the trees planted by Szekely at rancho
La Puerta more than 30 years ago are
now fully grown and have created new
saplings of their own; Szekely
reminded each iSPa member in atten-
dance that “every guest you serve is a
new tree. may each of you coming
here see your forest grow.”
Not Impossible
Szekely then introduced the winner of
this year’s iSPa alex Szekely
humanitarian award: mick ebeling. a
problem-solving visionary and philan-
thropist, ebeling is the
founder of not
impossible Labs and
delivered the final
keynote of the
2019 iSPa
conference
& expo.
ebeling’s
keynote was
equal parts
humorous,
moving and
inspiring; it detailed
who he is, how not
impossible began and how it has
changed the world. not impossible,
said ebeling, started with an
unplanned, half-foolish promise to help
a paralyzed artist paint again. Despite
having no practical knowledge on how
to accomplish this, ebeling and a team
of creators invented the eyeWriter, a
low-cost and open-source pair of
glasses that allowed the artist to move
“Every guest you
serve is a new
tree. May each of
you coming here
see your forest
grow.”
— DEBORAH SZEKELY
a cursor, and paint, using only eye
movements. now, the
software that powers
these glasses is
available to all.
this was
the genesis
of ebeling’s
“help one,
help many”
approach to
problem
solving. “We
tackle these
problems for one
person,” said ebeling.
“Let’s not solve world hunger—
let’s solve it for one person. then, we
scale up from there.”
he highlighted that the name of his
company, not impossible, is a nod to
what he was told about the eyeWriter:
that it was an impossible problem to
solve cheaply and effectively. Yet,
“impossible is a fallacy,” according to
ebeling. he further added that “every-
thing that’s impossible now is on the
trajectory to being possible.”
in 2013, ebeling turned his attention
to South Sudan, where a long civil war
had created untold numbers of
amputees without financial resources
to purchase prosthetics. ebeling,
working with a South african carpenter
who 3D-printed prosthetic fingers for
himself after a woodshop accident,
eventually created 3D-printable
prosthetic arms for the area’s refugees.
to ebeling, though, a few prosthetics
weren’t a suitable solution. instead, he
trained the local South Sudanese
population to 3D-print prosthetic limbs
on their own. this first-ever 3D-printing
lab for prosthetics is still going nearly
six years later.
ebeling’s unquenchable thirst for
helping others and solving problems
is best summed up by something he
said while discussing a pianist with
Parkinson's that not impossible
helped: “i don’t know why he or She
upstairs dropped this in our lap. no
idea. But i believe there’s somebody
upstairs who put this in our lap, and
so we had to do something about it.”
there is no alternative to ebeling:
helping others is nothing short of a
calling. he hopes this calling is shared
by the emotional, mental and
physical healers who comprise the
iSPa membership. circling back to his
“help one, help many” ethos, ebeling
ended the week’s final General
Session by asking the audience: “who
is your one?” n
novEmbEr/dEcEmbEr
■
PULSE 2019
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