WASHINGTON–The task is not impossible. Even if you’re convinced it is. Even if you lack the qualifications to tackle the task. In fact, the lack of understanding around the task may be just what you need.
That was the mantra shared by Mick Ebeling in an opening session to CUNA’s Governmental Affairs Conference (GAC) here.
Fittingly, Ebeling leads a life-changing organization called Not Impossible Labs, through which he and others have tackled a variety of “impossible” tasks and challenges—and showed it is possible—even though many lack any real expertise as they have taken on big hurdles such as helping the paralyzed, feeding hungry people and helping victims of Parkinson’s to control their tremors.
Ebeling, the author of “Not Impossible: The Art and Joy of doing What Couldn’t Be Done,” has dedicated himself to using technology for the sake of humanity. He shared his experiences during an “Ed Talk” to open CUNA’s Governmental Affairs Conference.”
“It’s based on this infatuation I have of looking at things that are impossible and trying to make them not impossible,” said Ebeling.
The mission statement of Not Impossible Labs is “Changing the World Through Technology and Story.”
“Technology is a ubiquitous term,” said Ebeling. “What ‘technology for the sake of humanity’ means to us is looking at the world through this lens of things that seem to be absurd. Things that are ‘not just right.’ Why does the world work that way? Why is there this limitation? It's the kind of thing that you feel ‘I’ve got to do something about.’ We convened all these brilliant teams of makers and engineers and all kinds of people and we dog pile on it and crowdsource that absurdity we see, then we try to get it out to help the most people.”
The Story
The second piece of the Not Impossible Labs’ work is “story,” Ebeling told the meeting.
“If people walk up and ask what do you do?’, how many of you say ‘I’m a story teller.’ Not many,” said Ebeling. “Story is how we relate as human beings. It’s how we react. What we do is we use story as a means to scale the things we make, the technology for the sake of humanity.
You saw my last name isn’t Gates or Bezos or Buffett. We can’t just fling money at problems. We have to get scrappy. We use story as the means to do that. The lens we use is ‘help one, help many.’”
A resident of Venice Beach, Calif., Ebeling, who had a very successful career in film production, noted his community has a significant issue with homelessness, and while biking past an encampment he noticed one person whom he hadn’t seen before. He turned out to be an ex-Marine named Jimmy who was hungry.
Ebeling used the story of Jimmy to illustrate the “help one, help many” mantra as well as the power of telling a story by observing to his audience that hunger may feel too big a challenge to tackle, but feeding one person’s hunger is not.
“If I ask who wants to feed Jimmy dinner tomorrow night, hands go up. Why? Now, hunger has a name, hunger has a face. Now it’s not this massive boil-the-ocean concept. It’s a single individual,” said Ebeling. “What we do at the beginning of every project, every absurdity we tackle, is we ask who is the one? We know if we can solve for that one person it gives us the ability to tell the story and then scale it up for more people. That’s Not Impossible 101.”
Examples Shared
During his remarks Eberling shared several examples of ingenuity by Not Impossible Labs, including developing a pair of on-the-cheap glasses created for a local artist who has Lou Gehrig’s disease and who eventually could control only his eye muscles. But using the movement of the artist’s eyes and some off-the-shelf technologies (and a pair of cheap glasses), what is now the Not Impossible team was able to let him draw again.
He described that process as chapter one, titled “A Lot of Great Things Happen by Accident.”
Chapter Two
Chapter two, according to Eberling, is called “Commit. Then Figure It Out.”
“That’s scary. But that’s how our species has operated since the beginning of time. It’s how we overcome every challenge in life. It’s the muscle we know exists, but we just forget about it.”
But the results of committing to something and figuring it out can be “awesome,” according to Eberling, who called the opportunity to help the artist to draw again as “magical.”
It was also the beginning of Not Impossible Labs. After developing what is called the “EyeWriter” and making it available as open-source code, the plan had been for those involved to return to their day jobs. But the EyeWriter, which was named a Top 50 Invention by Time Magazine, proved to be such an inspiration (it’s in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art) that it spurred something even larger.
“We were like, ‘What just happened?’ It was bigger than anything we have ever done. It made us think maybe there is something here to help people,” said Ebeling. “I thought about it. Slept on it. In the end I came to the conclusion, ‘Dude, you got lucky.’ Save the press clippings and get back to your day job.”
But an email from the artist who had received the EyeWriter changed all that as he talked about how life-changing it had been.
The Impossible Question
And it’s changed the life of Ebeling and others involved with Not Impossible Labs, as well.
“After a decade of studying this concept, the question I ask you is, can you name anything that is possible today that wasn’t impossible first? The answer is nothing. Every single thing that surrounds you today was at one point was impossible until someone made it possible.
“If everything that is possible today was impossible first, then everything that is impossible today is on the trajectory to being possible,” Ebeling continued. “The crazy thing about it is that impossible is a fallacy. It reminds us the next time you’re facing something that is difficult and you’re about to say that’s impossible, just think about the fact that if you are so certain it’s impossible, that means you the first human being in history to discover the thing that will be impossible forever.”
Creating the Possible
Ebeling shared other stories of overcoming the impossible, including learning to create prosthetic arms for people affected by war in Sudan (and then teaching people in the country to build the arms themselves), which is called Project Daniel (a video can be viewed here), and another project called Bento.com that seeks to get cellphones to the homeless as a means of receiving meals they can pick up at restaurants in the same way anyone else would in order to maintain their dignity (a video on Bento.com can be found here).
The Bento Project was named a “World Changing Idea” by one publication and again named to Time Magazine’s list of top ideas of the year.
Ebeling and the Not Impossible Labs’ team is now awaiting approval of a device worn on the wrist that helps victims of Parkinson’s disease to bring one of its symptoms—the shaking of a hand or arm—under control.
“Why are we able to pull these off? Because we shouldn’t. We have no credentials, no training, no tangible reason to success,” said Ebeling. “The reason is beautiful, limitless naivete. We didn’t get the memo we aren’t supposed to pull this off. Then we find our one, we commit and figure it out.”
In closing, Ebeling shared this quote, below, and challenged credit unions to “use your blessings.”