Ponoko is on the cutting edge of the post-industrial revolution that is changing the way products are created, traded and distributed. Already featured in the New York Times, Wired Magazine, The Economist and many other media outlets we are currently looking for Bloggers who can commit to regularly writing articles for the Ponoko Blog. We would love to talk with people who have previous blogging experience (although not a must) and who have a genuine interest in writing about all, or a combination of, the following topics.

* The rise of the creative class.
* Mass customization, mass personalization, mass individualization, design-to-order.
* Connecting creators direct with consumers.
* Digital manufacturing hardware (3d printers, laser cutters, cnc routers).
* Environmental issues of the current manufacturing standard.
* Selling / exporting IP rather than physical product.
* Copyright / DRM.
* Desktop manufacturing / nano-manufacturing.
* Virtual / online / personal factories.
* Product design and making.
* Software tools for designing and making.

Writing for the Ponoko blog will be an incredible opportunity to promote your knowledge and opinion on a variety of emerging topics that will have enormous global influence in the near future. Don’t miss out on this chance. If you feel you have the skills to be great blogger then please email steven@ponoko.com with details of your background. This is a virtual role so you can be based anywhere in the world.

Dan Emery is our resident laser cutting genius at Ponoko. He’s also responsible for a great deal of the design education for newbies to the Ponoko experience and also interaction with Designers using Ponoko. Dan is also, of course, a Designer himself of exceptional talent. And if you’re in the Hamilton area (Hamilton, New Zealand) over the next month you’ll be able to stop by and see one of the creations he’s made for Ponoko in the past, but with a real twist. For this exhibit Dan continued to use a laser cutter, but used steel as the material of choice. It was his first experience making a piece of steel furniture with the results being particularly dynamic. Dan explains:

I was invited to submit a design for the ESCAPE exhibition at Waitakaruru Arboretum and Sculpture park in Hamilton. The response was a nest of steel tables that sit clustered on a grassy bank at the edge of a large pond at the entrance to the park. From a distance the tables long spindly legs feel unsteady as if a strong wind might unsettle them, but on approach the sturdiness of the raw steel changes this. These tables require total precision in their fabrication but disorder and chance are introduced to the work as they are left to weather and rust throughout the course of the show. The tables were laser cut by Fraser Engineering in Lower Hutt. Their experience in laser cutting steel made the transition from plywood to steel easy with the tolerances right the first time.

The exhibition runs from 15th March – 25th May 2008 and contact details and directions to the park are on their website.

Despite it’s tumultuous political situation, if the blogs Designist Dream and Modern Tribe are anything to go by Israel isn’t short of creativity. I recently found a post on jewelry created from cardboard by Israeli Jewelry Designer Dana Hakim Berkovich. As the picture below shows it’s very unique.

In the same post is another unique creation from Israeli jewelry designer, Yael Friedman, a pewter-metal blend gold Hanukiyah or Chanukah Menorah created with a laser cutter. I think Yael might have some success in inspiring Jewish Ponoko users to have a go at their own DIY Menorah with this.

On another note seeing how Friedman created this using flat materials reminded me of Ponoko Users who’ve created candelabra. It was timely to see as last night my family took part in Earth Hour. Having no lights at all in our home and trying to use nothing but candles really showed us that we could have done with having a candelabra or two around. We are still trying to get all the wax out of the carpet this morning.

Last May, a jaw-dropping 45,000 people gathered at the San Mateo Fairgrounds in California for an event some called, “The Woodstock for inventors” and another 20,000 people had the same experience at Maker Faire Austin in October 2007. A one-of-a-kind event for tech geeks, crafty hipsters, DIY lovers, and basically, anyone who builds anything—from 7 year-olds to 70 year olds—Maker Faire brought together people from over 15 different countries and 40 different states. This spring, the award-winning Maker Faire returns to the Bay Area in 2008—May 3 and 4 at the San Mateo County Expo Center and Fairgrounds.

And in 2008 Ponoko will be there for the very first time! We are VERY excited to announce that we will be exhibiting at Maker Faire and that we are also looking for Ponoko Makers. We’d like to talk with 5 - 10 Makers based in the SF Bay Area or going to the Bay Area Maker Faire who use (or are able to use) Ponoko as a part of creating their exhibit. We are offering to help you in various ways to get that done. Please get in touch via email to dan@ponoko.com with details on your project for Maker Faire and how using Ponoko makes your life easier in making (and selling) your creations.

Product of the Week this week is very different to last week. It’s a model Rotary Engine from Pete. While this isn’t for sale, you can email Pete through his “Contact the Designer” button on his product page if you are interested in this fascinating creation. Pete describes his experience on creating the model:

I need to manually refinish the housings a little to provide proper clearance, and plan to recut the gears to make them mesh better, but i’m absolutely blown away by what i’ve been able to acheive in a very short space of time with this project”.

Pete’s buddy Tim Norton wrote about the model Pete created on the PlanHQ Blog, and how it helped him see exactly how a rotary engine works. Sounds like this would make a great gift for a kid who’s shown an interest in engines (or even an adult for that matter).

So well done Pete, and congratulations on being the Ponoko Product of the Week!

Photos via Tim Norton and the PlanHQ blog.

Today we’re very excited to announce that the following 25 entries have made it through to the Invitation Round of the Ponoko Jewelry Design Challenge! There were a spectacular number of creative and interesting designs, and it was VERY hard for all involved to choose just 25. Congratulations to those who have made it through and thanks to everyone who participated, we’ve really enjoyed seeing everyone’s creations.

If you’ve made the 25 you’ll be receiving your made products from us very soon and you can get full details on the Invitation Round from the Jewelry Design Challenge details post.

We’re starting a new weekly series that we’ve decided to call (quite imaginatively really) “Product of the Week”. There are lots of cool, bizarre, and fascinating products being uploaded into the Ponoko Showroom and while we do regularly feature them on the blog doing it on a weekly basis we are hoping will create a few more regular fans for the designers involved. We hope you enjoy it, and you’re welcome to suggest future winners in the comments.

The Inaugural Product of the Week is (drum roll please)……

Marmalade Monkey and their Wooden Lace wearable art garment.

In addition to having one of the coolest name’s on Ponoko Marmalade has one of the most bizarre products, a wooden lace dress (what is “wooden lace”?). Here’s her description of the product and she has even more pictures in her showroom. I wonder if she can sit down in that?

“Wooden lace was one of my entries into the world of wearable art competition in 2007. It was a finalist in the Avant-Garde section. Inspired by the intricate patterns of William Morris’ tapestries and wallpaper I used the laser-cutter to construct the entire garment. Each panel features an etch of the tapestry and is hand sewn together to make the garment flexible”.

When we first started Ponoko we knew there was already a magazine that inspired us. And that magazine helped us believe that there were real people out there who would embrace digital manufacturing and the idea behind Ponoko. We also knew there was a writer who inspired us and whom we thought might really “get” our idea as well. But since we’re a long way away from the home of that magazine, and of that particular writer we didn’t honestly think we would come across their radar for a while. The reality has been very different. In both cases we’ve been really blessed by their willingness to share and to engage with us as we’ve started our journey.

So again when the latest issue of Make magazine arrived in the mailbox yesterday morning, it was an amazing feeling to open it up and see that Bruce Sterling had written a two-page article about Ponoko. Having heroes is inspiring, having those heroes acknowledge you even a little bit is incredibly motivating. We have a long way to go in our journey, but from everyone at Ponoko we’d like to really thank Bruce Sterling and Make magazine for both inspiring us and making us feel incredibly welcome as we’ve taken our first steps.

By the way unless you are already a Make subscriber you won’t be able to read the article online. So you’ll have to go and buy a copy of Make (totally worth it) or subscribe to the digital edition online (trust me, you won’t regret it).

The SHARE festival, based in Torino, is an international gathering for digital art and culture. SHARE exhibits electronic artworks, and awards a prize each year for advancing the state of digital art. This year Bruce Sterling is Curator and Ponoko is very excited to be presenting an exhibit there of creations by our amazing users. Photos below are from Bruce of the whole show but you can see some of the Ponoko facilitated creations early in the Slide Show.

The SHARE festival looks incredibly interesting. The full description of the speakers and conference schedule includes discussions on Robots, Digifab, Networked Objects, Digital Art and Dramatic Manufacturing. Conferences are being broadcasted live over Sharecast via the festival homepage.

The Jewelry Design Challenge officially closed earlier this week and we’ve been madly going through the entries since then. We were ecstatic at the response and we want to thank everyone who entered. The entries are just awesome! You can check out all the wildly creative pieces of jewelry in the Ponoko Showroom. It’s amazing to see what people came up with, some are funny, others serious, some are inspired by nature and others inspired by technology, there is a mix of those who come from a craft background and others who must be very experienced as product designers. It’s obvious that the versatility of laser cutting allows people to express themselves in some exciting (and bizarre) ways.

Now for some housekeeping on the Design Challenge. We’re judging the top 25 entries right now. We will let you know via the blog and by email of the results once they are collated, we expect that to be very soon.

If your design is selected among the top 25 entries, we will make it and ship it to you free of charge. We will also invite you to enter your design in the final round. Entries for this round close on 28 March 2008.

The final round will be judged on photos and text description of your completed product.

Judging criteria

Entries/finalists will be judged on the following criteria, in no particular order:

1. Innovation in design concept
2. Clarity and resolution of design
3. Originality
4. Presentation and photography
5. Interesting use of material(s)
6. Attention to detail
7. Production feasibility

Good luck everyone!