Maker movement (resources)

In my series about Makers, I wrote about the new makers and Fab Labs. For those interested, I gathered some links for further reading. Do you know other useful resources? Please mention them in the comments or drop me a line.

Enjoy!

3D Printing refers to any of the various processes for printing a three-dimensional object.

CAD is the use of computer systems to assist in the creation, modification, analysis, or optimization of a design.

CAM is the use of computer software to control machine tools and related machinery in the manufacturing of workpieces.

CNC Machines. Numerical control (NC) is the automation of machine tools that are operated by precisely programmed commands encoded on a storage medium, as opposed to controlled manually via hand wheels or levers, or mechanically automated via cams alone.

MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms is an interdisciplinary initiative exploring the boundary between computer science and physical science.

Fab: The Coming Revolution on Your Desktop--from Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication

Fab Lab is a technical prototyping platform for innovation and invention, providing stimulus for local entrepreneurship. A Fab Lab is also a platform for learning and innovation: a place to play, to create, to learn, to mentor, to invent.

Instructables is a place that lets you explore, document, and share your creations.

Local Motors. We combine co-creation and micro-manufacturing to bring hardware innovations to market at unprecedented speed.

MAKE magazine brings the do-it-yourself mindset to all the exciting projects in your life and helps you make the most of technology at home and away from home.

Maker Faire is a family friendly event celebrating technology, education, science, arts, crafts, engineering, food, sustainability, and more. 

Maker Movement. Community enabled by a rekindled interest in manufacturing and hardware, accompanied by the proliferation of inexpensive or less expensive distributed, democratizing manufacturing tools.

The Maker Movement Manifesto: Rules for Innovation in the New World of Crafters, Hackers, and Tinkerers

Maker Stuff supplies the most innovative equipments which turn your ideas into your product. 

Makers: The New Industrial Revolution

Popular Mechanics helps people build, fix and customize the technology in their lives, from houses to hot rods to gaming systems.

Prosumer is a portmanteau originally formed by contracting producer with the word consumer.

Thingiverse is a thriving design community for discovering, making, and sharing 3D printable things. As the world's largest 3D printing community, we believe that everyone should be encouraged to create and remix 3D things, no matter their technical expertise or previous experience.

The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism

Zero to Maker: Learn (Just Enough) to Make (Just About) Anything
 

Unleash your creativity in a Fab Lab (video)

Last week, I wrote about the new makers. Neil Gerschenfeld was one of the people in the documentary.

This professor of the MIT Center for bits and atoms founded the Fab Labs. According to its website a...

"Fab Lab is the educational outreach component of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA), an extension of its research into digital fabrication and computation.
A Fab Lab is a technical prototyping platform for innovation and invention, providing stimulus for local entrepreneurship.
A Fab Lab is also a platform for learning and innovation: a place to play, to create, to learn, to mentor, to invent.
To be a Fab Lab means connecting to a global community of learners, educators, technologists, researchers, makers and innovators- -a knowledge sharing network that spans 30 countries and 24 time zones.
Because all Fab Labs share common tools and processes, the program is building a global network, a distributed laboratory for research and invention."

To spread his ideas, he wrote Fab: The Coming Revolution on Your Desktop--from Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication and held an interesting TED Talk. Altough it was recorded in 2006, it's still fascinating.

Enjoy!

Keepod

Recently, I wrote about portable Operating Systems. I found out, I'm not the only one. ;-) The people of Keepod created a complete Operating System on an USB stick. By seperating the software from the hardware, Keepod offers a simple and cheap solution for personal computing. Nice isn't it? But, do we need it?

As the costs of this way of computing is very low, it comes in reach for the poor. According to Keepod, 5 billion people don't have access to personal computing, let alone the internet. People don't need to possess a computer themselves any longer. Access to (a shared) one is enough. As the system requirements are low, old and refurbished computers will do.

Keepod contains Linux which is stable, 'light weight' and free (as in 'freedom'). Users are able to use the enclosed software. However, they may be able to install their own applications. All data are stored on the thumb drive, so they carry their data and don't leave traces on the guest PC's.

The costs of such a USB stick are only $ 7 (!). The Keepod project is in search for funding at Indiegogo. This isn't the first idea to bring computing to developing countries. An earlier initiative was One Laptop Per Child. As the name states, it's aim is to provide every child with a laptop for education purposes. Therefore they developed a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop. Many of them are sold and distributed.

Good initiatives! Do you know other projects like these?

The Personal MBA (video)

Recently, I told you about The Personal MBA. Here's a nice video in which Josh Kaufman explains what The Personal MBA is, why he developed it and how you'll benefit of it.

Among others, Kauffman discusses the few aspects of every business:

• Value creation
• Marketing
• Sales
• Value delivery
• Finance

You won't be surprised these are also the topics of his book, The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business.

Enjoy!

The Personal MBA

You may have noticed, I mention the Personal MBA on my About me page and my resume. But what is a Personal MBA? What makes it personal? And why would people join it?

Founder, researcher and author Josh Kaufman wrote an excellent manifesto about it, which you can download for free. He declares, traditional MBA programmes don't have a monopoly on business knowledge. It's possible to educate yourself in your own time. This makes his programme very flexible. Costs are low as no college expenses are necessary and one's income stream won't be interrupted.

The core of the self-study programma is a list of 99 books. Kaufman read many business books and selected the best according to a few criteria.

• valuable, action-orientated content
• acceptable time commitment
• self-learning friendly
• reference value
• comprehensive set of resources

Among others, authors are Stephen Covey, Peter Drucker, Eli Goldratt, Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki, Tom Peters and Michael Porter. The books are categorized so it's easy to choose your next one.

Kaufman emphasizes the course is not easy. It requires commitment, discipline and persistance to keep going. He also admits, just reading isn't sufficient. You have to evaluate and discuss what you've learned. With your friends, at work or online, e.g. at communities on LinkedIn or Goodreads. Then go out and learn by doing.

Well, the Personal MBA took me a whole bunch of time. There are a great number of good books on the list. Understanding the content requires more effort then just reading them once. In addition: the list turned out to be a moving target as Kaufman - still researching - updated it several times. However this enlarged the number of books to choose from. ;-)

I like many of the listed books, for instance The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Innovation and Entrepreneurship and The Goal which I reviewed earlier. However I'm not enthusiastic about all of them. Mastery is one of them. Not being a marketing and sales man, I didn't like reading several commercial books in a row. But I do like Kaufman's pragmatic approach. Start reading and practice what you've learned. In this way, barriers are low.

Kaufman himself understands that reading all books will cost you much time. Therefore he wrote a comprehensive book with a somewhat predictable name, The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business . It's kind of a summary of the content of the complete list. If you're interested, this is a good starting point for further education.

Which business and/or educational books do you prefer?

Happy reading!

Learn Morse code

Last week, I reviewed Mind Performance Hacks. In this post, I'll feature # 53 Learn Morse code like an efficiency expert. Wikipedia defines Morse code as

"a method of transmitting text information as a series of on-off tones, lights, or clicks that can be directly understood by a skilled listener or observer without special equipment".

Here's the alphabet and the numbers.

Picture: Wikipedia

Simple, isn't it? But how would one learn the code? In Mind Performance Hacks, Hale-Evans mentions Frank Gilbreth, an early scientific management advocate and efficiency expert. Gilbreth was blessed with twelve children. Two of them wrote Cheaper by the Dozen (my review) and Belles on Their Toes about the household. These books cover their family life including many efficiency tricks Gilbreth learned his kids. He taught them for example to wash themselves efficiently in the meanwhile studying foreign languages by listening to recordings.

During summer, Gilbreth taught his childeren Morse. In their holiday home, he wrote the alphabet on the walls (...). Then he added keywords, whose accents were a reminder of the code for the various letters like DAN-ger-ous, dash-dot-dot, DAN-ger-ous. Unfortunately only four of Gilbreth's study aids are left (for A till D). Therefore I'll use another set of mnemonics in this post. I like these as they are linked to the NATO phonetic alphabet.

For visual minded people - and who is'nt? - there's also another reminder.

Picture: Wikipedia

Have you ever used Morse? How dit you learn it?

Enjoy!

Mind performance hacks (book review)

Mind Performance Hacks: Tips & Tools for Overclocking Your Brain

Ron Hale-Evans

O'Reilly, 2006

Here's my next book review and again, it's not a new book. Nevertheless, I think Mind Performance Hacks by Ron Hale-Evans is interesting. It's more or less a continuation of Mind Hacks by Tom Stafford and Matt Webb. The book contains 75 brain hacks. Just as I wrote earlier, this way of hacking has nothing to do with criminal activities. As the author states:

"Mind performance hacks are a technology as new as the newest smart drugs and as old as language. In the broadest sense, every time you learn something, you're hacking your brain. This book is designed to help you learn to hack your brain intentionally, safely, and productively."

Hale-Evans describes every hack in the same structure. It's possible to read the entire book at once or just the hacks that might interest you. They are grouped by theme.

• Memory
• Information processing
• Creativity
• Math
• Decision making
• Communication
• Clarity
• Mental fitness

Among others, the author learns his readers how to overcome the tip-of-the-tongue effect (# 12), to speak your brain's language (# 15) including why that's useful and to hold a question in mind (# 30) when solving a complex problem. Other examples are to put down the calculator (# 35) using some simple tricks and warming up your brain (# 66) before getting busy.

Reading the entire book - I really did - I learned some interesting things. As the author added also additional resources like reports, books and websites, the book contains tons of information. There's also the Mentat Wiki for still more information. However some of the tips and tricks, I'll never use as they seem useless to me or I simply don't like them. An example of these, is playing boardgames (# 67). Being a Christian, I neither like the hacks in chapter 7, Clarity. Therefore my advice is to read Mind Performance Hacks and use the hacks you like and/or are useful to you.

Did you read this book? What's your opinion about it?

Happy reading!