Meet DIYLILCNC, an opensource CNC milling machine project set to teach anyone to build there own milling tool. The initiative came from 2 chicago-based artists and educators of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Thanks to them, today with around 700 dollars and some time invested putting the parts together, anyone can have their own CNC milling machine at home.
While Computer Numerical Controlled machines are nothing new, the availability of open-source building plans is a reflection of the democratization of innovation we have been seeing in the last years.
How open source software comes about is still a myth for lots of people. The notion that a group of people with no monetary reward can get together and create something as complex as an operational system like Linux challenges all our previous notions of the market laws of production. In this video presentation, Karl Fogel, open source developer and writer of the book Producing Open Source Software, guides us through the key principles of open source communities.
Great presentation on open innovation by Brazilian entrepreneurs Gian Carlo Martinelli, Bruno Rondani and Rene Fernandes. Some Portuguese required. Even though presented in 2008, it is still very valid.
Want to see how the earth looks like from way way up in the skies? send a balloon equipped with some smart electronics and let it do some sightseeing for you. That’s what this group of hardware hackers did. Their balloon reached 70000 feet, aprox. 21 Kilometers of altitude and was discovered after landing thanks to it’s google android phone hacked with an app that send an SMS with it’s position whenever it got a cell phone signal. NASA, prepare for some competition in the skies!
Call it disruptive innovation or user innovation, bike tuning is one of the seeds of the DIY movement. Here in Brazil, specially away from the big cities, a whole lot is happening. Check the blog Ceci Brisa Tuning for example, and you will find numerous stories of custom bikes made by passionate users. They exchange tutorials and tips around their creations and are proud to show of their skills. We love it!
The conversation around the concept of Open Design is starting to pick up momentum, last week at the Betahaus in Berlin, a workshop was organized during the Social Media Week Berlin 2010 to discuss the topic among designers.
The documentary: Delivered in Beta was shot during the workshop and exposes some of the ideas talked about there.
As an open design platform, we are happy to see the start of a more broader conversation on the topic hoping that this wave of attention will help us achieve greater success in realizing our design ideas.
The Nextfab and the Centro de Tecnologia da Informação Renato Archer are planning a conference about Personal fabrication in Brazil in 2010, for that, they organized a survey to gather some information about people interested in attending/presenting at the conference. I suggest everyone interested in the subjects of Open Design, Fabing, Open Hardware and Manufacturing to contribute to the survey helping to bring an event like this to life.
Following Local Motors tweet, commenting next month’s Wired magazine cover story, the New Industrial Revolution Issue:
On the cover, Wired magazine editor Chris Anderson puts: “The factory, the investors, the workers – obsolete. In the age of DIY manufacturing, all you need is a garage and a great idea.”
Even dough I also (and sometimes naively) think so, I have heard the opposite many times.
All I know is that this new industrial revolution has in deed already started. New forms of value creation have already been proven to spark new kind of enterprises and products, just look at Linux, Arduino and Threadless. And Letsevo is on this wave, trying to figure out how product design innovation will thrive in this new wiki-reality.
Among the open questions are:
Is the world going to get any better with DIY manufacturing and garage entrepreneurs building up their ideas?
And what are the skills needed to put these ideas in practice?
How are Universities going to adapt to this new industrial scenario?
who is joining in with us?
I would love to get some thoughts on this and can not wait to grab this issue.
Personally, you mark the end of a 6 year incubation period in Germany and in Holland, where I lived amazing encounters that helped shape a great part of my design education and defined the beginning of my professional career. For Letsevo, you mark the beginning of new perspectives back where it’s first ideas were planted.
Because of this special moment, I want to dedicate this first Letsevo post of 2010, to all encounters of our lives which help us see the world differently, and I can tell, I had countless of them in these 6 years I spent in Europe. I am deeply thankful for that.
Let us have the creative energy to make every 2010 encounter “unforgetably” enriching. Happy 2010!
