openalia
Exploring the open source hardware revolution.
Category Archives: Convention
Eben Moglen Keynote, “Innovation under Austerity”
Eben Moglen is a professor of law at Columbia Law School, Founding Director of the Software Freedom Law Center, and the leader of the FreedomBox Project. This is his keynote address to the F2C: Freedom to Connect conference.
Here are some excerpts by Stephen Bloch:
Automated Customization with 3D Printers
A 3D printer is, at heart, a prototyping machine. They will never be able to compete on volume alone.
What they can compete on is high-volume customization. Josef Prusa, the designer of the Prusa Mendel, wrote a Python script to automatically add a custom pair of initials to the many whistles he prints out as gifts.
If you look closely, you can tell that each whistle has a different pair of letters embossed on the top.
The great thing about open source is that people do cool stuff like this and then give it away! You an download the WhistleGen program Josef Prusa wrote from his GitHub repository. Perhaps someone could modify it to take advantage of two-color or multi-color extruders.
Related Links
Michael Wineberg and Public Knowledge Ahead of the Curve
We’ve all read It Will Be Awesome If They Don’t Screw It Up. Right? If you haven’t read it, go ahead and do that now.
Michael Wineberg is the staff attorney at Public Knowledge, an organization that represents the public’s interests in open access to technology and information. He/they recently put on an event intended to bring political representatives, the public, and open source hardware together for an introduction (and maybe group hug if the mood is right). It was called OH/DC and hopefully we’ll see some media come out of it.
Cat Johnson at Shareable has a nice interview with Mr. Wineberg in which he explains Public Knowledge’s strategy of meeting with representatives BEFORE any legislation affecting open hardware is considered.
What Wineberg and Public Knowledge are doing is fantastic. It seems inevitable that open sourcing manufacturing tools (like 3D printing) will start to cause corporations heart burn sooner or later (they are people after all). I for one really hope the community has gotten out ahead of them and demonstrated the benefits of open source before something along the lines of the RIAA emerges and tries to go after people sharing open hardware designs.
Additional Links
Hardware Innovation Workshop
Do we really need more gatherings for people to talk about innovation? Yes. Yes we do.
Make Magazine is hosting a bunch of people to talk about, “shaping the future of manufacturing and the global economy.” Sounds good to me. A bit of hyperbole never hurt anyone.
Personally I think it would be more accurate to put “business” or “profit” somewhere in the name of the convention. As you can tell from the lineup of presenters, this is primarily a for-profit networking event.
- Kai Backman, Co-Founder & CEO of Tinkercad
- Massimo Banzi, Co-Founder of Arduino
- Carl Bass, President & CEO of Autodesk
- Ayah Bdeir, Founder of littleBits
- Greg Borenstein, author of Making Things See: 3D vision with Kinect, Processing, Arduino, and MakerBot
- Liam Casey, Founder & CEO PCH International
- Allan Chochinov, Partner & Editor-in-Chief of Core77
- Jeremy Conrad, Co-Founder of Lemnos Lab
- Ben Einstein, Principal of Bolt Accelerator Program
- Brad Feld, Co-Founder of Foundry Group
- Travis Good, Co-Chair of Hardware Innovation Workshop
- Ted Hall, Founder & CEO of ShopBot
- Mark Hatch, Co-Founder & CEO of TechShop
- Andrew “Bunnie” Huang, Founder of Chumby
- Zach Kaplan, CEO of Inventables
- Tod Kurt, Co-Founder of ThingM
- Catarina Mota, Co-Founder of openMaterials
- Tim O’Reilly, Founder & CEO of O’Reilly Media
- Bre Pettis, Co-Founder of MakerBot Industries
- Bryce Roberts, Co-Founder of OATV
- Jay Rogers, Founder & CEO of Local Motors
- Nathan Seidle, Owner & CEO of SparkFun Electronics
What I wanna know is who let that guy in? Apparently, “Greg Borenstein is an artist and researcher in New York.” He seems a bit out of place in a list of CEOs, partners and founders. Oh, wait, “He recently finished writing a book for O’Reilly about the Microsoft Kinect, titled: Making Things See: 3D vision with Kinect, Processing, Arduino, and MakerBot.” O’Reilly Media publishes Make Magazine, and is hosting the event. I wonder if he’s going to wear a shirt without a collar just to mess with everyone else.
