Maker Faire: 9 Projects That Will Inspire You
Innovation, mutual respect, and the open sharing of information are the hallmarks of the Maker Movement. Here's why a trip to your local Maker Faire might be the wake-up call your IT team needs.
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A walk through a Maker Faire is an encounter with the unusual. It's not usual to see passion so obviously displayed. It's not usual to see autodidacts given the same status as the heavily credentialed. And it's not at all usual to see so many answers to IT's on-going human resource problems in one place. Those are some of the reasons to schedule a visit to your nearest Maker Faire.
After wandering around the Orlando Maker Faire on Sept. 12 and 13, I came away, as I usually do, with a long list of projects I'd like to attempt. This year, though, I went to the Maker Faire looking for people and projects that might have something to say to enterprise IT, and I managed to find plenty of both.
On the project and technology side, there were things on display that either stretched my understanding of what a particular technology could do (such as drones that couldn't fly unless you threw them off a roof, and then not for very long), or set me thinking about applying technology to solving new problems (including how the Internet of Things is about so much more than wearables). In many cases, I saw a solution created by a "maker" and imagined that solution brought into the enterprise by a forward-thinking CIO.
[ Want to know more about the Internet of Things? Read 10 Raspberry Pi Projects For Learning IoT. ]
The people side of the equation was even more exciting. Here at InformationWeek, we've written a number of articles about the significant difference in IT participation between men and women. I didn't see a significant difference in the male and female participation levels, though I'm going to throw a caveat onto the statement: The younger the participants, the more even the gender mix. From pre-school up through university students, gender didn't seem to play any role at all in knowledge, expertise, or enthusiasm.
As age went up, enthusiasm seemed to remain constant for both genders, but the media changed: More women were working in paper, fiber, and clay, while more men were working in metal and electronics. All of them, though, could easily be considered a vast talent pool for IT hiring managers in search of new blood.
Here are a couple of other things I found, each of which provides a lesson for enterprise IT. One is a lesson in acceptance, the other a lesson in the value of information.
In many ways, the different kinds of makers are members of different tribes, communities brought together by a shared interest in a technology or application. Within those tribes, I saw newcomers welcomed and encouraged, even when their skill levels were low. The acceptance I spoke of, though, was between the members of different maker tribes. Bio-hackers asked questions of Arduino gamers who went and looked longingly at the Steampunk costume tables. Respect for creativity and the act of "making" ruled, regardless of the tribes (or "silos" in business jargon) each worked within.
When it came to information, Richard Stallman would have been proud of the value almost everyone in attendance placed on the free exchange of information. Sure, there were displays from companies or individuals who wanted to show what they made but keep the details secret. These received quick, polite looks from attendees. The real excitement surrounded those who were freely sharing what they made and how they made it. The words "open source" worked like magic to attract a crowd, and the promise of code on Github ratcheted up enthusiasm another notch.
I've boiled things down into a few lessons, here. Take a look, then make plans to visit your local Maker Faire (or mini-Maker Faire.) If you're looking for ways to boost the creativity and morale of your team, take them along, too.
Have you been to a Maker Faire? Are you a Maker? I'd love to hear about what you're making -- and how you think IT can bring the lessons of the Maker Faire into your organization. See you in the comments section below.
The world has been captivated by small quad-copters flying through fireworks or into the stands of sporting events. While copters are undeniably cool, drones (also called "Remotely Piloted Vehicles," or RPVs) are increasingly seen on the land and under the sea.
Underwater drones allow builders and users to see part of the world from a new vantage. They also allow builders to work with flotation and hydrodynamics, pressure seals, balance in multiple dimensions, and environmental isolation. In other words, if you build a submarine, you've done more than merely stick a camera on a model.
Many of the same principles that inform builders working on underwater ROVs are useful in high-altitude flying drones, drones built for industrial observation, and drones designed for space. The people who can successfully deploy such a platform bring skills in multiple areas.
OK, I'll admit it: There's nothing that draws a crowd like a fire-breathing dragon robot -- especially when it's the size of an 18-wheeler truck. The thing you discover at a Maker Faire, though, is that people are working on and creating systems of all different sizes.
Let's take the underwater drones as an example. The orange ROV on the previous page would take at least two strong people to carry. The ROV on this page is only a bit larger than your hand.
Why is this important to IT? Because the ability to work on projects at different scales in useful in an enterprise. So is the ability to work comfortably on some projects as a member of a team and on others as a solo operator. Look around when you go to a Maker Faire and you'll find people who prefer one operating style to the other. More important, you'll find people accustomed to being one-person development teams, as well as those who have been workers on and leaders of development teams. When you find people like that, you've started to find your next generation of employees.
"Information wants to be free." Stewart Brand famously said that as part of a discussion of the future. (Another part of the statement was, "Information wants to be expensive," but that's a topic for another day.) In the modern enterprise, we want information within the walls to be free, while we're generally quite happy for information that goes outside the walls to be expensive.
At a Maker Faire, everyone there is considered to be "inside the walls," so a spirit of sharing and information freedom is what you'll find. The image above is a perfect example: It's a telescope on a mount built with OpenGimble.net plans.
For an enterprise IT executive, this kind of result means that the people you see at a Maker Faire are already used to working outside the silos that everyone is always trying to tear down in the commercial organization. The Maker world is one in which status comes from how much you share and how far you can spread your ideas -- not how successfully you can hoard them.
IT organizations that want to encourage employees to share information could do far worse than looking to the Maker movement for models. There are a lot of fancy programs out there to encourage sharing, but an analysis of the status and communications mechanisms among makers can give you a valuable head start on the process.
One of the hot topics in enterprise IT these days is data visualization. It makes sense because we now have access to so much data that it's hard to make sense of it presented in page after page of columnar data.
It's not only corporate data, though: People in many different disciplines are using maker methods to see more deeply into the universe.
I was impressed by the number of makers who were at the Orlando Maker Faire showing off telescope or microscope projects. If you scratch a bit beneath the surface, you'll find that many of the people working on quad-copter or ROV projects really want to see what's over the horizon or around the next sharp curve.
If you read certain analyst reports you could be forgiven for thinking that the Internet of Things (IoT) is only about wearable technology. You could be forgiven, but you'd be quite wrong.
A Maker Faire is a good place to be reminded of how interesting things can be when intelligence is inserted into products and processes where it had never been a factor before.
Agriculture is one of the fields rapidly embracing IoT. Whether the specific use-case is irrigation, chemical application, or animal husbandry, embedded computers are providing better data and finer control than ever before. If people who make their living on a tractor can dive deeply into the Internet of Things, the odds are good your company can find something there to take advantage of.
There are a lot of embedded processors on the market, each with its dedicated corps of developers. In the world of makers, though, there are two that reign supreme: Raspberry Pi and Arduino. If you're going to take advantage of the maker movement, you need to be fluent in both.
Each platform is inexpensive, so it's fascinating to see how people use each. Raspberry Pi is at the heart of many communication and media server applications. It runs many complex solutions. Arduino is simple and cheap, so it tends to be in single-process controllers at the outer edge of the application -- though you can hear lots of stories of the multi-thousand line programs people write to control complex mechanisms and processes with these low-end systems.
If you can "speak" RasPi and Arduino you can understand how makers built their projects -- and you can talk with them in a way that wins you more respect right out of the gate.
We've all seen the annual "Best Colleges and Universities" lists. They carry with them the implication that you must receive your degree from a particular school or it doesn't really count. Enterprise IT doesn't tend to be quite so rigid in its drive for credentials, but there are still those who feel that a particular background or education is required for someone to be a good worker in IT. Maker Faire says, "Not so much."
At Make Faire you'll find programmers, technicians, and designers from many different walks of life and educational backgrounds. My favorites, to be honest, are the 4-H kids who are working on robotics problems. I have to say that it looks much cooler than the livestock judging that was part of my 4-H youth. Really.
IT departments, on the whole, have a diversity problem. Women, in particular, haven't been going into IT or other fields in numbers proportional to their presence in the general population. You wouldn't know that, though, to walk through the crowd at a Maker Faire.
I didn't do any sort of scientific survey, but a casual look around the Orlando Maker Faire showed many women in the crowd, and faces from nearly every part of earth behind tables showing off projects. The maker community isn't merely a meritocracy. It's an aggressively welcoming meritocracy.
Let me explain: People do care about how well you do things at a Maker Faire. In general, though, they recognize that everyone has to start somewhere. So the various tribes welcome those getting started in their chosen technology, regardless of where they're coming from.
That last part is important, too: Any area of "making" can be a point of entry to another. That means paper crafters are welcomed into robotics clubs, and embedded control geeks get lessons on knitting. It really is how everything grows.
Some people dismiss makers as "mere" hobbyists, and for some the creation is a hobby. It's a hobby, though, that has some of the biggest players in enterprise IT taking notice.
At the Orlando Maker Faire, HP had a booth. It's easy to find enterprise IT firms with booths at many of the larger Maker Faires. Vendor interest by itself doesn't mean that the market is legitimate, but it doesn't hurt -- especially when you find so many of these vendors' enterprise customers coming to Maker Faire to scratch technology itches that go beyond the 9-to-5.
I've heard IT executives say that they'd rather hire attitude and aptitude than credentials. If you think that's a good plan for building an IT team, you definitely need to head to your nearest Maker Faire. If you've hit a point at which you'd just like to get some technology inspiration to help break the mental logjam that can hit even the best manager, a Maker Faire can be the place to go.
Have you been to a Maker Faire? Are you planning to visit one soon? Let us know -- and let us know if you're a maker on your own time. I'll be in the comments section below talking about my making passions and plans. See you there.
Some people dismiss makers as "mere" hobbyists, and for some the creation is a hobby. It's a hobby, though, that has some of the biggest players in enterprise IT taking notice.
At the Orlando Maker Faire, HP had a booth. It's easy to find enterprise IT firms with booths at many of the larger Maker Faires. Vendor interest by itself doesn't mean that the market is legitimate, but it doesn't hurt -- especially when you find so many of these vendors' enterprise customers coming to Maker Faire to scratch technology itches that go beyond the 9-to-5.
I've heard IT executives say that they'd rather hire attitude and aptitude than credentials. If you think that's a good plan for building an IT team, you definitely need to head to your nearest Maker Faire. If you've hit a point at which you'd just like to get some technology inspiration to help break the mental logjam that can hit even the best manager, a Maker Faire can be the place to go.
Have you been to a Maker Faire? Are you planning to visit one soon? Let us know -- and let us know if you're a maker on your own time. I'll be in the comments section below talking about my making passions and plans. See you there.
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