via Downhill Berlin

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.

Link to survey
NextFab
CIT – Centro de Tecnologia da Informação Renato Archer

Many thanks to Massimo from Openp2pdesign for spreading the word!

The little video acompaning the new wired cover story, helps to explain this “new industrial revolution” we are entering on.

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.

Hello 2010,

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!

*I remixed Rodrigo Soldon´s Picture of MAC Niterói Licensed under Creative Commons

This week, I am working on a new section on the website with the goal of becoming a central hub of Information on the platform. Until now, the common place for news and all non-project information was our Blog which has been supporting everything, from photo galleries of events we participate, to interviews and little articles about open innovation. This common place, which I am calling Radar (just because it sounds cool) shall be collaboratively written, as people show interest in participating.

Letsevo Radar will be hosting our platform news, stories about people in the network who are making something interesting, friends visiting technology events can post their impressions as well publish articles.

Our blog will still live strong, and probably from now on, it will get more philosophical with Radar taking care of the on-topic stuff.

Letsevo Radar

The Eyewriter Project is an on-going effort to empower Phisically paralyzed artists to get back to creation. Powered by DIY tools and opensource software, the group has put together an amazing video showing the technology being used by the legendary LA graffiti writer Tony Quan, aka TEMPTONE, was almost completely physically paralyzed, except for his eyes after being diagnosed with ALS in 2003. This is truly moving.

Eyewriter Project
via Infosthetics

Martin Wenzel created this sculptural wooden bar in Rio de Janeiro. He came up this work for the opening of the Studio Antonia Rodrigues and the launch of the 6th issue of Miroir, the young design and fashion magazine published by Priscila Miranda.

I have long watched his experiments with wood while together at the design school in Germany, and this new work is just one of the signs that his visit to Brazil won’t be left unseen.

Martin Wenzel Website

I love DIY so I made these web badges. Download them and Spread the love!!

I love DIY badges

Several sizes along with a Black version with white Type are available. If one of the sizes doesn’t suit your website perfectly, open the photoshop master file and DIY it! Enjoy.

*I used the free King font which comes very close to the original ITC American Typewriter font.

Download DIY Badges

The Folha Seca, one of our boards developed in collaboration with Brazilian ecological company Fibra, was featured in last weekend’s Esporte Espetacular. We are still working to put the board on the market but  it’s great to see our project getting this kind of attention. The snippet of the TV program can be seen online. It is great to see in the video, Bob Burnquist’s similar efforts to put an ecologic board on the market! way to go Bob, maybe we should do something together!

A step-by-step instruction guide of our DIY Skateboard project is up on the project’s page.

Please full-screen this video. Amazing spots, awesome Longboard Film.