of curiosity that lead to questions like, “What about that situation?,” and “What would a person do if they were to use this application there?” and the real kicker: “How would it make them feel?”
Eva’s the president of Diyode and a staunch contributor to the Precious Plastics project, because she wants people to be curious. To build solutions that inspire questions about how a solution makes other people feel. To make more people care. That’s not how she says it, but it’s certainly how I see it.
A humble hero indeed.
