Sparkfun founder Nathan Siedle gave a great speech at Google the other day about history of the company and the new DIY electronics movement that they (and we) are part of. The full text and slides are here, but here's just one brief excerpt:
"We were talking over lunch one day, and he says “You know what? SparkFun is like Home Depot.” You go to Home Depot, and you walk down the store and there's wood and there's screws and there's plaster there. But you don't expect to see a bathroom on the shelf that you can just pick up and put in your cart, right? They may have demos. They may have different things showing you how you could redo your bathroom, but they don't sell you the bathroom. That's how it works at SparkFun. We don't sell you a cell phone. We don't sell you a laser pointer. We show you the bits and pieces that you could string together to build something interesting, and we educate you how to do it. And we encourage people to do it themselves."
Comments
I would be interested in hearing others thoughts on the DIY movement and how they are fostering open and creative environments in their community. The city I live in isn't a hot spot for electronics DIY but I would like to find and connect with those people who are interested.