Fluid Forms is interested in cheap rapid prototyping and 3D-printing solutions to test new ideas and to experiment with. That’s why we’ve been looking forward to the launch of the Desktop Factory. But I still don’t even know what kind of material it’s going to use. (Do you know?)  Quite a while ago the announcement of the “world 1st 3D-printer under USD 5.000,-” was such a big shout out in the media – and we’re still waiting. Another machine I’m very interested in buying would be the LOM-machine by Mcor Technologies. I signed up for their newsletter, but I didn’t get any information so far. Today I dropped an email so they know that I really want to buy such a machine. Hope I’ll get some information soon.

Out there are many other creative coding and open design communities like processing, generatorX, many universities and artist waiting for cheap solutions to bring their ideas to physical life. They don’t need a perfect or flashy 3D-printer and neither do we. Much more important is that the solution is (a) cheap to buy / make and (b) cheap to operate and maintain. If it can (c) be hacked / improved easily and there’s (d) a community behind to ask for help, it’s even better.

The open source 3D-printing solutions makerbot, reprap or fab@home are obviously following Paul Graham’s famous six principles for making new things: Find (a) simple solutions (b) to overlooked problems (c) that actually need to be solved, and (d) deliver them as informally as possible, (e) starting with a very crude version 1, then (f) iterating rapidly.

And I think that’s absolutely the right way, because we are going to order either a makerbot or a reprap machine. Does anyone have experience with both machines and knows about advantages and can recommend one of them? (Even though the Makerbot isn’t officialy launched yet)

If the Desktop Factory is launched or I can get hold of a Mcor fine, but meanwhile we’ll be happyly using the open source versions.

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Imagine a situation where you are standing in front of a big audience to present your flash of genious…

Pic by Randomness

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…with the dynamic of an old, rusty out-of-order washing machine like this one:

Pic by dochotshot

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No wonder if you see reactions, that can be compared to the following:

Pic by Baptiste Pons

SO WHAT TO DO???

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I bet you know that kind of reaction, do you? To me this happened only once but nonetheless I thought:

“Why not giving it a try and search for some inspiration to make my own presentations better?”

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And what I found is absolutely worth sharing with you:

Garr Reynolds’ book “Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on presenation Design and Delivery”.

I am halfway through the book and it’s great fun and inspiring to follow his ideas. Deconstructing nowadays (bad) PowerPoint/Keynote presentations he shows simple ways to make one’s own presentation sticky.

And your ideas are worth to stick in your audience’s minds, aren’t they?

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Have a glance on the biggest Earth Table we produced so far for one of our customers… Oh yeah, I love this piece!

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And the best is still to come:

Soon You Can Design Your Own Earth Table On Fluid Forms!

You want to know when it will hit the road? On the day our new website goes online…that can only be a question of years

Why not following us on twitter or checking out the Fluid Forms flickr account in the meantime?

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On Tuesday @hanneswalter and me had the chance to poke around in the location we chose for the first Austrian DesignCamp. Palais Kees is a palace (!) which was used (occupied) by the Austrian military before. It will be (has to be *lol*) renovated after the DesignCamp.
I think 23th of May is gonna be AWESOME…

Don’t forget: sign up for the DesignCamp and post ideas for sessions!
Don’t forget under no circumstances: SPEAK ABOUT THE DESIGNCAMP
Thx to @famepix for contributing the logo!

Yep, the location is ready to rock! In the pics below, please focus on the fine selection of furniture already waiting for you…

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I have to commit that it took me various months to stumble uppon a great German online-magazine for individual products and user co-creation which is actually hosted “just around the corner” (since Fluid Forms is located in Austria). Hm, ok, let’s blame my monitoring tools for this faux pas

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egoo offers its readers a spezialized magazine with a lot of product tests, gift ideas and company reviews.

Check out their shop-index for all kinds of mass customizers offering custom tea, wallpapers, muesli and many more.

I think I will have a closer look on some of the companies listed. There are definately some I like to present to you…

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I have found some (worth to share with you) thoughts from Stephen (@s_t_e_p_h_e_n) hidden deep inside our (old) website:

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Cassius represents the direction in which we can steer our future. Cassius demonstrates that anyone can realize their ideas as physical objects.

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At present we have two hurdles.

• The first hurdle is that generative production machines do not yet enable us to produce anything we wish.
• The second hurdle is the difficulty of communicating an idea to a machine without first undergoing years of training. This second hurdle is addressed by Cassius.

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Before the industrial revolution we could go to a tradesman, a cabinet maker for example, and communicate our idea for a new table. These ideas would then be realized within boarders of our financial means and the skills of the tradesman. Upon the arrival of industrialized production we lost this freedom, to a large extent, in favor of prices that a larger portion of our population could afford.

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CASSIUS Punching Bag Design Interface from Fluidforms on Vimeo.

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In 1978 in “The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” we heard with pleasure and hope of a machine that could create something that is “almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea”. The machine, called a Replicator termed originally in “Star Trek” could, at a push of a button, synthesize food. This could be seen as the second generation of such machines. The third generation was presented in “The Star of the Unborn”. It was not a machine but a human, known as “The Worker”, who could turn ideas into reality.

Unless we really like bad tea the first generation was not much use to us. The second generation required special skills to program it and represents a similar situation to that in which we find ourselves now. The third generation is where Fluid Forms is working towards. In the Fluid Forms’ vision, the job of “The Worker” is performed by a combination of “Design Interfaces” and generative production machines.

As does the tradesman, the Design Interfaces maintain the borders represented by the capabilities of the production machines and gives us feedback relating to the price. As “The Worker” interprets our ideas, so too does the Design Interface: through its ease-of-use, it communicates our ideas to the production machines.

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