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Andrew from littleBits contacted me a few weeks ago to tell me about the bitLab, a new program to support littleBits contributors that he has been putting up together. I really liked the idea and after a few discussions I offered to do a special bitLab week here on MakingSociety to describe the program in details and share ideas and tips for makers who want to give it a try. littleBits agreed and is now officially the first sponsor ever of MakingSociety! Exciting times. Here we go! This bitLab Week starts today with a new MakingSociety Podcast episode featuring Andrew Avrin, the person behind everything bitLab at littleBits. This episode is a 30 minutes full interview about littleBits and its new bitLab program where makers can now develop modules that could become integral part of littleBits module catalog. Contributors get revenue sharing as well as full credit and hand-in-hand collaboration. The bitLab is truly an exciting idea! It’s a great experiment in open hardware and community integration. More about this podcast episode The core of the episode is about the bitLab. You’ll learn all the basics of the program, how to participate, what to prepare before submitting your proposal. Andrew shares many stories of developers who already have a submissions live and up for vote. He gives some great insider tips about what littleBits can support. A successful bitLab module proposal: EMG SpikerBox by BackyardBrains   You can listen to the episode right below: Or on iTunes or Stitcher as well. In addition of this podcast episode, I also prepared 2 in-depth articles that will guide you along your bitLab journey so you can make the most of it. They will be publish along the week. Happy listening and see you soon for more bitLab action! And first, go check littlebits.cc/bitlab to see what I’m actually talking about. How to listen to the episode? Listen or download it below: Listen on iTunes or Stitcher Cheers,   The post MakingSociety Podcast Special bitLab Week ! appeared first on MakingSociety.

MakingSociety Podcast is back with a new interview to help you start and run your open hardware company. And… this new episode features a 40 minutes interview with SparkFun CEO Nathan Seidle! Nathan started SparkFun 12 years ago while studying electrical engineering. Since then, company grew to become the most successful open source hardware company to date and employs today more than 130 team members out of Boulder, Colorado. Nathan is also a key activist for the open source hardware movement. He is one of the key actors behind the creation of the Open Source Hardware Association. SparkFun is one of the biggest contributors in open hardware. The team put together a successful product development process able to iterate quickly and get new products on shelves every Friday. They are also pushing the frontiers of documentation in hardware. What We Talk about in this Episode This episode is entirely dedicated to how Nathan started SparkFun and grew it to what it is today. We talk about how to get started, how to bootstrap and get noticed. Nathan goes back on some of his biggest challenges, how he deals with competition and the SparkFun process to get new products on the shelves every Friday. He also shares advice on how to find people to work with you and how to differentiate yourself. Nathan shares his experience with open source hardware, how it can be beneficial but also challenging. He shares thoughts on what means “open source hardware” and the current growth of the movement. I also asked Nathan to explain how to get your open hardware products get made at SparkFun. If you have a hardware prototype that you think could interest SparkFun, this section is definitively for you! To give you a recap, here are the topics we talk about: how to start an open hardware company while being a student early beginnings bootstrap financing finding team mates how to differentiate your hardware company how to learn how to be a CEO SparkFun’s process to get new products on the shelves at a fast pace And also: benefits and challenges of being open hardware how the open hardware world deal with competition where open hardware is going For SparkFun fans: how to submit a project and work with SparkFun This episode is a gold nugget of advice coming from an open hardware business master! As we talk about in the interview, check Nathan’s TEDx conference on what open source hardware is and how it can help your company and society: How to listen to the MakingSociety podcast? You have plenty of options to subscribe to MakingSociety Podcast. As usual: Listen or download the episode on Archive.org Subscribe on Stitcher, iTunes or RSS feed All episodes are also available here on MakingSociety. Enjoy, and share your thoughts in the comments!     Good to know: every two weeks, I send a newsletter to help you start and run your open hardware company. Join in! Email Address First Name The post How to Start and Run an Open Hardware Business – with SparkFun CEO Nathan Seidle appeared first on MakingSociety.

Red Pitaya is a young hardware company coming from Slovenia in East Europe. For the last years, the team has been working on a very clever product. A device that replaces tens of expensive scientific tools. It’s called Red Pitaya and is a science researcher and electronics engineer dream. Red Pitaya can be a measurement tool, an oscilloscope, a spectrum analyzer… and replace many other expensive measurement tools. I met the team at the Open Hardware Summit in Italy last month and was interested to know more about their story. It’s not every day that you meet start-ups from Slovenia, and even less often hardware ones. Red Pitaya In addition of bringing an innovative approach to science research tools, Red Pitaya has an original story. This MakingSociety podcast episode is about early hardware business strategy, community reaching and how to build a valuable partnership. Company started in Slovenia and is still based in Slovenia. Rok talks about challenges and advantages that come with starting a hardware company outside a major hardware hub like San Francisco or New York. Red Pitaya started on Kickstarter, and that’s really what got them going. Originality of their strategy is the exclusive deal they made with RS Microelectronic. We talk about their open hardware strategy. Red Pitaya is not an open source hardware project but has an open platform. Link talked about in the episode: RS Components online store to buy Red Pitaya Red Pitaya’s website Listen to the episode RSS feed of MakingSociety Podcast Archive.org page Subscribe on Stitcher, iTunes or RSS feed See you soon for a new episode, The post Interview with Red Pitaya: From Kickstarter to the Shelves of RS Components appeared first on MakingSociety.

MakingSociety Podcast is back with a new episode. Today, Sally Carson tells the story of how she and Eric Jennings created Pinoccio, open source tiny wireless controller for the Internet of Things. Their story is a great example of how makers can now build successful niche products using crowdfunding, grass-root marketing and online tools. What I like in this episode is that Sally really takes the time to share how you go from a a DIY project to a prototype, and to defining a market and launching an actual product. She shares her story on she started collaborating with her business partner (she’s is a UX designer while Eric is a computer science and electrical engineer), how they made sure that the prototype would make a viable product (she takes us through the process of pivoting from their original idea, creating personas, doing interviews…) Before the big jump A few thoughts comes to my mind from this episode. Sally really explains how her previous work and community experiences shaped part of her success. So even if you’re not ready yet to start your own company, it’s smart to start building early skills. For example, Sally and Eric have been involved in the maker community for a long time. Sally studied abroad to Ivea in Italy, where Arduino was created. Both team members worked in tech companies and startups in the San Francisco Bay Area (Yahoo! and more). They got involved with the maker/hacker movement, going to the second Maker Faire Bay Area, and more. “I had my professional career, working on the web, and then I had this passion, hobby, that I wasn’t able to cultivate more”, she says. Follow your guts Pinoccio really first product idea was a soil moisture sprinkler product, but they decided to not go with it. “We felt like in foreign waters”. Lean Prototyping Sally also explains how they went to maker events doing early product idea testing. Doing casual interviews with potential customers, with open and exploratory questions. She gives great detail on how to create personas for building your brand. Crowdfunding How to define your rewards How to prepare the campaign When and how to contact the press Listen to the podcast As usual, many options are available for you to listen to this podcast. Subscribe on Stitcher, iTunes or RSS feed Happy listening,       Every two weeks, I send a newsletter to help you start and run your open hardware company. Join in! Email Address First Name The post Starting a Maker Pro Company, with Sally Carson, Pinoccio appeared first on MakingSociety.

Episode #4 is with Emile Petrone, founder and CEO of Tindie. We talk about lean hardware startups, pro makers building small companies and the Tindie community. You will learn about makers who are selling their products online and some of the strategies they adopt to find customers and manufacture their products. Emile talks about Tindie and how the community is growing. He shares advice on how to use the marketplace to make profit and how to deal with social media, pricing and more. One big challenge to solve for small maker business: getting noticed! This interview kicks off a series of articles about makers building open hardware startups with Tindie. To read on MakingSociety.com! They are multiple ways to listen to the MakingSociety podcast: Subscribe on Stitcher, iTunes or RSS feed MakingSociety podcast is under CC-BY-NC license. Happy selling,     Every two weeks, I send a newsletter to help you start and run your open hardware company. Join in! The post Episode #4: How to Start a Side Maker Business, with Emile Petrone, CEO of Tindie appeared first on MakingSociety.

I find it really hard to get information about manufacturing. There are not many resource out there for the hardware entrepreneur. Continuing my goal to help makers building their hardware company, I contacted Scott Miller from Dragon Innovation who accepted to answer my (many) questions for the MakingSociety Podcast. Scott Miller has been bringing products to manufacturing for the last 15 years or so. He was the one in charge of manufacturing iRobot products such as the robot vacuum cleaner Roomba. He then created the company Dragon Innovation, which helps hardware entrepreneurs going to manufacturing. Dragon Innovation also recently launched a crowdfunding platform specifically dedicated to hardware products. This episode is packed with key information about manufacturing. We talk about the whole manufacturing timeline, batch sizes, designing your prototype for manufacturing, writing the right Bill of Materials, types of factory and how to find yours, outsourced vs. domestic plants, when to contact and what to say to your contract manufacturer, repartition of costs, manufacturing schedules and quality testing. This is killer content, I tell you! Subscribe to MakingSociety Podcast on Stitcher, iTunes or RSS feed See you soon, Credits: Music is an extract of “Mad Music” by Dub Terminator. I got it on Jamendo. Home image has been taken by KristenRice. License: this episode is under Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA 3.0. You can share it and remix it for non-commercial purpose. Simply credit: http.makingsociety.com The post Podcast 3: Going to Manufacturing – with Scott Miller, Dragon Innovation appeared first on MakingSociety.

In this second episode of the MakingSociety podcast, I interview Nick Pinkston, community-builder and hardware entrepreneur who played a key role at building the hardware community in Pittsburgh and the San Francisco Bay Area. I met Nick almost two years ago when he had just moved to San Francisco. Since then, I have seen him making his way in the Bay Area startup ecosystem to the point that he tremendously helped creating a structured hardware startup community, now spreading worldwide. He is a dedicated and passionate man, obsessed with hardware as a way to make the world a better place. What we talk about in this episode In this episode, you will hear about how to build a community: the Pittsburgh hardware scene and the birth of Pittsburgh hackerspace, HackPittsburgh moving to San Francisco Bay Area and meeting the right people for your hardware project the rise of the hardware startup community: from nothing to the first Hardware Meetup how to organize a meetup: format, sponsors, invitations, emails, archives strategies for building a community: shared open docs, building tools by and for the community (the MakerMap), online forums… why to build a community: motivations, opportunities tools and ideas for building a community online and offline: meetup.com, reddit, stack exchange, google docs, twitter, blogs, link exchange… a few key events for hardware entrepreneurs (Hardware Meetup, FooCamp, Hardware Unconference, Sketching…) Links & Resources Nick shares a lot of interesting resources for the hardware entrepreneur. Here are the links we talk about in this episode: Hardware Spaces: NYC Resistor, HackPittsburgh, Techshop events CloudFab bought by VistaTek Meetups: SF Hardware Meetup, New York Hardware Meetup, Bay Area Factory Tours, Hardware Meetups Map Community Tools: TheMakerMap, Hardware Meetup Spreadsheet Hardware Startups on Reddit: /hwstartups Nick Pinkston on Twitter Hardware events formats: FooCamp, UnConference (the Hardware UnConference), Ignite, Sketching in Hardware Listen to MakingSociety Podcast Subscribe to the podcast on Stitcher, iTunes or RSS feed Cheers, The post MakingSociety Podcast Session 02: Bringing a Hardware Community to Life, with Nick Pinkston appeared first on MakingSociety.

I’m very happy to announce today that the first session of the MakingSociety podcast is now online! It’s about 40 minutes packed with advice, tips and resources to help you launch your open hardware business. The unique goal of the monthly MakingSociety podcast is to help you go from maker to entrepreneur. We cover topics such as prototyping, manufacturing, distribution, raising money, product launching, licences and more. In this first session, I interview Ben Einstein, co-founder of Bolt, the hardware incubator based in Boston. Passionate about creating great products and helping ambitious hardware companies, he talks about prototyping, design for manufacturing and products fitted for crowdfunding and open source. We recorded this first session at Techshop in San Francisco. Thanks ProtoTank for welcoming us in your office! I’ll let you try to guess which machines are responsible for some of the noises in the background. In this episode, we cover some of the key steps of the hardware process: prototyping, manufacturing, crowdfunding. What you will hear about in details in this first episode: Going from maker to hardware entrepreneur: which mindset you need before to get started. Big challenges to build a hardware company. Learn about the one big mistake that many makers-entrepreneurs do when prototyping! Design for Manufacturing Great products and should you work with a team. Manufacturing tips & tricks: how big should be your first batch, … Why is hardware hard? Understand what it means concretely “Don’t go to Shenzen” Personal advisor vs. professional manufacturing firm (Dragon Innovation) Crowdfunding is a “double-edge sword”. What type of products are the best fitted for crowdfunding. Open Source Hardware: when should you go open #inbound-list.class-cECyOZsMjb li { list-style: none; font-weight: 500; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: top; margin-bottom: 5px; } #inbound-list.class-cECyOZsMjb li:before { background: transparent; border-radius: 50% 50% 50% 50%; display: inline-block; font-family: 'FontAwesome'; font-size: 18px; line-height: 18px; margin-right: 0.5em; margin-top: 0; text-align: center; } @media only screen and (max-width: 580px) { #inbound-list.class-cECyOZsMjb li { width:100%; } } p:empty { display:none; } Resources mentioned in this podcast include: Protomold real-time quote for molding injection parts Dragon Innovation Bolt #inbound-list.class-YlyVstpRbz li { list-style: none; font-weight: 500; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: top; margin-bottom: 5px; } #inbound-list.class-YlyVstpRbz li:before { background: transparent; border-radius: 50% 50% 50% 50%; display: inline-block; font-family: 'FontAwesome'; font-size: 18px; line-height: 18px; margin-right: 0.5em; margin-top: 0; text-align: center; } @media only screen and (max-width: 580px) { #inbound-list.class-YlyVstpRbz li { width:100%; } } p:empty { display:none; } Subscribe to the MakingSociety Podcast on Stitcher, iTunes or RSS feed You can share and use freely the MakingSociety podcast as it is a Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication. Hope you’ll enjoy it! If you’re interested in following MakingSociety, be sure to join us on Facebook or Google and follow the RSS feed. More content to come! Talk to you soon,       Image credit: Headphones thumbnail by Ivan Coyier The post MakingSociety Podcast Session 01: Building A Hardware Company with Ben Einstein, Bolt appeared first on MakingSociety.