Mick Ebeling


Mick Ebeling is an American film, television and commercial executive producer, author, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. Ebeling has been honored by Advertising Age as one of the , 2015 , and the recipient of the 2014 .
Ebeling is the founder and CEO of Not Impossible Labs, a company committed to creating technology for the sake of humanity. Ebeling is also founder of The Ebeling Group and the nonprofit The Not Impossible Foundation.

Career

Ebeling's first entertainment job was launching Venice Beach based, FUEL in 1995. FUEL was a motion design studio using one of the first versions of the Adobe After Effects software. FUEL was bought by Razorfish in July 1999. Ebeling then went on to be the CEO of THEY. THEY was a cross-platform design company that worked with clients such as NASA. In 2001, Mick formed The Ebeling Group, a commercial and film production company that focuses on animation, design and visual effects.
From 2006 to 2011, under Ebeling's leadership the company branched into film and long form content with credits on titles such as “Stranger Than Fiction”, “Kite Runner”, “Quantum of Solace”, the award-winning animation "Yes, Virginia" television special for CBS and a series of short films with Marvel Studios called "One-Shots".
Ebeling is also the executive producer of the documentary film , winner of the Audience Award at the 2011 Slamdance Film Festival.
In 2014, Ebeling will be featured as one of Intel's Innovators for their "Look Inside" Series. Other sponsored Innovators include Jack Andraka.
Ebeling's first book, , discusses his work on the Eyewriter and Project Daniel and was released by Simon & Schuster on January 6, 2015. The Book is now in its fifth printing.

The Eyewriter

In April 2009, Ebeling flew five programmers and hackers from Graffiti Research Lab, Free Art and Technology Lab, and openFrameworks to Los Angeles and in the living room of his home created the EyeWriter, an open source, DIY device which enables individuals with paralysis to communicate and create art using only the movement of their eyes. The EyeWriter project was conceptualized and first created for Tempt One, a Los Angeles-based graffiti artist who was diagnosed with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in 2003. Tempt1 wrote his first piece of graffiti after seven years using the EyeWriter on April 10, 2009.
Ebeling's March 2011 TED talk: The invention that unlocked the locked-in artist discusses the creation of The EyeWriter and Ebeling's mission to raise public awareness and inspire ideas that encourage change. With no technical background in ocular recognition technology, Ebeling asks the question: “If not now, then when? If not me, then who?” TIME magazine called it one of the “50 Best Inventions of 2010,” and the device is now part of the permanent collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

Project Daniel

In November 2013, Ebeling traveled to Sudan to 3D-print arms for children who lost their limbs in the war. Ebeling set up what is likely the first-ever 3D printing prosthetic lab in the Nuba Mountains. The mission was called "Project Daniel." Ebeling debuted "Project Daniel" at CES 2014 in Las Vegas alongside Intel. Of the project, TIME's tech journalist Harry McCracken wrote, "it’s hard to imagine any other device here doing more to make the world a better place.”
Project Daniel has won numerous accolades, including a 2015 SXSW Interactive Innovation Award, as well as being nominated for “Design of the Year” from London’s Design Museum. In 2014, it garnered the Titanium Cannes Lion as well as Gold and Bronze Lions. Project Daniel also won Association of Independent Commercial Producers’ Next Cause Marketing Award, Best in Show in the 2014 One Show, Silver and Bronze Telly Awards, and the 2014 Maker Faire Editor's Choice Blue Ribbon.
Project Daniel has been featured in Time, WIRED, Business Insider, Yahoo! Finance, BBC, The Guardian, Globo, The Independent, and CNET

Personal life and education

Mick Ebeling was raised in a family of entrepreneurs and philanthropists, son of Marge and Les Ebeling. He was born in Long Beach, California and raised in Phoenix, Arizona where he attended Brophy College Preparatory. He went on to play basketball for the Air Force Academy, Colorado before he transferred to University of California, Santa Barbara where he graduated in 1992 with a degree in political science.
Mick is married to Caskey Ebeling, an American filmmaker and screenwriter; they have three children: Angus, Bo Jameson, and Trace.
Caskey is a partner of The Ebeling Group and co-founder of The Not Impossible Foundation.
The Ebelings documented the creation of the EyeWriter that began in the living room of their Venice Beach home in a documentary titled "Getting Up: The TEMPT ONE Story”.

Appearances

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