Eric Wilhelm, kite surfer and founder of Instructables.com<\/a> started Instructables as a way to erase the barriers to inventing by helping people share what they\u2019ve made with others. The site now hosts 85,000 projects. <\/p>\n Making his second appearance at AU this year (his first was at the Keynote Address), Schuyler St. Leger, enthusiastic amateur maker, talked about his own evolution using 3D printers and electronics as an example of the ability of youth to learn and push boundaries on technology. His own projects take advantage of inexpensive tools like Arduino boards<\/a> and MakerBot\u2122 3D printers<\/a> to be creative and inventive. Where did he learn all this? He said \u201cNot from public school.\u201d Shuyler\u2019s own creative spark has been supported by his parents and others in the Maker community. Jason Chua and Rachel Star of SparkTruck<\/a>, an educational build-mobile from the Stanford d.School felt that the increasing standards requirements in public education were making it harder for kids to be creative. At a Maker Faire<\/a>, they met Schuyler and he inspired them to start thinking of ways to take some of these technologies and transplant them into the classroom. Starting in the Bay area, they outfitted a truck and over 4 months traveled all over the U.S. with their program. Teachers and students said it was some of the most fun they\u2019d had in years. They teach brainstorming, prototyping, and storytelling. For many students, this is \u201ctheir first experience in unfiltered thinking.\u201d Jason and Rachel\u2019s goal is to \u201cspark more young designers around the country.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/a>David Lang, treasure hunter and co-founder, OpenROV<\/a>, described his organization as \u201cDIY ocean explorers.\u201d Using Kickstarter<\/a>, OpenROV was able to raise over $100,000 dollars to build their first generation of underwater robots. David\u2019s main point is that from his perspective, the Maker movement and \u201cdemocratization of design\u201d is not do-it-yourself, but rather, a community collaboration. His personal quest to reskill himself turned into a great adventure. Now people all over the world are helping him reach his goal of creating an inexpensive, effective underwater robot for ocean exploring. Today\u2019s technologies (3D printers, laser cutters, etc.) are easy to learn to use. Everyone can participate in the process of designing today, and \u201cwe\u2019re all exploring this together.\u201d His advice: Go out and find your own treasure.<\/p>\n
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<\/a>Anne Filson and Gary Rorhbacher, partners at Filson and Rohrbacher and co-founders of AtFAB<\/a>, set out to create a new model for how designers create. If you define design as \u201crecognizing the agency in yourself to change the world and you act on it,\u201d then you are a designer. Anne and Gary want to live in a world where everyone is a designer by this definition. To promote this new way of thinking, they started AtFAB to \u201cprovoke consumers to become makers.\u201d On the AtFAB website, a half-dozen personal parametric interfaces (furniture objects), such as for material thickness, enable anyone to design their own furniture. These furniture objects can be cut by a CNC router, laser cutter, or water jet from any off-the-shelf sheet material. One of their goals is to create an alternative to the centralized factory, by shipping \u201cinfo not stuff.\u201d <\/p>\n