Yesterday morning I attended Creative Mornings New York, a monthly breakfast lecture series for creative industry professionals, organised by designer/blogger Tina Roth Eisenberg (aka Swiss Miss).
Bre Pettis was speaking about hacking, creativity, sharing, open source and the story of founding Makerbot. Makerbot is a low cost, open source 3D printer which Bre and a number of others created in 2009. The current printers are sold as do it yourself kits, requiring only minor soldering.
Makerbot is an open source product—the source files needed to make the devices are shared openly, allowing anyone to build their own from scratch. The company has also sought to encourage a culture of sharing in the community that has evolved around them. They created Thingiverse as a place for printable 3d objects to be shared, downloaded and improved upon.
One audience question after the lecture was “what motivates people to share?” Bre talked about the contrast of this sharing culture to the proprietary nature of design. Instead of talking about ownership, he preferred to think of himself as having a parental role as the designer—having the privilege of watching your design grow and find a life of its own.
My favourite example of a ’thing’ designed by the community was an object that could connect Lego Duplo bricks to Brio train tracks—something that neither company would have any commercial interest in making, but could find a place in many homes.
Bre spoke about the power of open source as a platform for shared problem solving and empowering individuals through access to resources often only corporations have. Working within UNICEF’s Innovation Team, where open source solutions are central to their work, it was great to be inspired about the possibilities this shared ownership and empowerment brings in international development situations.
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