Institute For The Future

Technology Horizons conference

Everyone at the Institute is at the Technology Horizons conference today on "The Future of Making." It's rather different from our usual events. Conference attendees started trickling in yesterday at the Maker Faire, and we put them through a couple exercises that encouraged them to spend some time exploring the Faire and talking to people. Today is more like our usual conferences: we're combining talks and roundtables, with exercises in which conference attedees think through the implications of what we're talking about.

Today's list of guests is also unusually interesting. Joshua Kauffman from Regional talked about DIY in Cuba (here's a video of a similar talk they gave at Stanford recently); Dale Dougherty (founder and editor of Make) and David Pescovitz (who divides his time between IFTF, Boingboing.net, and Make) talked about "the Maker mindset." Our panel on the future of open source included Bunny Huang (creator of the Chumby), Dan Morrill (Google Android), and Brian Carver (an IP attoruney at Fenwick & West). After lunch, we got into Citizen R&D with Eric Wilhelm (founder of Instructables), Hugh Rienhoff (founder of MyDaughtersDNA.org), Jeane Frost (founder of PatientsLikeMe.com), and Gary Wolf (a senior contributor at Wired, and now working on a project on the quantified self). Now, Mark Hatch (COO of TechShop), David ten Have (founder and CEO of New Zealand-based Ponoko), and Liam Casey (founder and CEO of PCH International) are talking about lightweight manufacturing.

One of the things a long-time attendee pointed out recently is that

lots of people at our conferences get up, wander around, grab another

cup of coffee, and sit wherever they want; unlike some conferences,

where they expect you to be in your seat all the time, but don't

necessarily invest a lot of time on presentations, we spend long hours

rehearsing, and assume that people are going to listen, even when

they're in the back of the room stretching.