I was in Detroit for Maker Faire and my buddy Jeff Sturges gave me a tour of Detroit. There is creativity, resourcefulness and great things happening. There's also poverty, 40% unemployment and 20% of the folks there graduate high school. It's a place ripe for change and the people who are there building up infrastructure for awesome are doing some really interesting things like starting farms on abandoned city blocks.
Last week the MakerBot Giveaway ended and the MakerBot Transformer came out on top. I made one on my MakerBot over the last 3 days. The first day I only printed the body which took around 4 hours and then the rest of the parts I made while working on other stuff and each one took between 15-30 minutes to print out.
This is one of those things that just blows my mind. It's a transformer and it transforms from a MakerBot into a robot... with my head on it!
There are a ton of oother things I want to print out before Maker Faire next week, but this one was at the top of my list! My next project for the evening is to bring a MakerBot to life that got started almost a year ago and then it had to have most of it's parts hijacked to ship out to customers. We've got everything in stock now so I can put it together as another bot to travel with and show MakerBotting in action.
In the rest of my life there are some great things going on. I moved in with my girlfriend Kio and we've got a great apartment with some space to entertain. As part of the deal I now live with a cat who is basically a puppey in cat's clothing. He's pretty hilarious and chases his tail most of the day.
Mar 21, 2010 7 Comments
The Sandpit from Sam O'Hare on Vimeo.
I'm from Seattle which has in it's favor the color green and family and good friends. I lived in or near Seattle for nearly 21 years. It's a great place.
But now I love New York. It's been so good to me. I moved here to get in the action and it's just a wonderful place full of people who do things. I've made great friends, started a business with a few of them and I get to be here where I believe the most exciting adventures are to be had.
Before i moved here, I was scared of it in the same way I am scared of steam engines. There is potential and it takes time to get to know how it all works. I spent 3 weeks going the wrong way on subways and planning a lot to just go out and see a movie and figure out how to navigate to a bar called burp castle to connect up with the movers and shakers.
This little movie makes me happy because it captures the action of New York. People are here to get stuff done and it's expensive and it can be hard and the only way you'll make it is if you give all of yourself and if you do, NYC gives back.
Come visit and just walk around. Go see art. Ask directions on the street from strangers. Walk over bridges. Eat food from streetcarts. Get to high places. Act like you're on your way to the most important meeting of your life and you'll feel the energy of the streets. If you like it, find a way to stay or find a way to return here when you can. NYC will remind you that you are a powerful creature walking this earth and that humans like you can make amazing things happen.
Steve and I met in 2005 at Gnomedex and we were the guys with video cameras when the conversation was all about audio podcasting.
Since then, Steve has continued being Steve! He has his camera with him all the time and he shares his life and his perspective with the internet, which is basically my version of a saint. He interviewed me for his book and it shows up on Amazon now. Cool! 
His reach now goes into the realm of old skool books. He's coming out with a book called Get Seen: Online Video Secrets to Building Your Business
When Mark Frauenfelder was asked to think of an imaginary future Apple product, he came up with a 3D printer in full Apple style, glossy and sleek.
I've always imagined that someday soon, everyone will have a 3D printer at home. Mark's vision of the Apple-y future really shook me up and made me think about how designs circulate. In the future Mark posits, designs could be like songs, or iPhone apps in iTunes.
"To create a product, you visit the iTunes Store to choose from among tens of thousands of product designs--prices range from free to $9.99--purchasing one just as you would a song, video, or app. The 3D data is sent to the iMake, which builds the parts, layer by layer, out of high-quality plastic. The iMake will also make the circuit boards. Then, all you do is snap the pieces together! After purchasing a 3D model from the iTunes Store, it takes about 15 minutes to print a 3D part."
Imagining a digital design branch of iTunes unsettled me, because one of the main focuses of the current DIY 3D printing movement is to be open source--and focus on sharing ideas and designs freely. The collective goal is to build out a large library of digital objects that anyone can download, modify, customize and share.
Should designs be free? It's really a provocative question. Would designers be more motivated to create designs if they could make money off of them?
I'm really curious to hear what you think about this in the comments! And, thanks to Mark for the thought-provoking vision of the future!
