ABOUT US
Work Hard, Dream Bigger.
Makey Makey started out as a project that was initiated by two students at MIT Media Lab under the advisorship of Mitch Resnick and is an academic and artistic project. Now it's both a business and a project with thousands of community collaborators, with more joining the ranks of inventors everyday.
Makey Makey is a spin-off from
Creators
We believe that everyone is creative, inventive, and imaginative. We believe that everyone can create the future and change the world. So we have dedicated our lives to making easy-to-use invention kits.
Before Jay and Eric created Makey Makey we worked on other creative tools and invention kits such as Drawdio, Singing Fingers, and Mitch Resnick's Scratch
Before Jay and Eric created Makey Makey we worked on other creative tools and invention kits such as Drawdio, Singing Fingers, and Mitch Resnick's Scratch
JoyLabz Team
Jay Melican
President & Chief Operating Officer
Todd Eddie
Vice President of E-Commerce
Colleen Graves
Director of Community, Curriculum
& Creative Content
& Creative Content
Clair Adams
Sales and Accounting
Collaborators
Thanks Everyone!
This project is based on Research at MIT Media Lab's Lifelong Kindergarten.
Prototype for manufacturing made in collaboration with SparkFun with the help of Jim Lindblom and Nathan Seidle as well as everyone on the SparkFun team.
Initial funding from Kickstarter (A.K.A. From 11,000 individual people. Wow!!!) with a lot of help from Aurora Thornhill of Kickstarter.
- Liz Warburton First official employee. In charge of Sales and Operations for 1+ years. Put heart and soul into early functioning of the company. Revamped our work flow.
- Jim Lindblom did tons of Eagle work on the board layout and collaborated with us on many aspects of versions 2, 3, and 4 of the board. He was our point person at SparkFun, and an amazing engineer (seriously!!!).
- Arduino was the first Makey Makey platform. Dave Mellis of Arduino gave us tons of advice.
- Mitch Resnick, our advisor, inspired how we think about creative tool-making and how people learn. There is no way to cover all the influences Mitch had, but to name a few, he taught us how to design and talk about new creative learning media technology. Also, the idea of invention literacy is a direct copy of the way Mitch discusses "coding literacy".
- Etonnet worked with us on the manufacture of the first 100,000 Makey Makey Classics.
- Merge Design designed our retail packaging for Makey Makey Classic, and has worked with us on manufacturing and other issues around Makey Makey Classic and Makey Makey GO.
- Product Manufactory co-engineered Makey Makey GO PCB and co-designed Makey Makey Go casing.
- Mark Feldmeier gave us ninja circuit advice.
- Nathan Seidle from SparkFun understood the awesomeness of this project right away and gave it a chance before it was "pretty".
- Kate Hartman gave us advice on how to make a wireless version.
- Leah Buechley inspired us to think differently about microcontroller platforms.
- Joi Ito supported this project going open source. He changed Media Lab culture so that the students feel more empowered.
- Robbie Sigman gave us web advice.
- Amon Millner's ideas in the Pico Board / Scratch Board influenced our thinking on this project.
- Evelyn Eastmond helped us with visual design ideas.
- Mat Cegiela helped us with visual design, concepts, and running the Maker Faire booth.
- Sam Eberle gave us advice on video design.
- Jeff Lieberman gave us wizard advice on innumerable things, and the confidence to believe in ourselves.
- Jodi Silver loved and supported us in 1000 ways.
- Magic Seth Raphael helped us finalize our main ideas and gave us lots of advice.
- The Tinkering Studio at the Exploratorium helped us build our very first prototypes and tried them out in lots of creative ways (thanks Ryan, Luigi, Walter, Sebastian, Nicole, and everybody else!).
- Quarly clowned the Maker Faire booth.
- Kurt ideated video and imagery.
- Shakti redigested the Kickstarter page and video.
- Amos Blanton hooked the forums up with instant skillz. Best community manager for creative sites. Sweet!
- Tyler Williams was the tech lead on the testing code and procedure and contributed to a faster startup time.
- Adafruit gave us initial creative confidence by supporting us through the Drawdio project, and PT has given key advice and encouragement after the Kickstarter.
- Mitch Altman has given key advice and positive encouragement.
- Mikey Siegel has discussed the project from man-weeks worth of time and stepped in on customer support and business planning. Partner in negotiations and high-level "what do we do now" thinking.
- Beau Silver has performed excellently on banana-ma-phone with me at events, answered some customer questions and created original FAQ. He was Maker Faire 2013 booth lead.
- Rachel Silver has lots of different support roles at JoyLabz.
- Lilavati Eberle gave us so much support and encouragement.
- Not Back to School Camp provided basic inspiration of a temporary international community, energizing us to create beauty. Through running workshops there, I had invaluable insight.
- Keith Simmons provided ongoing encouragement, and specific feedback on the Group-How-To contest.
- Jason Camp is a teacher who tested on Chromebook for us.