In June of 2013, we had the wonderful opportunity to work with some amazing people to build a couple of our Amphora rowboats at Harvard. We had known of Dr. Melissa Franklin's thoughts about the importance of working with one's hands at a young age, and the positive effects that can have on abstract problem solving and critical-thinking. We'd chatted with her about the idea of setting up a class or workshop to explore these ideas more, and Dr. Franklin very graciously set things up so we could work in the amazing and inspiring building which used ot house part of the Cambridge Electron Accelerator — A huge space with a superb workshop attached to it: Perfect for building little boats!

Dr. Franklin gathered a few of her students — some undergraduate, some just graduated, and one post-graduate, but all amazingly capable people — none of whom had ever a project like this before. We had just a week after the end of the school year to try and get two boats built, and we did!

As we had expected, given our forty-plus years of experience in DIY project design, the experience was as powerful as we'd hoped, and we all learned a lot — both the participants and ourselves!

I can't wait to help facilitate another of these workshops!

We want to thank Dr. Melissa Franklin and the builders for their kind participation in this event, as we certainly enjoyed the experience. All of the aspects of this workshop were outstanding: The people gracious and remarkably competant, kind and creative, and the space we built these boats in was inspiring! We hope this will be the first of many joint hands-on projects at Harvard!

Most of the builders in this workshop had little to no experience in building projects of this scale, and they were pleasantly surprised to be on the water a week after they started! We were not surprised, however, as they were all motivated (and we knew how simple the Amphora is to build!)