MAKE | Maker kits – Building a kit business, open source hardware and more..

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By Phillip Torrone
Posted 2008/05/11 @ 9:41 pm
Category Electronics, Open Source Hardware

@ Maker Faire MAKE’s Phil Torrone and Limor Fried of Adafruit Industries talked about emerging opportunities for makers to create and sell their work – here are our slides and notes – ZIP (27mb). EDN also has a write up. Each year we’ve seen more and more makers do what they love (making) as a full time job, we put together some of the observations, trends and more on how you could go about doing this too. After our talk we met about a dozen kit makers, we hope to have their kits in the MAKE store soon!

BY Phillip Torrone

Editor at large - Make magazine. Creative director - Adafruit Industries, contributing editor - Popular Science. Previously: Founded - Hack-a-Day, how-to editor - Engadget, Director of product development - Fallon Worldwide, Technology Director - Braincraft.

In the Maker Shed

4 Responses to Maker kits – Building a kit business, open source hardware and more..

Keith Neufeld on May 12th, 2008 at 12:15 pm said:

Do you have a video of the talk posted? I’m thinking about making a couple of kits and I’d love to watch the talk!

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Anonymous on May 13th, 2008 at 5:35 am said:

Step 7: “This is a demo, so lie.”

What a great way to gain the trust of the customers & get your shoestring business off to a roaring start!!!

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Phillip Torrone on May 13th, 2008 at 5:44 am said:

please don’t take each word literally from a slide or notes, it’s a presentation, the context is important.

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Limor on July 31st, 2008 at 5:22 pm said:

when i say “this is a demo, so lie” i dont mean ‘lie outright about what it is and what it does’. What I do mean is that the demo/photography should be adapted for the best example. Use of fast forwarding, cuts, montage, etc.

For example, http://www.adafruit.com/index.php?products_id=19 is the product page for SpokePOV. the animated gif is created by two still photos. *Obviously* its not a real video because the pedals arent spinning. However, taking a photo while the bike is moving is hard, even tho it looks the same. The other kits I sell are photographed assembled, with accessories, doing something. Now *obviously* they dont come assembled, but the ‘final photo’ is the best indicator of the kit.

Thus the ‘demo’ is a ‘lie’.

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