Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Closing Comments”.
Well, there you have it um lots of different speakers: lots of perspectives, lots of ground to cover in a relatively short time. I want to take just a few minutes before we go out to the reception, have a drink or two and the last chance to connect um to just reflect on on a few things here, and i actually want to uh hatham. Are you still here hate them? Where are you there? You are come on, get a mic on you. I want to invite you up and give a few thoughts. Hatham runs the new york city, hardware, startup meetup, and you know this is something that nick started in the bay area and it has really spread – and i thought just to get a quick perspective – come on up here: uh, hey um, to talk a little bit about What you see happening in new york city, and even what you’re doing personally, because you you had a degree in like surgical, robotics or something like that, and you got into this, so give your folks a little bit of background on you, okay! Well, so thanks thanks a lot for having me here. Um like like dale said i mean i i’m just a guy. I have a mechanical engineering background.
I did a phd in medical robotics, we were um, you know i was building robots, um that went into people’s bodies um, sometimes to places that are sort of unpleasant and other times at you know, uh in different areas like the heart and so um. I actually spent some time in boston, doing research in this field and i you know i had an idea for startup together with some people and we started working on it, and actually it was a little bit tough, because this was 2008 in boston and we didn’t Really have a place to work from so we were sort of sneaking in the lab at night from you know, academic lab, or we weren’t supposed to be there working on something else and we’re taking stuff home and working working from there and um. And actually there wasn’t that much support even for people doing physical product and so um. You know the startup sort of failed and i moved to new york.
But i had that thought in my head that you had this sort of startup bug and i was like right. You know i’m moving to new york. I want to continue. I want to continue what i’m doing. I want to build something new i want to.
You know do another startup, and so you know i arrived to new york and so the realities of new york kick in right. Where you go into your apartment and you realize you know, i actually remember my first, my first room there. If i sort of lied down and stretched, i could actually touch both walls right and so i was like there’s not going to be much development going on in this apartment. So i the first thing i did going over there was to try and find the maker spaces in new york, where i could actually do some of my own sort of hacking or designing engineering, and so there’s a there’s. A few really cool hacker spaces in new york.
You know nyc resistor, there’s alpha one labs and i went to those places and they’re sort of small little hubs. Where um, you know people sort of talk to each other in nice, little communities but they’re, quite isolated and um and sort of small. And but you know that was pretty interesting, and so i i visited those places. I then went to some academic centers, and you know that was that was interesting as well, but you can’t really hang out there even though there’s like lots of smart people and you can talk to people, but you can’t really do stuff there and then.
Finally, i went to these meetups for like product designers and product developers, and i realized that i just wasn’t cool enough for those crowds. I mean these guys, like you know they look good, they wear like colored, trousers and nice shoes and they have canapes of their events and they’re like wow. This is this is a this is a bit odd. So so i i remember, you know i was sort of having these thoughts. You know. Where can i go? What can i do and then nick pinkston who’s, like the the chief instigator of all, you know a lot of hardware related stuff.
He sent me an email. We sort of got connected and he was like hey. Why don’t you just start a hardware startup meetup over there and i was like oh that’s a good idea, yeah i’ll, think about doing it and he’s no? No! No.
Why don’t you do it now and i’m like? Oh okay, so i’ll do that now, and so i started up this meetup just to see what happened just to see who’s out there, and what i was amazed at is that in a few days like a couple hundred people had signed up right or like 150 People in the first few days – and i was like wow – this is pretty amazing um. Then you know we organized the first session and uh. You know we we got like makerbot came to tell their story and little bits came to tell their story and there’s like 70 people – and i was just like my eyes – were watering.
I was so happy you’re, like hugging people. You know this is amazing. This is, you know this is the community. I was trying to find, and you know this – there were engineers there.
There were makers there. There are product designers there um. There are guys at academic labs and sort of they’re all talking to each other. For the first time, right and – and this is just absolutely fantastic – and so we kept on growing um, we got ourselves a sponsor alan hyman’s here for make simply he they sort of help make us.
You know productize, and so we got a sponsor. We got it. We got a space um now we have like 120 people that come to these events, um, and so it’s absolutely fantastic right and and now you know, it’s sort of gone from engineers. Entrepreneurs are coming, and even investors are coming right and you know some who have already invested in sort of hardware startups and others that are just you know, interested sort of scared.
But thinking about it and and so it’s it’s become, this sort of great community – that’s happening over there in new york. So then, of course it is make affairs. I went there for the first time: 40. 000 people.
It was like a madonna concert. You know i was going there like this is. This is amazing.
I had never even heard of this thing before and and and then you know something something very interesting happened was that the new york city economic development corporation and i think allison, who sort of leads their hardware initiative, is in the back. They, they sort of you know, have been trying to diversify a little bit how new york, you know the economic development of new york. So it’s not just wall street anymore. It’S not just media anymore. You know hardware has a role in this in this ecosystem, and so they actually organized a sort of next top maker competition right where they basically had a call for proposals, and they said this is a competition we’re going to give money to six winners space for Them to spend the summer building stuff with mentorship and really sort of go from maker to founder right.
That was the sort of intention and in new york there’s lots of these communities. So a lot of the entrants were sort of designers who were designing furniture, and then there was, you know guys who who are making like really cool cnc, skateboard companies, and there was a and there’s people who you know after hurricane sandy they were sort of okay. How can we convert a car battery into a usb charger so that people can actually charge their mobile phones and so an incredible amount of very cool entries came out of this competition, and so there’s like these six.
You know: six winners have been chosen. They’Re working out of some space and um so anyway, all this is going on, and city college is a university there in new york. They they suddenly received money from a wealthy donor. Who was like yeah. I want to build an incubator, but actually i want it to be an incubator that helps people build physical products right and so um. I’M now the director of that incubator and the city of new york has given us like half a million bucks to build a fab lab right. So i’m i’m again weeping of joy right, i’m going out and i’m buying all these things, i’m buying these 3d printers and not just makerbots, but i’m buying, like you know, 3d system huge printers to help people prototype.
We, you know we’re gon na, buy a pick and place machine. We’Ve got a cnc mill, we’ve got all sorts of fantastic stuff and so we’re helping a lot of startups. Um. Actually, you know, come and and build product prototypes, but also product right. That’S that’s the idea at least start thinking about that and uh.
You know i saw pch of announced their incubator with 30 000 square feet. I was like wow, you know. We have 2 000.
We sort of already outgrown the space and we’re only about four months old. So that’s that’s pretty telling of what’s going on. You know. We have our first two startups that are already trying to raise money. One of them has like 40 of their first round committed. So it’s it’s incredible.
The amount of things that are going on in new york um. You know if i were to sort of tell you guys to try. You know one thing out of this: is you know if in your city you know, go back and go to meet up and see if you have a hardware startup there meet up, because you know nick’s been encouraging people from all over the u.s and outside the U.S to create meetups there and it’s amazing what actually happens when you create a community like this i mean i i usually at each session. I have like three startups pitch um and sort of one person come and tell their war stories, and i used to like really struggle to try and get these startups to come because i just didn’t know where they were and now i have this this long list For the next sort of four to five months of presenters, who want to present right and so they’ve just come out of the woodwork, uh they’re, not afraid to present – and it’s just amazing, to see the innovation that’s coming out of it. So you know go sign up to your local meetup or create it. If it doesn’t exist, then create it and you like me, i mean i’m sure you’re going to be surprised so yeah. That’S that’s great, and thank you. Thank you.
Seeing you today and hearing your story makes me think we should do a version of this before maker faire new york. What do you think, i think that’s a great idea? Okay! Well, let’s work on it. Okay, thank you, um! Well, justin. In closing one of the things that i i recall from from this uh, particularly from bunny’s workshop the other day, he said factories are about capabilities, not products, you go in there and say you know.
What can you do and – and i think i want to extend that metaphor to really you know – the maker community is really about capabilities, it isn’t just the products or the companies you might have seen in the next in in this day and a half but you’ve Seen a lot of ideas, everything from the materials uh presentation today to a new language, framing around motate to uh, talking about crowd, funding and and lots of different ways of going about this. I feel very fortunate to be part of such a a really great community. That cares – and someone said out to me, there’s a one of the two comments that you know this is this is a community with a soul, and this is a workshop that that has a feel to it and the people care.
Another person came out and said you know, i’m really impressed by how many speakers are here for the whole thing and i think that’s part of it, because we’re we’re all learning from each other. It isn’t just what we have to say um or what i have to say it’s how much we can learn and uh. I particularly like you with wendell’s presentation. It makes me personally um uh, happy to think uh of of the arc of of you coming to maker faire, with your wife um, seeing those which are you know, sadly, they’re starting to look kind of dated right like like, like, like yearbook, photos or something, but Um, you should see one of tim o’reilly and me at the first unix expo in 1985.. We look like we’re 13. um, but that that sort of development and growth and the human side, the stories of people developing and in a sense we, i believe, while we may even compete in various ways, we really are rooting for each other and uh. I think that’s such a a great uh aspect of this. I’Ve been part of you know the early web and it had a similar feel, but it disappeared at a certain point once once success came, it brought new people with different goals and, to be honest, they didn’t have the same soul. So i’m i’m uh. I’M really happy to see what we’re able to do over this day and a half, and, of course this is all just a preliminary to a much larger event that we have coming this weekend and uh. One of the reasons we started doing this workshop was to in a sense, provide a way for makers to get together talk shop, uh, learn from each other and and uh kind of nourish uh.
What what in terms of ideas and and imagination um who you are and what you do, but uh maker faire, is exhausting you’ll, uh, expend uh a lot of energy there and uh. I was thinking to my team the other day that the next copy of makes is how to make a it’s a special issues: how to make a tesla, coil and maker fare is kind of like a giant tesla coil itself. It’S it wants this sort of tremendous release of energy and the same time recharging that that the batteries at the same time, so i invite you uh to uh those of you that aren’t participating, make very sure. Surely i hope you’ll come and continue on part of the the hole maker movement and spreading it across the world. Thank you very much for being here, see you on the weekend. .