Bre Pettis Blog

We just hit a few inflection points at MakerBot. It's an exciting time for the company and the industry. The biggest shift was last September when we launched the MakerBot Replicator 2 Desktop 3D Printer and the new MakerWare. By being made with a chassis of powder coated steel and with a number of refreshing updates, it's a machine that professionals can feel proud to have on their desk. The wooden machines we made were awesome and each of the 3 previous generations were leaders in the category at that time, but the Replicator 2 is black. The users that have shown up to get this new MakerBot are a mix of professionals getting a jump on the innovation process.   MakerWare was a shift away from ReplicatorG. It's a lot easier to use and streamlines the whole process of moving a digital design from your computer to your MakerBot. Our software team worked hard to make it simpler and more powerful. In December we moved offices. At the old botcave, I had rented anything on the block that we could put desks into and it had become a rabbit warren. With our new office, I focused on keeping things simple with simple desks and we spent our buildout money on nice ergonomic chairs. People work hard at MakerBot and it's a lot easier to work hard when you've got good posture in a nice chair. Thingiverse Customizer is an application that runs on Thingiverse that allows people to make things that can be customized. This new class of customizable things is huge. It means that a lot of people who haven't thought of themselves as designers get to jump into the world of digital design. Want to try it? Check out the lithopanes project, as seen above and make an awesome 3D model! At MakerBot, we're making great partnerships with companies that innovate. We worked with Nokia to create backs that go right on the Lumia series phones. We've teamed up with Autodesk to do some wonderful things too. MakerBot is hiring! We've got a lot of work to do and we're looking for people to help us. Go to the MakerBot jobs page to check it out. This is all just some of the stuff that we're working on. The game is on and we're focused on making wonderful things happen in the world. As a CEO, I've grown a lot. I used to be the guy who wanted to do everything myself and now we're 200 people and I've got a team that reports to me and each one is a ninja in their field. I love coming to work. I enjoy the people I get to work with. Life is busy, full of hard work, and good!

Repost of my post on hackerspaces.org. In December of 2008, a group of hackers was sitting on the floor with faces aglow with laptop light cruising the internet and skyping friends in and listening to death metal. It was 12 days before 25c3. Astera and I had a conversation that went something like this: B: There should be a book. A: Yes, there should. B: We have 12 days. A: We can do it. The twelve days we had was until CCC started. We figured we would have it done by then. We contacted all the hackers we knew around the world and put the word out. We expected to get about a half a page of writing from each space. We reckoned that it would be a 25 page pamphlet. We also reckoned that it be easy for folks to write up a little summary within a few days of what it was like to get their hackerspace started and get back to us. Within a week we had been scorched by a flame war, gotten a lot of both written and photographic material submitted and it seemed likely that the book would happen. Then the submissions kept coming… and coming. The hackerspaces around the world told each other about the project and many groups sent some writing in describing the beginning of their hackerspace. Word had even gotten round to groups that didn't have a space yet and they were sending us descriptions of their pre-beginnings too! The 12 days came and went and still the submissions kept coming. After a few months submissions had trailed off and Astera came to NYC and began designing the book. She's a pro and it shows. This book looks beautiful because she took the material and somehow made it fit together aesthetically, not a trivial task. Jens Ohlig jumped into the process last year to help push the editing process forward. Remember, in our minds it was going to be a project that would take less than two weeks and it turned into something epic. It's been a long wait and I hope you'll think that it's worth it. Download HackerSpaces: The Beginning! This book documents where the hackerspace movement was in December of 2008. In that way it's a bit of a time capsule. It's not an exhaustive book, but we hope there are enough stories in here to show that all your excuses for not starting up a hackerspace are invalid. Each group faced down their own dragons to bring their hackerspace into existence including floods, rats, and drama. If they can do it, so can you. We did this because we wanted it to exist and so it is a reward in itself. If you feel moved and want to support hackerspaces, we suggest contributing to the Wau Holland fund which helps make awesome things happen for hackerspaces. We would also like to thank everyone who submitted photographs and writing, this is your book. After these years, the book is finally free in the world as a pdf. Download it, read it, and share it. We're open to the idea of making it into a real physical book and if you're interested in making that happen, let us know. Build, Unite, Multiply!

The folks over at Motherboard remade this video and it's basically just me talking. It was recorded two years ago and it's nice to see that I'm still the same person, pretty much saying the same things now as I did then! Yay for personal continuity!

I'm at Fabricate 2001, a conference about fabrication, design, and architecture. It's been great to meet the architecture community and chat. I don't have any architecture background, so it's a cultural anthropology lesson for me as well. Here are my takeaway points. I may add more later. Architects are like philosophers and are capable of thinking about things from a very extrapolated and conceptual level. The two main buzzwords in the architectural fabrication community here are parametric and optimisation. There is a new generation of architects that are either in school or recently graduated that are obsessed with low cost or free tools and materials and automation. Arduinos got mentioned many times. Open source tools, software, and infrastructure is a small but growing voice in architecture. The internet/sharing culture is just beginning to really arrive to the field and is beginning to unlock the black boxes of old boy networks and proprietary software/hardware. It seems like there were lots of people who were experimenting with students to explore automated manufacturing techniques on a scale that could bring design and manufacturing to the masses. This crowd loves orange robotic arms. Seriously, 4 or 5 presentations had pictures of them in their talks. Also, there was an awesome robotic arm in the lobby. While this technology is 30 years old, they are being used in interesting ways to collaborate with human friends to make interesting things. Where can I get a big orange robotic arm? Am I going to have to make my own? (probably) 3D printing is gaining traction and there are a lot of people who want to get involved at the gcode level to explore the material at the molecule level. I gave out lots of MakerBotted presents! I made a lot of new friends and enjoyed learning about the state of technology and fabrication in the architectural field, thanks to the organizers and presenters for a wonderful conference!  

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.