MakerBot will be participating in the SIGGRAPH Studio again this year, Sunday August 5th through Thursday August 9th, in downtown Los Angeles. Each year since 1974, tens of thousands of amazing artists, designers, and computer graphics professionals head to the annual SIGGRAPH (short for Special Interest Group on GRAPHics and Interactive Techniques) conference and expo to catch demos and talks featuring the bleeding edge of computer graphics and interactive technology.

The Studio is a section of the event where attendees can roll up their sleeves and take a test drive of the best tools in the biz. MakerBot will be bringing a sizable eight Replicator BotFarm and most of our newest colors with us to the event which will mean that a lot of visitors will get a chance to print out loads of items from Thingiverse as well as original work.

What’s new this year: the BotFarm will be partially staffed by the outstanding MakerBot Operators from the Greater Los Angeles Area, including Theron, TeamTeamUSA, and a few volunteers from CRASHspace and art toy professional Dave Bondi. Wanna help us out? Drop a message to “griffin at makerbot dot com” by Saturday at midnight with your cell number, a message about your level of MakerBot experience, your availability for the Studio, and your favorite object from Thingiverse. The SIGGRAPH Studio BotFarm Wants You!

Speaking of friends getting together at the booth, the staff who went last year were deeply impressed with the level of talent from visitors to the booth — including the modeler who shared a picture-perfect Yoda Bust that MakerBot Operators print frequently all over the world. What will be the next Thingiverse hit to come out of our SIGGRAPH Studio BotFarm? Bring your files with you and we’ll check your work out!

Here’s where to find us!

This past weekend, MakerBot had a great time sharing The MakerBot Replicator with good friends from the MakerBot Community as well as probably the best manufacturing-savvy general audiences we have ever chatted with.

Special delights included:

• Inviting Zheng3 to share his open source tabletop war game called SEEJ on Saturday, followed by an afternoon of energetic gameplay. (Thanks, ShopBot, for the use of the awesome table!)
• A few MakerBot Operators headed to the Henry Ford Museum to 123D Catch the Wienermobile. (Let’s each share our results on Thingiverse, folks!)
• Bernie (aka SSW on Thingiverse) brought his kids with their Twirl Mini Mustache prints. (Our booth printed them for hours to the delight of eager children waiting for a Helsinki Sky colored ‘stache.)

We also added Chicago superuser Mike Moceri from the ChiMUG to the booth for the weekend to clock highspeed scanning time trials, using the Microsoft Kinect and ReconstructMe. He accomplished this entire process up to start-of-print in around 5 minutes per head, which Bre described as “a zero to sixty record for MakerBots.”

See you all at World Maker Faire in NYC!

Tonight, MakerBot will host a very special MUGNY (MakerBot User Group NYC) meeting at the beautiful Marymount School Fifth Avenue Campus right across from the Met Museum, preceded by a RSVP-only walking tour through the Met with a handful of the artists who participated in the Met MakerBot Hackathon.

While the free Met Tour event is ”sold out” at this point, I do want to remind those who managed to reserve a ticket that the Walking Tour guests need to check in with me (Matt Griffin) on the left hand side of the Met lobby (near the Greek/Roman entrance) just before 5:30pm to get your Met pin and be ready for the tour to depart — promptly at 5:30pm.

Glenn Berry will be handling the check-in list at the Marymount School starting at 6:00pm across the street. After the Walking Tour rejoins the reception, MakerBot Operators, Thingiverse Makers, and the curious public will be treated to refreshments, snacks, the latest community show-and-tell, and inspiring keynote talks featuring the Met MakerBot Hackathon and the Capture Your Town project.

MakerBot User Group meetings are monthly meet ups where members of our world-wide community get together locally to share what they have been up to with their MakerBots. The events typically include a featured guest or keynote arranged beforehand, and tend to attract a large crowd of those from the general public as well as those actively involved with MakerBot and Thingiverse — all are welcome!

And here’s a sneak preview of the mini-master class in casting to be given tonight by 3D designer and jeweler Jason Bakutis. The work he is bringing will drop some jaws, and offer all of those curious about creating replicas of physical objects a few new routes for finishing!

After visiting our HOPE Number 9 booth, Robot Dreams blogger Lem Fugitt stopped by MakerBot to pick up a few goodies he purchased to take back home with him to Tokyo. He has been by MakerBot several times, as far back as 2010, and he stopped by the BotFarm to meet the local robots, including MakerBot Petting Zoo favorite Bumper Bot designed by MakerBot designer Jason Bakutis and a few of the Minions created by MakerBot’s Michael Curry. He was thrilled to grab a BotMobile and a few MakerBot Windup Walkers for some projects back home.

Check out a few images from MakerBot’s weekend at HOPE Number 9!

Thanks also to the many visitors who snapped great photos of the MakerBot vendor table and have been sending us some links, including the below photo from Laughing Squid coverage of HOPE Number 9. Scott Beale deserves a special prize for stumbling on (and documenting beautifully) MakerBot wherever we appear in the world: our unofficial photojournalist-at-large. Laughing Squid….also documented the Toy Tokyo booth at San Diego Comic Con at the same time. Wow! How do they do that?

If you have been holding out on me, share links to your photos of MakerBot at HOPE and we’ll share them here!

Next Friday night, MakerBot will host a very special MUGNY (MakerBot User Group NYC) meeting at the beautiful Marymount School Fifth Avenue Campus right across from the Met Museum. Marymount is an an independent, Catholic all-girls day school that actually has a rocking fab lab full of MakerBots — so this is a special pleasure for us. What’s more, this venue allows us to host a special RSVP only (grab tickets quick here!) opportunity to do a walking tour through the Met Museum so that a number of the artists can share about their derivative works right in front of the originals!

At 6:30pm, MakerBot Operators, Thingiverse Makers, and the curious public will cross the street and join us at the Marymount School for refreshments, snacks, the latest community show-and-tell, and inspiring keynote talks featuring the Met MakerBot Hackathon and the Capture Your Town project that emerged: a chance for all of our community to dive in and digitize buildings, artwork, and other objects that they want to share with the world about where they live.

MakerBot User Group meetings are monthly meet ups for members of our world-wide community to get together locally to share what they have been up to with their MakerBots. The events typically include a featured guest or keynote arranged beforehand, and tend to attract a large crowd of those from the general public as well as those actively involved with MakerBot and Thingiverse — all are welcome!

Check back early next week for further details about the Hackathon artists, digital archivists, and MakerBot community members who will be speaking — and reserve your “5:00pm Pre-Event Demo and Art Talk at the Met Museum” and “MUGNY Event @ Marymount School” RSVP tickets so that you can receive instructions for attending this very special evening.

Thanks again to inspiring maker and educator Jaymes Dec for connecting us with the Marymount School.

This weekend, while Keith, Nick, Sasha, and Andrew will be on the West Coast at San Diego Comic-Con at the Toy Tokyo booth collaborating with art toy superstar Ron English, Glenn, a gaggle of MakerBot web, software and R&D staffers and I will be making the far shorter pilgrimage over the bridge into Manhattan to spend time in the company of another breed of superstar — the hacker superstars at HOPE Number 9 at the Hotel Pennsylvania!

H.O.P.E. stands for Hackers On Planet Earth (and also “HOtel PEnnsylvania,” the venue for the event) and does beg the question — are there hackers for whom this designation does not apply? (Check through the schedule to see if there is a talk on this topic: are astronauts/cosmonauts the first Hackers Off the Planet Earth?)

HOPE Biennial Conference

For those of you who have never heard of or attended 2600: The Hacker Quarterly‘s biennial conference before, you should take note: not only is this the premier east coast conference dedicated to an impossibly diverse and interesting list of talks budding off the core topics of security, privacy, computers/technology, Internet/broadcast/transmissions, associated legal/policy implications, open source development, and hackers/hacking, this series is constantly pre-saging its own imminent demise – and this might be the very last year! (Just like they said the last two times. No, really this time!)

This year’s keynote speakers William Binney and The Yes Men are unlikely to disappoint, but also take the time to sift through the entire list to learn more about what this conference has on offer. We are hoping that MakerBot’s own Rob Vincent (Rob T Firefly), part of HOPE’s organizing team, will sneak us tips about the best talks and events to attend at this rambunctious, infectious, 24-hour programming hacker conference extraordinaire. Generally the rule of thumb is that if you manage to score a badge and make your way to the event, you are bound to stumble on activities, concerts, talks and people who you will find interesting.

MakerBot @ HOPE Number 9

MakerBot has secured two-tables-worth of vendorspace at the venue where I will be setting up two BotStands featuring our latest MakerBot Replicators, 3D-printed parts, Thingiverse.com, MakerBotTV videos, and a Thingiverse data visualization that Thingiverse participants will tremendously enjoy.

The BotStands are also display cases — so anyone in the MakerBot / Thingiverse community is invited to bring over their 3D printed work to display proudly at our booth (bring a Thingitag or similar label so we can brag about who created what).

There is also a rumor that I can neither confirm nor deny that one of the tables will devolve into a Seej tournament partway through the conference. This likely depends upon whether anyone in the community can come even close to competing with the MakerBot Seej Masters.

But wait, there’s more!

Check out what the MakerBot’s software team will be up to at the conference!

• Friday 10AM @ Dennis: “Community Fabrication: Four Years Later” – talk by MakerBot’s Far McKon, a follow-up to the one he gave 2 HOPEs ago before joining MakerBot
• Saturday 4pm-6pm @ MakerBot Booth: “How to Get Hacking on ReplicatorG” – tech demo lead by MakerBot’s software team
• Sunday 10am-11am @ MakerBot Booth: “How to Get Hacking on MakerBot Community Software Early on Sunday Morning” – tech demo lead by MakerBot’s software team

A Special Note

And if someone asks to borrow your cellphone or laptop “to check something” … well … you might be about to learn a very valuable lesson in computer security practice, if not policy and assumptions made about said policies at network/computer security conferences. Don’t say I didn’t warn you: pranks are an inevitable if unofficial part of the entertainment on offer.

Michael and I have successfully reached the Twin Cities from Madison, WI, in our 10-gallon-tank rental car, learning a little bit about Wisconsin history at each and every rest stop. Tonight we have the pleasure of co-hosting TWO Twin Cities maker meetups to share our pair of MakerBot Replicators: one at the relatively new makerspace The Mill and the other at the hackerspace Hack Factory with TC Maker. If you’d like to learn more about these great places, check out this great piece that came out today in the Twin Cities StarTribune detailing them and the maker movement that has very much exploded in this community.

THE MILL: 6pm-8pm

2300 Kennedy Street NE, Suite #130
Minneapolis, MN 55413
(651) 592.3372
http://www.mnmill.org/

HACK FACTORY: 8:30pm-11pm

3119 E. 26th Street
Minneapolis, MN 55406
http://www.tcmaker.org/blog/hack-factory/

There are MakerBot Operators in both spaces that we can’t wait to spend time with. The two places cater to a different slice of the very makery and inspiring community here, so I’m very much looking forward to the two-event night despite the road weariness and confusion about reality that comes from waking up in a different motel every day for a week.

I’ve been dreaming of visiting Minneapolis for years — and have a few friends here who I’m hoping will help me locate the ideal Capture Your Town challenge sites for the Minneapolis Maker MUG to tackle. (Anyone up for a CaptureSession tomorrow in the Twin Cities?) Also, I’ve been told by many American poets (95% of which are published or funded by some foundation, publisher or org in the  Twin Cities area) that this is one of America’s most cosmopolitan communities. Take that provincial New York City (with the demise of funding for individual artists and poets)!

The enterprising will join Michael and me to both events — and perhaps to a late night CaptureSession should we find a suitably lit public art piece to #capture! At any rate, as our evening shifts from entertaining to hacking, feel free to dive in to the Capture Your Town processing and uploading that we will be doing to share back the spoils of our rather intense-but-awesome tour.

Michael and I have moments ago arrived in Madison, Wisconsin, eager to greet the Power Racing Series winners of the Maker Faire Kansas City tourney: Sector67′s Fauxrrari! Congrats! That and also bring a pair of MakerBot Replicators to the Sector67 hackerspace to share it with all of the membership and guests tonight!

TIME:

6:00pm-8:00pm

VENUE:

Sector67
2100 Winnebago St
(In the Atwood neighborhood on the near east side)
Madison, WI 53704
http://www.sector67.org

I will be at Sector67 all afternoon, preparing to host our MakerBot Meetup night — with a special emphasis (on my laptop at least) on cleaning up and posting many of the incredible Capture Your Town contributions that myself and others at NYMUG, KC Fabricators, ChiMUG, and Milwaukee Makerspace have #captured this past week. This is a great chance to come over and pickup a few tips and tricks — not only to get a better sense of how to use a series of apps to improve even grotesquely sucky 123D Catch captures, but also to do so in a context that is far less antisocial than me hanging out on my laptop during the meetup tonight.

You know what else you can do? Dive in and help me with this stuff! (Access to a Win7 PC a plus, but not a requirement.)

The “official” (i.e. not laptop-centric) event is tonight from 6pm-8pm — and Chris tells me that there should be a good crowd joining us. I will be grabbing food and drinks for all. I can’t wait to catch up with all of you!

This past weekend, Michael Curry and I verified that “everything is up to date in Kansas City” spending time at Hammerspace and Maker Faire Kansas City with the KC Fabricators MUG  and a bunch of the CCCKC crew. Well, we also got a chance to spend time with members of hackerspaces and makerspaces from all over the region, and have now embarked on a mini-tour to visit the home bases of handful of these great folks.

We are particularly aiming to connect with local MakerBot User Groups (MUGs) to introduce the Capture Your Town project — sharing tips and tricks from the field to help each group level up quickly and start sharing things they love about their towns on Thingiverse. Check the slideshow above for the latest snaps from our journey — and read below for chances to meet up with us on our travels this week!

ChiMUG CaptureSession — Chicago, IL — Monday, June 25th, 10am-1pm

Michael and I will be joining Mike Moceri, Tom Burtonwood, and other members of ChiMUG to hit the Art Institute of Chicago Museum and/or The Field Museum to perform some Chicago-focused Capture Your Town. This visit will be fast and furious: definitely an exciting day, all before lunchtime!

Milwaukee Makerspace — Milwaukee, WI — Monday, June 25th, 7pm-11pm

After completing the CaptureSession, Michael and I will head 2hrs north up to Milwaukee to spend an evening with the Milwaukee Makerspace crew sharing the MakerBot Replicators and printed objects we are bringing, and checking out this awesome space and community.

Sector67 — Madison, WI — Tuesday, June 26th, 6pm-8pm

Now, I’ve been excited about attending Sector67 for a couple of months now, after seeing images of Nathan Davis’s MakerBot/Arduino music project. We have heard that there are some awesome MakerBot Operators at this space and I certainly had a good time hanging out with members of this space in Kansas City. When they weren’t elbow (wrist?) deep into repairing their Power Racing Series vehicle, that is.

The Mill — Minneapolis, MN — Wednesday, June 27th, 6pm-8pm

Our first stop in Minneapolis is The Mill, a new educational industrial arts/maker space. The rumor on the streets of Maker Faire KC are that a gaggle of educators will be racing over to join us at The Mill for The Replicator demo as well as to learn about MakerBot’s curriculum resources and opportunities for the classroom. Also, there are a bunch of MakerBot Operators who orbit around this space: I’m looking forward to meeting them!

Hack Factory — Minneapolis, MN — Wednesday, June 27th, 8:30pm-11pm

After hanging out at The Mill, join us for “hacker hours” (i.e. late!) with Twin Cities Maker @ the Hack Factory for BBQ, beer, and all sorts of project show-and-tell and socializing. TC Maker has had MakerBots since the early days so I am looking forward to checking out what sort of 3D printing activity is going on here — and to see who’s running their MakerBots lately!