 Please join me in welcoming David Byne. Good evening. So this is really exciting for me. I'm David with OpenROV. And I was so excited to get this invitation to come speak at the library because I actually wrote a good chunk of the book here. I used to live down the street and found this to be a really productive place to come and get some writing done. I would go work at Tech Shop down the street and then come here and write about everything I learned. So it's a real privilege to be here. And I want to talk about a few things about making. But I've also learned a few things. So the book came out three months ago. And I've been around kind of talking to different people about their projects and what they're working on and how they can get involved. And I want to broaden it to more than just making and really make this talk about dreaming and about friendship. Because that's really what my story has been. And I think it's an important component to what this whole maker movement really is. And I want to start with this quote from Kanye West, who I think is totally crazy. But I really like this quote that I read from him in The New York Times about dreaming properly. And it just kind of jumped off the page. Before I get started, I just want to get a quick show of hands. How many people have heard of the maker movement? OK, so everybody. How many people have been to a maker fair? OK, so only about half. So that's great. That means you all have this kind of opportunity coming up here in May of this year to go and attend a maker fair and really see what this whole thing is about. And that's what happened to me four years ago now. Someone told me, he said, have you ever heard a maker fair? And I said, no, I don't know what it is. I said, well, you've got to go and you've got to check it out. And so I did. I showed up at this maker fair and I think it was, it must have been 2009 now. And I was completely blown away. I mean, there were this huge crowd of people building all sorts of things that I never could have imagined. Robots and 3D printers and working with electronics. And it was just, the whole scene to me was bizarre. It was out of this world. And I was captivated. And the thing that really grabbed my attention was the people. Regardless of all these cool things that they were making, I was most impressed by how passionate they were and how excited they were about what they were doing. I knew I wanted that. At the time, I was working in an office and I had a job where I was writing a lot of emails and thought it was important in doing all these things. But I knew I wanted to have that passion that I saw that these makers had. And so I didn't know what to do, but I kind of left that event thinking, okay, somehow I got to get involved in that. And it wasn't until I met this guy. This is a photo taken a little bit later. This is Eric Stackpole. He's one of my best friends and co-conspirator at OpenROV. He's, this is the kind of guy he is. I always like to use this photo because he went to Antarctica last year and he was packing a tuxedo. I was like, why are you packing a tuxedo? And he's like, just trust me. And just so we could take this photo. And this is exactly the type of guy he is. He's just really, really thoughtful, adventurous. And I met him three years ago, almost to this day exactly. And we met at a hostel in Fort Mason. Mutual friend said, you know, you gotta meet this guy. I think you'll really like him. He's building a submarine in his garage. I said, that sounds bizarre. You know, I have to meet him. And we got introduced and he started telling me this story about this underwater cave that supposedly had gold at the bottom of this underwater cave in Northern California. There was this gold rush-era robbery and this gold was thrown down the cave and no one had been to the bottom of it. And that's why he was building this underwater robot to go explore. And he pulled this out and showed it to me. And this was in the first hour of us talking and my jaw was on the floor and I just knew that I wanted to be a part of that. I mean, this was that same feeling that I had seen at Maker Faire and that same thing that was missing from my life at the time. And so I said, Eric, you gotta let me tag along. I wanna help you build this robot. I wanna go to this cave. I wanna be a part of it. And he was like, okay, great, sounds good. And so what we did was that robot never worked. It was an early prototype that never functioned. It was kind of a symbol of where we were going. But he let me create a website. We called it OpenROV. And I said, I think we should make this thing open source and invite other people on the internet to help us get to our goal, to help us make this robot. And see if we can make this a bigger thing than just about us. So we did. We created this website called OpenROV and what it is is just a forum. And I talk about in the book all the different platforms that you can easily get started and create one of these things. And the barriers to getting these things going are so low. It's really, what it really is is just starting a discussion. And that's what happened at that hostel when Eric and I first met, is we shared our dream of having really low cost underwater robots and being able to explore for ourselves. We started dreaming together. And that was important. And also this stage when we had these forums was really important because it was just Eric and I at the beginning. But steadily we began to meet more people who were interested, people who had different advice. And we'd always invite them to a website to contribute ideas and concepts and maybe other adventure ideas. We just invited people to be a part of this dream. And so we kept doing it. And for many, many months it was just us on the forums, no big deal. But then we mounted this expedition to go back to the cave. We finally had a robot to the point where we could go and we could do this. And we were so excited. I mean, it was just us and a few friends. But we did get the, we ended up getting the interest of the New York Times. And the New York Times wrote a story about it. And all of a sudden it was, it exploded. We got, we started getting emails and messages from people all over the world who said, that robot looks really cool. I wanna get one. You know, how can I get one? How can I build my own? And we had been publishing all the designs online but we decided to run a Kickstarter project. And we thought, okay, well we'll offer these kits for the robot and put it on Kickstarter and see if anyone wants one. And we set our funding goal at $20,000. We thought, you know, if we get $20,000 that would be a big success and we can get a number of these kits out there and we raise the $20,000 in like two hours. So we pressed, you know, you press submit on your project and then it goes on the internet and all of a sudden you see the dollar signs going up and it's, at first you're really excited. You know, it's thrilling. And then it keeps going up and then you realize, oh man, we really gotta make all of these things. So we ended up raising $111,000 which a year and a half ago was a lot of money on Kickstarter. Nowadays it's like run of the mill. A lot of projects raise that much money. It's not as impressive, but for us that was a lot. I mean, we were working out of Eric's garage at the time. We were working out of Tech Shop. I was living in my car. I mean, that was a significant deal. And then Eric was going to Antarctica. So he had another job working on ROVs at the time. He had worked out, but anyways, he had to go to Antarctica. And so I was left to make all these things and that was so daunting. It was one of the loneliest, most difficult moments of my life is getting all of these boxes of parts and trying to manage where all these things are coming from from all over the world and then turning around and then shipping these out to our Kickstarter backers. And luckily we had this great community of people who've been really supportive and we did get these things together. A lot of the community ended up showing up, helping me pack boxes, helping me make robots and getting them out the door. So we figured it out and we started shipping these things around the world and now they've been to all these different corners of the globe and it's so exciting to get these pictures back, but more importantly, it's exciting to meet all these other people. We feel so privileged to be a part of this, to be a part of this community of ocean explorers, of people who are curious, who have different shipwrecks or meteorites or sunken ships or whatever. They have these wild stories and they're gonna go out and they're gonna try and find them. And for us it's just so fun to be a part of. So we're not getting rich, we're not the richest oceanic mini-subbuilders in the world but we are having the most fun. And the people who contribute to our community are getting a lot out of the process because it's not just a product. You get this kid and you're also a part of this community of people who are building this infrastructure. Nothing like this has really ever existed for ocean exploration and we're doing it. It's a network of garage enthusiasts putting this thing together. And this is the latest one. So the robot is moving so fast. The development is really moving along. The software is coming along with a lot of the different hardware components. This is the latest version 2.5. It's something that's fun to look at and to play with but it also is fun because of what it stands for. And it stands for the thousands of people who have taken the time to be a part of it. Okay, so that has all happened in the span of like two years. I went from not having a job to living in my car to all of a sudden working on this robot company and having this community of DIY ocean explorers who I'm a part of. That's a big jump. And so what did I learn? And I wrote, I started writing about this from Make Magazine and the first thing I learned is that this is not about DIY. I mean, when you first get into this you think, wow, these makers are really gifted people. They know a lot of things that I don't know. They could build these things in their garage. They have a lot of skills and knowledge. But I didn't have that. I was kind of a desk jockey. And I learned very quickly that this isn't about doing anything yourself. This is about being open to doing things with other people. It's about getting advice. It's about sharing ideas. Helping people when you can and having people help you when they can. So that's a big important idea. It's about do it together, D-I-T. The other thing I learned is that these are not my grandfather's tools. I figured this was something where if I wanted to start making, I would have to either go back to school getting an engineering degree or maybe I would have to be a computer scientist or all these different things. What I found was that these tools, these mostly computer controlled machines, so CNC machines, like 3D printers are something you hear a lot about. Laser cutters are another exceptional tool. The CNC mill machines. These things are all very accessible. I mean, they're at Noisebridge, which is a hacker space in the mission. You guys can all go there on, I think Wednesday nights is their open house and you can go there and you can learn how to use these machines. You can go to TechShop, also down the street, learn how to use these tools. These things are really becoming accessible and you could take a two hour class, a three hour class and learn enough to be dangerous. And that's the one thing I picked up quickly is you're never gonna learn everything. You're not gonna learn how to use all these tools, but that shouldn't stop you from getting started. That once you have seen what's possible inside the shop, you've seen what these different tools can do, then you know what's possible and you learn it as you need to and you figure out which people to talk to because other people have the information. They have the technique. They can help you get things done. So it's kind of this idea of just in time learning is something that Neil Gershinfeld talked about. And from the very beginning, I only wanted to learn, I didn't want to learn everything, I just wanted to learn enough to be dangerous and I think that's a really important idea is that a little bit of knowledge goes a long way in opening up all these new possibilities. Really you can kind of chart this new trajectory for your life really and now is a perfect time to get involved because the tools are still kind of nascent and the communities are just forming and just coming together. The opportunity is really, it's wonderful right now. It's a really opportune time to jump in. Someone had this chart when I was getting started and showed it to me and I thought it was really important. Obviously there's a lot of stuff that you just don't know and even more stuff that you don't know you don't know and learning enough to be dangerous is really about expanding that yellow circle. It's about expanding the stuff that you know it's out there but you don't know how to do it. Just kind of broadening your world of what's possible. And so I had all this advice that I had been writing down of all these things I was learning and I decided that I wanted to turn that thing into a little book, into a guide for someone else who was in, maybe my position a few years ago who was in this kind of office or in this job that they didn't like or have this idea that they want to get into the world but didn't know where to start. That this whole thing seemed too intimidating. So I thought I'd put it together in a little guide book and that's what I did. I put the project again on Kickstarter. I said I want to create this book and several people got behind it and then I had to write the book which again shouldn't put yourself in those kind of positions but I did and it came out in September and I'm really proud of it and I'm proud of all the people who have participated in this and are excited to get their own projects into the world and are excited to participate in this maker movement because I think it's really important. I think this, I'd grown up in this world where there was television and ads and everything gets done for you and for me this was a really important transition. This was kind of moving from this world where you're just kind of a passive consumer of things to an active participant, to a maker and I think that's what this maker movement is really about and I really hope that you guys are interested and excited to make that first step because it's really the most important thing. One other thing I wanted to add. I just got this email. So the thing about writing a book is you unleash your ideas in the world and they're the best ideas you have but there's always criticism and so I've gotten some feedback of people who've been, some people have really liked it and some people have been critical. I got this email the other day and I wanted to address some of the criticism of the book because I think this is important because I think this is worth clarifying. Here were his three bones to pick with the book. One is David, you joined a project that was already underway. Eric was already building this robot. Second thing was you live in the Bay Area, the Bay Area has a huge advantage over other places in the world and then three, you became a maker with the support of Make Magazine and all these people were reading your blog, you're a zero to maker blog. I thought all of these things are totally fair but I also want to address them and say I did join a project that was already underway but there are so many projects that are underway. I mean, it's a big, you know, by deciding to become a part of this community you can show up at these makerspaces and join any of these projects. You know, we welcome anyone to jump into the OpenRV project and start sharing what they're doing online. We love that. I don't think you need to feel like you're starting from zero. You know, you shouldn't feel like you have to do this all yourself. You could be a part of some of these other projects. We're all standing on the shoulders of giants. There's all these people who've created these tools and created these pathways and opportunities for us. It's great to take advantage of those things. So that's what I think about that one. Second, you live in the Bay Area. All of you live in the Bay Area. You guys are all very privileged to be in this place because I do think there is something special about charting new ideas and making them happen here but I do think this thing is spreading all over the world and we're seeing this in our community. There's people in every corner of the globe who are participating in our projects and all of these open source hardware projects would tell you the same thing. Also, there's maker spaces popping up everywhere. There are local mini maker fairs that are springing up all over the place. There was just the hundredth mini maker fair last weekend. It's something that's spreading beyond the Bay Area and if there isn't a maker movement in your, or a maker fair or a maker space in your community, you know, it's a great time to get your neighbors organized, get your friends organized and start something like this. The third thing is that I was privileged because I got to write for Make Magazine and of course I think that's true. I think it was a really big honor and we were really lucky but I also think that everybody has that opportunity. I mean, Make Magazine loves writing about makers and the projects that they're doing and I think it's important that if you see what's happening here that you know that you also have the support of Make Magazine. You also have the support of the maker community. We all want you to start your own project. Nobody, no, if you have an idea in your head, a dream, we want, everybody wants to see that come to life and I think that's important to keep in mind is that everyone's rooting for you. I'm happy to teach everything I've learned. Most of all my best ideas are in the book but I think you'll find that with the maker movement is everybody is really supportive and encouraging of what you can dream of and what you want to build. And then just to end on this, that a lot of people are probably wondering if we found any gold in the cave. We didn't. But I always like to end this is that we didn't find any gold but we found this treasure which was this community of people and this experience of sharing this dream with all these other folks. So that's all and if you guys have any questions I'm happy to answer questions. Ideas are kind of cheap in a way because there's plenty of them but implementing the idea is a whole different story. So how do you, how do you filter the ideas? Is there a process? Because even your own ideas, the first time maybe isn't the best thing. You need to go through a process of filtering it and refining it and editing the idea. So what is that process about? I'll go back to the first slide. I think it's really, it's more about just having a good idea. It's about dreaming properly. It's about having an idea that really comes from something that you wanna see in the world. I see a lot of people who say, oh I think there's a big market for this. Then I'm gonna go and create that. I think that I could sell 100,000 of X. Those projects never work out because they don't have the right spirit. They don't have the right soul. I mean the thing that you want, that you just can't live without and nobody else makes it or it doesn't exist, that's the thing you should be making. Even if it's just for you. So starting with the right idea which comes from something that either solves a big problem you're having or it's just something you want is the first step. And then it's about inviting people. It's about finding the people around here and saying, hey, what do you think of this? It's about showing up at the local makerspace and saying, well I have this idea, I've started prototyping this way but I don't know if that's gonna work. What do you think? And those are the four most powerful words in bringing an idea to life is what do you think? Like you, I guess, joined the tech shop recently. Wanted to get into some other stuff. And I'm a little daunted, particularly about electronics. I never built anything with logic circuits or computer control. Yeah, if you walk into tech shop or if you walk into a makerspace and it's filled with projects and it's filled with these electronics and that is scary. There is that barrier of fear and I think everybody has it and it's really natural. You can learn it. With everything you learn, there is going to be work. No doubt about it. I think what I've found is that setting myself up in a position where I have to learn it. Like saying, okay, we wanna build this underwater robot and now we have to figure out this part of it. Kind of raising the stakes almost and then inviting other people to be a part of it. So I'm still terrible with electronics, still terrible with programming. I don't think I'm a good maker, but what I think is important is that for me it was just a willingness to be a part of something. And I think that's what we're finding is that one is these things are approachable, the classes, the experts, they're all accessible online now. But two is the internet has kind of changed things where you can connect to people much quicker and kind of leverage what you do know to be a part of something that you want to do, almost like trading your skills. Sort of a special idea. I was curious if there are groups of people thinking about cooperatives and applying the idea that you can have a bunch of potters who get together and they make pottery together and then they sell the stuff they make in a shared shop and each potter is an owner of the cooperative together and it's easy for them to come and go. Are there people who are doing this in the maker movement and also in the kind of the version that you have where you're actually trying to do this at scale? Yeah. You know, there's some things that are cooperative like. One of the things that we're seeing is open source hardware, right? So people are making hardware open source. All of our design files are online. You can go and download them and make your own robot. That'd be wonderful. I'd love that. So there's forms of that. I mean sharing is rampant. I think there's a kind of a widespread realization that we need to rethink what value is and because I don't have a lot of money, I live on a little sailboat now and you know what? My life is just really rich because I have this huge community and I get to invite it on these adventurers with them all over the world and I talk about this a lot. This goes back to your question too is Eric and I, when we started this, we said, okay, you know, even though it's a business, we're gonna maximize our return on adventure. We're gonna make sure we're having the most fun and that everybody who jumps in here is gonna have a lot of fun and I think that's important for us and I think that new models will start to emerge but I think it's really important to think about value and regardless of whether you call yourself a nonprofit or a co-op or a business, those are all just structural issues. I think that the real focus has to be on creating value. Do you think about something in terms of its hackability? Yeah. Like before you buy it? Sure. And when you look at a product or things that you just, like your toaster breaks, I'm gonna take apart my toaster. Sure. Washing machine, like you didn't ever think about that before but now you do. Yeah, totally. There's a section in the book about fixing things and I have to tell a little story about how my blender broke and I just realized it was a totally cheap blender and I fixed it and I took it apart and put it back together and it worked again but I just realized, you know, like you should have more valuable things. You know, you should think about how things are made and that's one thing I noticed with me. I mean, this was very early on and I started this as I started noticing how things are made. I started understanding and wondering how things were made and really kind of getting, putting a mental picture of the manufacturing process and where all this stuff comes from and yeah, it's the provenance of things, the story of things, the soul of things. That all really, really matters and I think like as a culture, we need to wake up to that, that we're creating this world. We're putting the meaning into things or not putting the meaning into things and we need to decide what kind of world we wanna live in. I hope it's a meaningful one. You mentioned there was a shop called the Tech Shop nearby that we could go and look at people doing this, making these items. Where could you tell us more about that shop? Sure, thank you. So there's a number of these physical spaces. So the maker movement is an idea but it's also manifesting in these physical maker spaces around the world and they take a lot of different forms. There's a number of different shapes and sizes here in the Bay Area. One of them is Tech Shop. Tech Shop is the most like commercial, it's like a fitness club but they've got a bunch of tools and it's more expensive. It's like a hundred bucks or something like that a month but they have millions of dollars worth of tooling there. I mean all the CNC machining, all the training, all these things that you can really prototype just about anything there. There's other spaces in the Bay Area too like Noise Bridge is a good example. It's a maker space, it's a cooperative model where you can just show up. You don't have to, they're kind of open and welcome but it's a smaller community. It's called Noise Bridge, it's in the mission. So you mentioned that you went through a time where you had lost your job and you were living in your car and you're kind of going through a transitional phase? Sure. And I'm in a similar position right now and I was wondering if you could kind of share your insights about what kind of challenges that you faced or how you managed living in the Bay Area kind of in a transitional period like that. Yeah, it's really hard. I'm like emotional thinking about it because when you lose your job or when you lose anything, you find yourself questioning things. You question your value as a human. I vividly remember walking through the streets just going what am I gonna do? And it was terrifying for a lot, for a good amount of time, for months and months and months. I was really scared. And one day I had this idea, okay, what do I really wanna do? And I had this idea of being a DIY industrial designer and that's when I really schemed up this whole zero to maker thing. I was like, I don't have any money to do this but I'm gonna start taking these classes and writing about it and doing all these things. And there was this glimmer of hope that maybe that's the right way to do it. Maybe there's a way there and really positive things started to happen after I made that commitment. And it was little things. It was showing up and woodworking one day or just these small victories. You know, like, so one day you start with something and then you finish it and it's something else. You see the progress. It builds this kind of confidence that there's forward momentum. You know, I learned how to do this today where I learned about this tool today. And those small victories were huge, were really important. And I just started stringing those together and open ROV. I mean, it's great. I mean, it's cool to come up here and talk about this like there's a book and now we have a company and all these people and it's wonderful. But it was not always like that. You know, there were moments where it was very, very bleak. It's never been a better time to learn these tools. And if there's something you're interested in, just find someone who knows it and just hang around them. Hang around until they teach you. And keep doing that until you've learned several different things and continue to dream big because it's really possible. And really amazing things can happen if you keep your head down straight and say, okay, this is an opportunity. This is, because you only get a few windows of time where you can change things in a big way. That was a really long thing, but that means a lot to me. You guys, thank you so much. I really enjoyed the conversation.