HarwareCon3 Educating the Maker Transition to Products
February 2015 – The first annual HardwareCon3 (conference, convention and connection) event was held at the Zero Net Energy (ZNE) center in San Leandro over the weekend of Feb 28-March 1. This first event was designed to help the members of the Marker movement and community move to the business community and product production. The education and conference portion of the event was focused on issues related to understanding the single piece prototype to production ramp. The convention portion had a community area with vendors in the space, companies giving pitches to VCs, and panel discussions on topics such as IP, offshoring, distribution and product launch. The program was designed to include schedule meet-up and collaboration time, as this is a key component of the Maker movement is the open community architecture.
The event opened is a keynote from community icon Carl Bass who is not only CEO of Autodesk but is a fellow Maker and builder. Carl is unique in that he has the opportunity to not only guide the industry’s leading software company driving creative design and realization community, but is an active member who has workshops in multiple media (wood, metal, plastics) in both his personal life and as an integral part of the Autodesk business to insure what they are creating as tools actually work for real work.
The Autodesk keynote focused on the new Fusion 360 system for design that has been released. As description from the Autodesk website “Fusion 360™ is a cloud-based 3D CAD/CAM tool for product development that combines industrial and mechanical design, collaboration, and machining in a single package. The tools in Fusion 360 enable fast and easy exploration of design ideas with an integrated concept-to-production toolset. “ The practical aspect on it is integrated multitool support and interoperability, open and for purchase library elements, built-in revision support and team collaboration tools, and it runs on PC, Mac, iOS and Android products so the input and control can be from a desk or a mobile device.
The idea of the product is enable the world of 3D design to a larger community, by allowing the cost and capability of a large CPU farm for running the tools and the complexity of peak demand licensing to be removed from the creative design process. The cost of access for the product is attractive to users as the base rate is $25/month. Continuing the Autodesk education policy, the product, like the balance of the Autodesk full product line, is available free of charge to students and educators on a multi-year basis. The Fusion 360 product is extended to include startups. Any company that is making under $100,00USD per year can obtain the licenses free to use on multiple platforms and people while they develop their product. It is an honor system procedure to transition to the $25/month paid model. The goal is it have makers transition to the business community and students transition to the working world, without having to invest in infrastructure costs at the start.
