Erik's Blog: Discussing open source innovation, personal fabrication and a ...

So much is happening, that I hardly have time to blog it all! In the meantime I've finished my thesis, presented at FSCONS and graduated! And if that wasn't enough, last week I demo'ed for two days promoting the technological-studies at the "Career Day" (or rather, promoting having your own DIY-tech project where you learn even faster!), had a few newspaper interviews while spending virtually all my spare time on the Ultimaker (mostly working on the 5D interpreter support for ReplicatorG). We will have an Ultimaker announcement coming up, real soon now^TM!

FSCONS 2010

Below are the slides of my presentation at FSCONS in Gotherburg, Sweden (description of the talk, here). It was one of those special events where there was a lot of variety in the people attending, but still they all had a special thing for free and open source software. In all, it was really well arranged and for me it was a great opportunity to talk about open source hardware and the role of personal fabricators while at the same time allowing me to practice for my thesis' defense the monday afterwards. Moreover, I had a really nice time with Johan Söderberg and his friends, staying at his place, for too few days, really! (Gotherburg in 20 minutes!)

Graduation!

On the 9th of November I graduated!


These were the slides of the defense presentation, it refers to the notion of public goods which open source communities often create, and how they provide an alternative to for-profit dominant ecosystems.




The thesis was awarded a 9 out of 10, which is very rarely given. Moreover, Prof. O'Callaghan told me it was the best written thesis he had seen in the 13 years as a professor at the University! That's probably the best kind of recognition I could hope for for this work! It wasn't an easy job, at all, but this makes me look back at it with satisfaction. Of course I have all of the RepRap & Makerbot community to thank for, because the survey allowed me to substantiate my claims (statistical significance)! I won't forget this! Adrian told me it was the first serious research project done on the RepRap project. It will definitely not be the last!

The PDF of the thesis can be found here.

Now, on to the next adventure:

From Ultimaker Protobox