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WSJ’s Andy Jordan visited Maker Faire to discover what so many of “us” already know - there’s a revolution going on! Ponoko is given a big mention among the other fascinating exhibits (iron particles within oil and manipulated by magnets reminded me so much of Terminator), check out the video below!
An annual exhibition of the work of students at ASU’s VizProto course, a 3D visualization and prototyping course. A part of the Herberger College School of Art since 1998, the VizProto course allows students to experience and experiment with rapid prototyping technologies. Luckily for us, many of the projects are documented at the VizProto course website, although the most recent documented course is spring 2004. Like any course, the final projects are not necessarily marketable products or processes, but are instead explorations of this developing medium; although some projects, like the customized action figure project, almost sell themselves. (more…)
Its a shame it hasn’t been mentioned before. Design Democracy ‘08 is an event and website sponsored by Context Furniture that allows anyone to submit ideas for furniture, from bar napkins sketches to photos of finished furniture. These ideas are voted on by the community and the top-rated design will be built for the International Contemporary Furniture Fair taking place on May 17-20 in New York City. Unfortunately, the deadline for entering submissions that will be built for the ICFF has passed. However, the contest isn’t the only reason to participate, (more…)
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.
I’m a little late on this after the holidays but Core77 have announced a really exciting Design Competition in collaboration with the Greener Gadgets Conference. Submissions started on December 26th and close on January 27th so you still have 20 days to go. If you’ve been dreaming up green gadgets in your spare time this might be a great chance to put it onto paper (or onto your design software of choice) and get feedback from the community.
The Greener Gadgets Conference is a “one day conference featuring key representatives from some of the largest consumer electronics companies in the world, innovators from academic thinktanks, members of startups focused on renewable energy, and some of the leading minds in the word of sustainable design and business”. Some of the sponsors include Nokia and HP. And there is a very cool list of Presenters including: Mary Lou Jepsen - Chief Technology Officer, One Laptop Per Child Project, Markus Terho - Director of Environmental Affairs, Nokia, Renee St. Denis - Director of Product Take Back and Recycling, HP and utterly fascinating Inventor, Engineer & Technoartist Natalie Jeremijenko. Jeremijenko looks worth the price of admission alone, her previous work has focused on socio-technical change and she was also named one of the 40 most influential designers by I.D. Magazine and one of the inaugural Top 100 Young Innovators by the MIT Technology Review.
The competition requires you create 3 images. One showing the object itself, another showing it within context, and another showing the detail or exploded view of the gadget. You’ll also need to provide a 500 word description of your project. First prize is US $2500 and there are two runner-up prizes of US $1000 each. The full design brief can be found on the competition site here. But the short of it is that the product should try to cut down on environmental impact throughout it’s lifecycle and use.
I’m really interested in seeing the results, and it’s good to see companies like Nokia and HP behind this as well. You have to wonder what the impact is of gadgets on the environment especially since the numbers in use over the last ten years have risen so exponentially with the combined popularity and affordability of cell phones, mp3 players, digital cameras and hand-held games. I’d be curious to know what kind of power usage increase they’ve caused. The gadgets I own seem to go a long time between charges but the number of items with rechargeable batteries seem to be growing as well. I hope that some of the newer gadgets come with alternative power capability through solar or even kinetic energy. I have to say I wish the disc in my Nike+ iPod sport kit had the kinetic energy battery option. It would seem like a good idea rather than having to buy a new one and consequently a new receiver as well every time the battery runs down (or is that the plan?)
For our local community - from TheNewDowse in Wellington:
Organised by TheNewDowse, the Deane Award for Decorative Arts & Design, is a project-based award established to support the creation and display of innovative new work within an exhibition context. The inaugural recipient of the Deane Award was jeweller Alan Preston. This year we would like to invite practitioners in the fields of furniture and/or product design to submit a proposal. Applications can be submitted by individuals, collectives or companies.
The recipient will receive $10,000 towards the realisation of their project.
Applications are due by 30 January 2008.
WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR?
TheNewDowse is about stimulating creativity.
This relates to our roles in supporting fresh creative practice as well as providing our audiences with accessible and inspiring experiences that stimulate their creativity. Decorative arts and design is a key focus of our collections and exhibition programme.
Proposals will be evaluated on the basis of the following criteria:-
The degree to which the receipt of the Deane Award will contribute to the significant development, (technically and/or conceptually) of the maker’s practice
The suitability of work(s) for TheNewDowse collection
The ability of the resulting exhibition to engage audiences
Proven ability to execute the proposed work, within the agreed time frame (to be negotiated).
For full details, terms and conditions, check here.
(From left to right: Alexandra Lutyen, Jason O’Hara and David ten Have)
TUANZ (Telecommunications Users Association of New Zealand) awarded us the Craft Award for the 2007 Business Internet Awards held last night in Wellington. The Craft Award is one of the supreme awards of the evening and I think it recognises excellent/innovative use of the Internet. A big congrats to the Ponoko team for your hard work well done - Like our shipment box says, “Yippee!”
Here’s some local news for Kiwis. We’re looking forward to Nov. 7th for the TUANZ Business Internet Conference and Awards in Wellington. We were selected as a finalist in the User Generated Content category. TUANZ is a non-profit organization aiming to raise New Zealand toward the top ten rank in the OECD for Communications Technology. In doing so, among other things, they promote and celebrate home-grown innovative web-based businesses. We’ll keep you posted!
CNet News: Fabricators descend on Maker Faire Austin
(via AMBerman CTO: Fabber Summit at Maker Faire Austin)
The movement for democratizing fabrication is making waves. At the Maker Faire in Austin on the weekend, these few makers sat down together to discuss how to spread the word to the masses about digital tools and machines. While there are a few who have heard about these tools and are aware of the capabilities and the technology that we have now, there are even fewer who have actually used them or have access to them, or even want to use them. We hope we’re doing our part on this blog.
While nothing concrete came out of the summit, there is at least a direction towards educating the younger crowd with working on things that they know and are cool, i.e. laser engraving their ipods and cellphones. I think this whole DIY/maker movement is going to only get bigger and stronger. There are just more and more resources and web apps that are aimed at empowering users to create and make their own things.
Another group aside from the makers are scientific groups such as those behind CRN, Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, who for the past five years have been introducing the concept of molecular manufacturing and the entailing responsibilities. While what they’re focused on is nanotechnologies, they see the first step towards getting mainstream is in fabbers - such as 3D printers. While their original challenge was to convince people that this technology was indeed true and available, they now focus on when this will all happen. To find out more about what they’re about, here’s their recent post on Making Fabbers Real.
There have been a few people asking for video of our presentation and the subsequent panel discussion at the Techcrunch 40 conference. While video of the presentation hasn’t been released yet, the panel discussion that followed is now available. You can watch it below courtesy of Techcrunch and Blip.tv. You get to hear the opinions of some very successful businesspeople on the relative merits of all the companies who presented in the Crowd Sourcing section of the conference.