696875_ted-logo (by dmuren)

Humblefactory founder Dominic Muren has been named a 2010 TED Global fellow for his work on open manufacturing!

I can't wait to get this group of fellows and TEDsters from around the world thinking about the possibilities of a truly open, shareable, flexible manufacturing infrastructure! Even cooler, Neil Gershenfeld, author of FAB and head honcho of Digital Fabrication at MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms will be there speaking. I'm hoping to push pretty hard for real, modular, open electronics development, among other things. If you've got suggestions, I'd love to hear them in the comments.


A couple weeks back, I gave a talk at the Dorkbot Seattle chapter meeting about the ecosystem of digital manufacturing. You can check out the video of the event below. You can also check out the slides, and links for the presentation in this previous post. Click through for part two after the break.

 
Last week, I gave a talk to Seattle's local Dorkbot contingent. The meeting was awesome: around 90 dorks, all ages and backgrounds, all talking fab. What more could you want? The talk was about the state of the Digital Fabrication Ecosystem today, and I think that this topic is hugely important to the development of Humblefactories in the future, particularly because digital fabrication puts more power in more people's hands. Mark Ganter gave a great talk about his Open3dP powder printing formulas. Willow Brugh also gave a great introduction to Jigsaw Renaissance in Seattle -- you can read more about why she's a maker here. And, Matt Westervelt from Metrix Createspace in Seaettle gave a demo of a Makerbot makerbotting. You can download the slides of the talk in PDF form here (or browse them above), but there are plenty of links that I couldn't include. Read on for a more thorough linkfest and discussion.

http://www.afrigadget.com/2009/08/16/agriculture-and-metal-fabrication-meet-in-n-ghana/
Seems like every week there is some new type of punk steering aesthetics or technology. From punk rock, to post-punk, Cyberpunk, Steampunk, even Biopunk, these gritty ways of life have tried to gain your interest and allegiance. Humblefacture, thought also an ethos which could result in a distinctive styling of product, will hopefully escape the fadish fadings of these movements. But in order to imagine what Humblefacture might become, it might help to compare it to the latest crowd of punks onto the scene -- the Bushpunks.

opensourcehardware2009 (by dmuren)
Make magazine is the Jefferson or Lenin of the open hardware movement, and this week, they didn't disappoint with an end-of-year roundup of open source hardware projects. Make has always emphasized the fun side of making, so as you can imagine, the list is more about blinkeys and videogames than real marketplace game-changers, but there are some gems in the mix. Perhaps the most exciting of the bunch is the Elphel open ethernet camera for sheer brawny real-world competitive chops. Be sure to check out the medical devices and digital fabricators. I know there are more great project out there than Make had a chance to post, so be sure to share your tips in the comments here or on the original make post.