p 13(?) - We are all Makers. We are born Makers (just watch a child's fascination with drawings, blocks, Lego, or crafts), and many of us retain that love in our hobbies and passions. It's not just about workshops, garages, and man caves... These projects represent the ideas, dreams, and passions of millions of people. Most never leave the home, and that's probably no bad thing. But one of the most profound shifts of the Web Age is that there is a new default of sharing online. If you do something, video it. If you video something, post it. If you post something, promote it to your friends. Projects shared online become inspiration for others and opportunities for collaboration. Individual Makers, globally connected this way, become a movement. Millions of DIYers, once working alone, suddenly start working together.
p 21 - When the Web taught us was the power of ' network effects': when you connect people and ideas, they grow. It's a virtual circle - more people combined create more value, which in turn attracts even more people, and so on. That's what has driven the ascent of Facebook, Twitter, and practically every other successful company online today. What Makers are doing is taking the DIY movement online - ' making in public' - which introduces network effects on a massive scale.
Maker movement characteristics:
(1) People using digital desktop tools to create designs for new products and prototype them (" digital DIY").
(2) A cultural norm to share those designs and collaborate with others in online communities.
(3) The use of common design file standards that allow anyone, if they desire, to send their designs to commercial manufacturing services to be produced in any number, just as easily as they can fabricate them on their desktop. This radically foreshortens the path from idea to entrepreneurship, just as the Web sis in software, information, and content.
p27 -
(1) How would these products be improved if they were connected to the Internet?
(2) How would they be improved if the designs were open, so anyone could modify or improve them?
(3) How much cheaper would they be if their manufacturers didnt charge for their intellectual property?
p74 -
We live in a "remix" culture ; everything is inspired by something that came before, and creativity is shown as much in the reinterpretation of existing works as in original ones...Just as Apple encouraged music fans to "Rip. Mix. Burn," Autodesk now preaches the gospel of "Rip. Mod. Fab" (#-D scan objects, modify them in a CAD program, and print them on a #-D printer)...You don't need to invent something from scratch or have an original idea. Instead, you can participate in a collaborative improvement of existing ideas or designs. The barrier to entry of participation is lower because it's so easy to modify digital files rather than create them entirely yourself.
p77 -
EXAMPLES of mass customization
the examples where consumers are designing their own products online are rarely mass. Threadless (T-shirts), Lu;u (self-published books), CafePress (Coffee mugs and other trinkets), are others like them are thriving businesses, but they are PLATFORMS for creativity more than great examples of mass customization.
p78 -
Blogger JASON KOTTKE wrestled wit what to call this new class of entrepreneurship, these cottage industries with global read targeting niche markets of distributed demand. "Boutique" is too pretentious, and "indie" not quite right. He observed that others had suggested "craftsman, artisan, bespoke, cloudless, studio, atelier, long tail, agile, bonsai company, mom and pop, small scale, specialty, anatomic, big heart, GTD business, dojo, haus, temple, coterie, and disco business" But none seems to capture the movement.
So he proposed "small batch", a term most often applied to bourbon. In this spirits world, this implies handcrafted care. But it can broadly refer to business focused more on the quality of their products than on the size of the market. They'd rather do something they were passionate about than go mass.
p108-
Today, inventors increasingly share their innovations publicly without any patent protection at all. This is what open source, Creative Commons, and all the other alternatives to traditional intellectual property protection do. Why do they do so? Because the creators believe they get back more in return than they give away: free help in developing their inventions. People tend to join promising open projects, and when those projects are shared, the contributions are automatically shared, too. Inventors also get feedback as well as help in promotion, marketing, and fixing bugs.
p112 -
In a sense, such rich, engaging content is marketing - marketing for the community itself, but also for the products that the community has created. Whether they think of it this way or not, the most successful Makers are also the best marketers. They're constantly blogging about their progress, and tweeting, too. They rake pictures and videos of every milestone, and post those. Their excitement in making is infectious, and builds excitement and anticipation for the products they ultimately release.
Seen this way, all making in public is marketing. Community management is marketing. Tutorial posts are marketing, Facebook updates are marketing. E-mailing other Makers in related fields is marketing. Of course, it's not JUST marketing: the reason that it's so effective is that it's also providing something of value that people appreciate and pay attention to...Above all, your community is your best marketing channel. Nor only is that the course for the word-of0mouth and viral marketing that you'll need, but it's also a safe place to talk about your won products, as enthusiastically as you want. If you've given people a reason to gather that serves their needs and interests, crowing about your cool new gizmo isn't advertising, it's content!
p116 - compete with china - lower price
And frankly, being able to read a lower-price market is a form of innovation, too, and that is no bad thing.
Personally, I'm delighted to see this development, for 4 reasons:
1. I think it's great that people have translated the wiki into Chinese, which makes it accessible to more people
2. It's a sign of success - you get cloned only if you're making something people want.
3. Competition is good.
4. What starts as clones may eventually become real innovation and improvements. Remember that our license requires that any derivative designs must be open-source. Think how great it would be if a Chinese team created a better design than ours. Then we could turn the tables and produce their design, translating the documentation into English and making them available to a market outside China. Everybody wins!
p 128- What makes these new models so powerful is that they tap the "dark energy" (or, as writer Clay Shirky calls it, "cognitive surplus"_ that's been all around us already. It's the ultimate market solution: open-innovation communities connect latent supply (talent not already employed in that field) with latent demand (products not already economical to create the usual way).
p139-
This was like the early days of computing. There were specialized computers for accounting, others for ballistic missile trajectories, and yet others for the census. Then researches invented the general-purpose computer, and today the PC on your desk can do anything Each program you run reconfigures the machine for a different function... Your computer can be a book, a phone, a television, a newspaper, a plaything, or a security guard, depending on what software it is running.
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recommended 3-D drawing programs
Free: Google Sketchup, Autodesk 123D (windows), TinkerCAD (web)
paid: solidworks
recommended 3-D printing solutions
printers: makerBot Replicator, Ultimaker
Servies: shapeways, ponoko
recommended 3-D scanning solutions
software: free autodesk 123D catch
Hardware: MakerBot 3-D scanner (requires a webcam and a pico projector. Use the free Mashlab software to clean up the image
recommended laser-cutting solutions
service bureau: ponoko.com
software: autodesk123DMake
recommended CNC solutions:
hobby-sized (dremel tool): MyDIYCNC
semi-pro: ShopBot Desktop
recommended electronics gear
Starter kit: Adafruit budget Arduino kit
Soldering iron: Weller WES51 soldering station
Multimeter: Sparkfun digital multimeter
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