Maker Pros are the innovators that are designing tomorrow’s products and businesses. Stay tuned for the latest news on manufacturing, startups, and industry trends.
Though it seems good form to use the umbrella term, for us here at MAKE, so far, “crowdfunding” essentially means “Kickstarter,” a search for which returns exactly 100 published posts in our archives, dating back to the first Kickstarter we ever mentioned (the MakerBeam project) in October 2009. Of major competing crowdfunding sites, only IndieGoGo…
The year 2011 was abuzz with news of makers and making. From The Economist to Forbes, to Dale Dougherty (MAKE founder) being recognized by the White House, political and business leaders recognized that small companies and startups drive the economy, and that increasingly, innovation for these new ventures is coming from a rapidly growing maker business community.
Meet Adam Wolf, co-founder of Wayne and Layne, a company that makes open source nerdery. In MAKE Volume 28, Adam wrote an article on making a Van de Graaff generator from a soda can and co-wrote an article on making a wireless arcade-quality joystick-and-button-panel for playing video games. I asked Adam my standard get-to-know-a-geek questions, and here’s what he had to say.
The latest print edition of The Economist has an article of makers, MAKE, Maker Faire, and the growing maker movement. It’s so great to see a head/subhead like this in any mainstream magazine, let alone one with such gravitas in the business world: More than just digital quilting — Technology and society: The “maker” movement could change how science is taught and boost innovation. It may even herald a new industrial revolution.
You’ll hear a lot of talk about the “death of the public library” these days. It isn’t simply the perpetual budget crises that many face either. It’s the move to digital literature, and the idea that once there are no more print books (or rather if there are no more print books), the library as an institution will cease to exist.
Unless libraries are seen as the future, we might just lose them.
The Arduino Leonardo is one of the latest boards announced by the Arduino team at World Maker Faire. It’s not going to replace the Arduino Uno, but provide an additional alternative. It’s a lower cost Arduino board using only surface mount components and simpler circuit, and it really excites me.
