March 1, 2014 marked the first grand opening of the Open Night Forum in the College of Design and Innovation。Located in 281 Fuxin Road, near Angry Bird Park in front of the newly-furnished building of D&I, Fablab was open in September 2013. After half a year of planning, Open Night Forum is now officially open to public. Every Saturday at 7 there will be a series of transboundary discussion on the internet revolution, such as interdiscipline, open design, 3d printing, and innovation of makers etc. The first Open Night Forum began with the introduction by DING Junfeng, founder of Fablab and Director of the open innovation lab. Speakers are LI Dawei, founder of Hackerspace in Shanghai, which is the first makers’ space in Shanghai;ZHU Haoxiang, one of the founders of DFROBOT;Stanley, founder of Freematic and alumni of Tongji University. Prof. LOU Yongqi, dean of the College of Design and Innovation, Tongji University gave open summary at the end of the open night.
Introduction of Fab Lab Shanghai
The Open Night Forum began with the introduction by DING Junfeng, founder of Fablab and Director of the open innovation lab. He talked about Fablab itself, current situation its future.
FabLab originated from the Center for Bits and Atoms in MIT. Now it is a popular experimental platform of micro fabrication with 200 similar organizations worldwide. Fab Lab Shanghai is the first open innovation lab in China with the thought of open source, new makers’ space going with the current trend. It is rooted in education, further open to society and exploring possibilities of business models. We are about to make the accreditation of Fablab international and establish all-round membership including students, teachers, consultants and so on. We have already listed out the equipment list aligned with the international standards, and will finish purchasing in the following weeks.
Ding said that Open is a verb, which was seen as opening the door of open nights. Open is also our attitude, with which we make innovation together. What’s more, open is also shows our philosophy of a series of interdisciplinary activities with open design as principle.
DFRobot and the trend of the maker
DFRobot is world-leading supplier of open source hardware and robots, with the largest online makers’ society. It is founded by Chen (Ricky) YE and organized by XIA Qing and some other core members. At first they established an online robot society for robot lovers and explore a series of robot products. Though the first trial is not a great success, they accidentally became the first company in China to import Arduino.
Arduino is an open source electronics platform, including hardware and software(Arduino IDE), perfect for artists, designers and people who are interested in interaction. Using this platform, everyone is able to realize his ideas after simple practice.
Now, DFRobot owns abundant source of hardware and education, offering support to both individuals and organizations worldwide. DFRobot has by far produced and sold more than 700 open source hardware and robotic products, offering easily developed prototype for makers, educators and R&D people.
DFRobot, at the same time, plays an active role in the international makers’ system. As few pioneers in China, it has attended a few times Maker Faire. Maker Faire is the largest DIY gathering in the world organized by the American magazine Make. It is a stage of creativity, innovation and innovation, a celebration of the culture of Maker and also a weekend carnival for families. The first Maker Faire was in California, Us in 2006, Shortly in just 5 years, Maker Faire in US has become an international faire attracting more than 700 makers competing and 170,000 audience.
In 2013,DFRobot , with other organizations, hosted the Shanghai Maker Faire, attacting around 30,000 people. Now DFRobot is a high-tech firm in China leading in R&D, producing and selling open source hardware, robotic products and 3d printers. It has gained worldwide fame and has won several honors in the international market.
They believe makers are like ecological system, which will have eternal energy in promoting technological progress.
Freematics and its way to kickstarter
The founder of Freematics is the speaker today – Stanley, who graduated from Tongji University in Electronic Engineering in 2008.
Actually before the year of 2011, he didn’t know anything about open source. The very first time he encountered this areas was that he was collecting information for a racing car project. He came across Arduino in Taobao and found it was just what he needed. The simplicity of Arduino enables him to realize his thoughts rapidly.
Not long, he could already realize using Arduino to combine wireless transmission modular instead of traditional way of mobile phones and wifi, and thus he solve the limitation of transmission distance and a few more problems, This excited him!
After a period of exploration, he began his own Freematics distance telemetering project, aiming at making vehicular networking technology a free project and thus enabling people get the statistics when driving the car more easily.
Vehicular networking technology is a popular vehicle-mounted computer system using wireless communication technology. Its major functions are analyzing and transmitting statistic. It is a comprehensive product of wireless communication technology, GPS, network communication technology and vehicle-mounted computer, regarded as the future star of vehicle technology.
While in Stanley’s eyes, this is a commercialized product starting from play. He first tried selling in his own website. One year ago, he entered the crowdfunding platform- Kickstarter.
Kickstarter started in New York in April 2009. It is a crowdfunding platform of creative projects. It aims at supporting and stimulating innovative, creative activities. Through collecting small amount of money from mass internet platform, it enables innovative people get the funding they need so as to make their dreams come true. It operates simply and effectively: one part of the platform is people who want to create something innovative, while the other part is people who are willing to pay and wait for the realization of the innovation. The innovative activities include: music, web design, graphic design, animation, writing and other activities that create things and influence others. Everyone can give certain amount of money to a certain project while the website only takes the lowest commission.
It is a smooth way all along from interest to the ideal generating, to the products and finally the success of commercialization.
Freematics system can be used in several areas, from home car situation to the supervision of racing cars. It can meet need of different levels according to the accuracy of the hardware.
From maker to startup
XinCheJian is the first Chinese-born Hackerspace, with high popularity in the field. XinCheJian is an open society of hardware specialists, electric artists, designers, diy lovers and people who are interested in making things. It offers experimental space and basic equipment. People spend their spare time here. Everyone can disassemble electronics or physical objects and can share good thoughts and make good design together,
XinCheJian offers working space for people to realize their projects. It also hosts seminars and training courses including electronics, coding, robots and some other themes. Besides, it is also a funding and managing platform to support people realize their own products and projects.
The founder, LI Dawei didn’t talk about his own story, instead, he shared with us many stories in XinCheJian, the people and their achivements. Some of them are high school students, some are high school teachers, some are university students and some are white collars with stable work. Some are even coal mine boss from Brazil. Everyone takes part in the activities and make their own wonders.
In this new era, related knowledge of production and electronics should go closer to our daily life and thus enable more and more people to play technology.
As the Chinese characteristic of open source, LI Dawei said, copycat mobiles are the start of Chinese characteristics. Long ago, if a big brand put forward a new mobile, Chinese factories always imitate and make their own. But now, there is no secret in copycat business, everyone is copying and copycatting each other and forms a virtuous production cycle. A lot of copycat company walks ahead of many big brand and put forward cutting-edge functions. Innovation is the driving force of copycat and open source while makers are the first step to innovation.
Chris Anderson, author of long tail one said, copycat is the start of innovation and progress. After open source of technology, markets will be dominated by niche market and design, which is the future trendd.
At last, LI Dawei recommended a book,《创新民主化》. The book itself is open source and everyone can download free PDF version from the internet.
沪ICP备05032680号