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Meet the MakerBot Operators Video 001: Meet Nick, Winter, and “Lola”

Posted by on Wednesday, July 21, 2010 in MakerBot Operators, Video

For the first video in the Meet the MakerBot Operators series, I talked with the brilliant Brooklyn teacher and NYC Resistor member Liz Arum about the students working with “Lola,” the MakerBot her school purchased for class and student use at Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn. I recorded this video earier this year when Nick (then a senior) and Winter (then a freshmen) were still in school.
This is an experiment and I’m planning on making more of these kinds of videos. I’d love to get your feedback. Tell me what you think about the video in the comments!

(Music: composed for and performed on a MakerBot by Bubblyfish, used with her permission.)

When talking to friends about MakerBots, I often get the question “What are most people looking to print with it?” With the list of potential uses long enough to boggle the mind, those asking me this question are looking for a sense of the culture of printing: what are people in the community of operators doing with their MakerBot?One exciting factor about working in a new frontier is that there is no cut and dry answer to this question. If you are designing and/or printing objects for the MakerBot, you are contributing to this discussion-in-progress. And the rapidly expanding community of people leaping into personal desktop fabrication are laboring everyday to broaden the list of possible answers.

Take a look at the thousands of objects up at Thingiverse.com, with all of the new custom “truders,” printheads, and other modifications: how do I answer the question “what is the MakerBot for?” without skipping over a number of purposes that are the very reason operator x or y assembled her MakerBot in the first place?

In the series Meet the MakerBot Operators, I am attempting to give a suitable, practical answer to this question by taking it directly to the community, by visiting this new breed of “MakerBot Operators” to meet their bots and do mini-interviews right there in their printing nooks. Most will be printed interviews posted here (with photos), but with every once in a while I plan to work on more videos: “Meet the MakerBot Operators” (profile) and “MakerBot Operators Tips” (collaboratively co-created with the subject).

And along with any activities I do (limited, at least at first, to the northeastern United States), consider this an open call for the community to jump into this discussion by introducing yourselves. Post your own “Meet the MakerBot Operators” and “MakerBot Operators Tips” blog entries, photographs, and videos and drop me a note about it at griffin at makerbot dot com.

– Matt Griffin

Tagged with , 7 comments
 

7 Comments so far

  • Brett Jones
    July 21, 2010 at 4:53 pm
     

    What a great video. I wish that we had these types of classes when I was in high school so that I could learn something I was actually interested in. Isn’t it neat how excited the kids are to talk about “Lola”? BTW – “When I’m really old” and “in two years” shouldn’t be spoken by a 14 year old. :)

     
  • Matt Griffin
    July 21, 2010 at 11:23 pm
     

    Heh, yeah I must admit to daydreaming a bit during the time while interviewing the two — while hearing how they think their way through problems and how familiar and capable they are with tools at their disposal — daydreaming “wow, I would have been so happy to have this exposure when I was in high school!” Today at the BotCave, where Winter is now the youngest intern in MakerBot history (not yet confirmed by Guinness), my colleague Marisol told him “man, with you doing this work at this age, when you are our age you will be controlling the planet!”

     
  • Erik
    July 22, 2010 at 2:06 am
     

    Very cool video. Excitement is contagious!

     
  • Ryan
    July 22, 2010 at 6:18 am
     

    Nice Job printing the makerbot ornament! http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1371 I think a bot has to be pretty well tuned to pull it off.

     
  • Luis Rodriguez
    July 22, 2010 at 4:09 pm
     

    I would love for this to start a MakerBot bio video marathon of folks introducing themselves and their bots! I’m doing it!

     
  • Matt
    Matt
    July 22, 2010 at 5:05 pm
     

    Luis — that is such a great idea. I really hope that the community takes this up and shares their bots and printing stories with everyone!

     
  • Michael Palacios
    July 23, 2010 at 12:14 pm
     

    Awesome, This turned out great!

     
 

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