In looking for little miracles in the Big Apple,
I came across people and companies who are not only creating “little miracles”
but are helping others create or make them.
In a forum of the CES Mid-Year Conference, I
met and listened to Ayah Bdeir. She is the founder and CEO of littleBits,
an award-winning library of Electronics dubbed “LEGOS for the iPad generation.”
She is an engineer, interactive artist and one of the leaders of
the open source hardware movement. She is a strong advocate for the
advancement of open source hardware to make education and innovation more
accessible to people around the world.
Bdeir is a co-founder of the Open
Hardware Summit, a TED Senior Fellow and an alumna of the MIT Media Lab.
FastCompany has named her one of the Most Creative People in
Business for 2013. CNN named her company, littleBits as
one of the top Emerging Startups to watch. She is now a resident of New
York City having come from Lebanon and Canada.
littleBits
As described in its
website, littleBits is an
open source library of electronic modules that snap together with tiny magnets
for prototyping, learning, and fun.
littleBits (spelled lower
case L, upper case B, all one word) consists of tiny circuit-boards with
specific functions engineered to snap together with magnets. No soldering, no wiring,
no programming, just snap together for prototyping, learning and fun. Each bit
has a specific function (light, sound, sensors, buttons, thresholds, pulse,
motors, etc), and modules snap to make larger circuits. Just as LEGO™ allows
you to create complex structures with very little engineering knowledge, littleBits
are small, simple, intuitive, blocks that make creating with sophisticated
electronics a matter of snapping small magnets together.
I was not surprised
that she was chosen to speak about New York City as the place “to make things”.
In her presentation,
she made a case for “Why Make in New York”. She said that there are 6
trends in the New York Maker Ecosystem, namely:
1. SOLVING COMPLEX
PROBLEMS
2. INNOVATING AT THE
INTERSECTIONS
3. FOSTERING
COMMUNITIES
4. CREATING PLATFORMS
FOR INNOVATION
5. CURATING
6. MISSION-DRIVEN
MAKING
She cited sample
companies located in various parts of New York City that fit each of the six
trends.
All were of great
interest to me. In fact, I intend to learn more about them in the
immediate future. But the trend that caught my attention was Trend No. 4
– Creating Platforms for Innovation.
Let me describe three
of the companies that she mentioned showing the trend:
MAKERBOT
Founded in 2009,
Brooklyn-based MakerBot (www.makerbot.com) has grown to
be the global leader in desktop 3D printing. It currently has 25% share
of the overall 3D printer market.
At MakerBot’s
Thingiverse website (www.thingiverse.com), MakerBot
owners can access and contribute to a “universe of things.” More than
35,000 projects, models, and things are available that can be downloaded and
made for free, and more than 10 million items have, in fact, been downloaded
from the site.
QUIRKY
It is a company that
makes invention accessible. It believes that the best ideas in the world
aren’t actually in the world. They are locked inside people’s heads.
Quirky supposedly exists to solve that problem.
This is how it works:
(From their website)
1.
Submit your idea. It does not matter if it’s
a little doodle, a crazy chemical formula, or a “wouldn’t it be cool if…”,
sharing your idea is the first step toward bringing your idea to life.
2.
Help us decide. You are encouraged to vote
on the best ideas.
3.
Influence and learn. You play
a role in every single decision we make. Help us decide something as simple as
what color we should make a product, or as complicated as how to solve an
engineering issue. Clicking buttons on Quirky makes you money.
4.
Making it real. We've invented something.
Unfortunately, it's still just a picture, but before long it'll be a product,
in a box, at a store, that earns you cash. Quirky uses some of the most
state-of-the-art manufacturing techniques to make high quality products.
5. The world prospers. In the
end, the world has access to an invention that wouldn’t have existed without
your help, and you have access to more cash to spend on new shoes or college or
booze or.. you know whatever you want.
SHAPEWAYS
Shapeways
is the source for limitless personal
production
Shapeways.com is the world's
leading 3D Printing marketplace and
community. We harness 3D Printing to help everyone make and share designs with
the world, making product design more accessible, personal, and inspiring.
On Shapeways, individuals can make, buy and sell their own
products. By providing a platform for our community members to share ideas and
gain access to cutting edge technology, we're bringing personalized production
to everyone, whether you're already designing in 3D or are looking to find
something just right. We 3D Print everything on-demand, which means that every
order is customized and personalized.
Headquartered in New York,
Shapeways is a spin-out of the lifestyle incubator of Royal Philips Electronics.
What this means is that if
you are looking for a little miracle or wanting to make one, New York City or
the Big Apple is the place. You may not, however, be able to sleep.
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