 That's from Singapore. Very cool. Thank you for the warm welcome. I don't want to talk too much, because I don't want to bore you with too much, but I want to know a little bit more about what you are doing. It's very interesting for me, because as we have mentioned, one day in 2011, he showed up in the south of Switzerland with the whole family to come and attend the workshop, to learn about Arduino. And it was very interesting for us to see somebody coming from so far away to learn this thing. And so I'm very interested in the work that you have done to rally the makers here in in Singapore and have a space like this. And I think it's also very interesting that you are a teacher by training. And we were discussing today about how it is now important to start teaching this kind of stuff in schools, because when I started working on Arduino, I was in a master's degree for... I was teaching in a master's degree for designers, specifically interaction designers, so that the prototyping aspect is very important, and really kind of functioning prototype was a very important idea. And I guess when I was doing this, it wasn't such an obvious thing. Like in Italy, where I come from, it's very famous for design, but they tend to do non-really functioning prototypes. There were no designers kind of messing with electronics. They didn't deal with this kind of stuff. While it was much more of a northern European idea that designers should mess with electronics and mechanics and everything, they should be really kind of interested in using this kind of tools. And then we kind of realized that a lot of the tools... there is an interesting thing that happens in the world of technology that there is a strange resistance to make tools that simplify the life of grown-ups. Like if you're trying to make a tool for children, everybody says, oh, yeah, children, we need to make tools to teach children how to code. Everybody's trying to make robots to teach kids how to code. And there's like a thousand of these robots and they're all the same, because deep blue itself is good. As soon as you say, I want to make it easier for adults to understand about it, well, no. Now, grown-ups need to learn the right way, which normally means an incredibly old-fashioned way of teaching that's very theoretical that nobody gets interested in. And so it respects the number of people that have access to this technology. One of the ideas that I was very interested in is how do you create tools that enable everyday people to try to work with electronics creatively? There's also obviously a bit of a political element to this, because in the world that we live in, it's becoming completely digital. Everything is digital now. You do music with computers. You do cinema with computers. We do a lot of things with computers. And even like the most classic activities I've written, yesterday I was crossing the border from Malaysia into Singapore, and we had to carry a piece of electronics into the country. And the people I was with, they checked the customs on a mobile phone. They had a mobile app to clear customs, which for me is like, wow. That's like totally 21st century, you know? That if you crossed it into the border in Italy, they pulled out a piece of paper that was printed in 1912, and they pulled out the stampede noise. You crossed the border like you crossed the border 100 years before, no? So it's kind of like, I was like, wow, this place is really in the next century. I mean, we are technically in the 21st century, but a lot of countries are still stuck in the 20th century. They haven't made the transition yet. So one thing is that if the world where we live in, everything is digital, then who designs the technology that we use? Change is also the way that we live. And so if the number of people who are participating in innovating, in inventing things is limited to a smaller set of the population, then it means that a smaller group of people decides how we live our digital life and since our digital life and the real life is becoming very one thing, then basically they decide how we live our lives. So clearly we need a lot more people that are involved in using technology creatively. We need to explain to people that if you use electronics as a creative tool, it's not that you're becoming an engineer. It's a different thing. Being an engineer requires a little bit more training, but inventing and doing creative work with electronics doesn't require you to do five years or three years of university. You can learn something without that kind of... You can build something with less knowledge, but just enough for you to invent something to have ideas. Also because one of the things that I noticed is that if you take a farmer and the farmer explains his problems to an engineer, the engineer will make something that kind of works because dogs are smart, very intelligent. But he will never be the same as a farmer that comes up with an idea because they understand what it means to be a farmer and they understand how to use the technology to fix that. This applies to doctors, for example. So today I met your Minister of Foreign Affairs of Singapore and I was so shocked because he is an Arduino user. He knew everything about Arduino. He had very difficult technical questions about this. I gave him this Wi-Fi board as the present and we were debating encryption keys and power consumption. And I thought he was an engineer and then I realized he's an eye doctor. But then the idea is that if an eye doctor understands technologies like Arduino so well, imagine what kind of innovation he can bring to the world of his profession of being an eye doctor and that somebody else will never be able to do. So that's why I think that making tools that make life simple to people is something that is very important to really enable people to innovate. And also I think the work that we do as makers doesn't stop at the electronics or the software. There's a lot of other things that we do that are not about electronics and software that can enable people. I used to go to the maker fair in the US and although there were like 100,000 people at the maker fair in California, I was kind of like a privileged person because my company paid for me to go to California and there's a lot of people that would like to go and see the maker fair in California but they don't have the money to go. So I thought I need to bring this maker fair to Europe but not just a mini maker fair. I need to bring a maker fair to Europe and so I worked with a bunch of people that enabled me to bring the maker fair to Rome in Italy and we decided to organize it as a European maker fair. So this year we had 100,000 people coming to see the fair from all over Europe but also people from China and India came to see the maker fair in Rome and we had 600 makers from 31 countries and even that doesn't have anything to do with electronics. I think it's also important to create these occasions for people to meet, to understand what they're doing, to exchange. So this maker fair which now is like the third edition in Rome already enabled a bunch of people to transport their ideas into companies. So there were some kids that showed up the first year with like a prototype of a 3D printer and now they are one of the most established companies in Europe. And so there was a lot of these things that we saw happen. So sometimes it's not about just the technology but it's also to create events, places, situations. You know, William was mentioning that we created the first Fab Lab in Italy. Because you know, I went to the MIT a number of times so I saw the first Fab Lab and then one day we were looking at the government to make a short story asking me to organize something for a specific event that happened in Italy and it was supposed to be something about the future of work. So the Italian way to do this would have been to take the money from the government, put some panels on the wall and just put the money in my pocket and walk away. And then I said no, that's not going to be it. I'm not making an exhibition on about the future of work which is panels printed on the wall like it's again 18, 20, you know. So we organized a Fab Lab and we realized that there were Fab Lab everywhere including Afghanistan but there was no Fab Lab in Italy. So I used the money for this exhibition to create the first Fab Lab in Italy. So in a way, creating these places, creating these events, creating these opportunities is as important as working on the technology. So as makers we kind of have this, we make stuff but we also kind of work with people and help them, you know, learn, you know, makers learn from each other a lot. So in a way, you make stuff but you also have an issue to help other people and they can start. So I think it's what we do is can have impact. You know, I met a lot of makers in these years I've been working on Agurino and I've met people who have built medical devices that solve problems in South America so those are a bunch of people that actually use the technology to effectively positively impact people's life and I think this is part of what... If you call yourself a maker you kind of have to think that part of your, what a good job description is to help other people in a way, you know, with your knowledge or, you know, by making life simpler or organizing an event, organizing a space like this one and stuff like that. So this is kind of what, you know, I like of what happened when we worked on a tool that was supposed to help the life of basically 25 people because in the schools where I teach the classes are 20 people, 25 people. So we built this tool for 25 people and now there's, now funnily enough there's 25 million people visit the Arduino website at least once in a year. Which it's kind of a multiply, the multiplying effects are incredible. It was imagined to help 25 people because like 25 million people are kind of trying to figure out what it is or they're using it. So I'm, obviously I'm super surprised about what happened and it's kind of, I never thought it was going to be this big but, you know, I'm glad but I'm more interested in also learning about what you are doing and, you know, how we use this and tools are high, you know, what it means for you to be a maker and what do you make. So, are you all Arduino users here? Raise your hand so I can prove that. Okay, that's pretty good. Thank you. Do you know how many users, how many are, how big is the user here? It's very difficult to question me. Actually yes, so from, I think, so what I meant is if you can, if you want to ask me a question, that's better. Listen to your questions and kind of talk with you about what has been going on and how it has happened. So I'm more interested in what you have to say. Now, the number of users that are part of the community is very difficult to estimate because obviously, you know, Raspberry Pi has an easy job. They're probably, they have the only one making it so they know exactly how many there are. But Arduino is an open source so everybody is, you know, either making their own Duinos or buying fake Duinos from China or from Europe. That's okay. It's often so hard work as long as you don't call it Arduino you can do whatever you want with it. So the, you know, what I can say is that so between October 2015 and October 2016 25 million people made at least one basic website. There was, there obviously means that there was somebody that showed up looked at the home page and said, what is this bullshit? And then people will spend maybe an hour. The average basic duration on their website is six minutes. Which for a website, it's a lot of time because it means that somebody opened the page and clicked it so one second and somebody spent a whole afternoon browsing through all the documentation so there is this interesting, you know, it means that the website is a tool that you use to learn to communicate the forum has now many million messages posted on it and it's available in several different languages so also the other thing that I can say from, I think in the last year the IDE was downloaded 11 million times but that's not a good indication because the statistics say that there is very few people connecting from China which is strange because when I go to China everybody's going and going but so this is my idea is that there are some Chinese Arduino communities that sort of created the wrong Arduino website and so I guess that a number of people download the software from a Chinese server that doesn't go to our server so we don't know exactly how many people it is interesting to see that in the first week that we release a new version of the IDE we get maybe two to three million downloads maybe now one not so 1.7 million downloads in the first like three or four days and this to me indicates what's kind of a hardcore part of the community probably 1.7 million people are kind of using it you know, it's their main tool then you never know because there are a number of people who are still stuck at Arduino 1.0.6 and they don't want to update which is kind of weird because it's I don't know it's like you know it's like those people who use more than 1.0 to write documents and they're like oh, I'm never upgrading this is fantastic yeah, also crazy also you know the guy that writes table thrones he writes everything on an old 1980s computer that's running probably maybe MS-DOS and everything is written on five inches properties but you know if one of those properties was bad you'd lose a whole season of table thrones which I don't watch maybe you're maybe you're into that stuff so your future seasons of table thrones are in the hands of a 5-inch properties so some people are stuck in this 1.0.6 world and they're like so it's not simple yes I'm still waiting for one but I just noticed when I was looking around there are many other companies that are trying to sort of mimic what people check so I think it's all coming up with that what's your take on that how do you see that the example of Intel is a good example because Intel is one of the very few very very few companies who say we only do something we are compatible so we're not going to be bad people we're going to talk to you and work with you so the Intel is the company that has been the most supportive and cooperative and works with us officially along with Samsung and Microsoft so they really cannot work with us officially and then obviously it's open source anybody can just use what we do and obviously it sort of becomes a kind of a standard so now even bots have got nothing to do with Arduino they adopted Arduino connectors so there was a company that made a board that was called the QC Arduino it wasn't running it wasn't running Arduino but it had these Arduino connectors but some people go and think that they could program between Arduino and Arduino it's although the real name is trademark the problem is that if you want to really protect the trademark you have to spend a huge amount of money so we don't spend our time protecting trademark yes where did the trademark come from? hahaha that's an interesting so basically we came up with Arduino while it was working in this town in the northwest of Italy called Ibrea and in the year 1000 there was a guy named Arduino that was born in Ibrea and he became the first King of Italy obviously he wasn't really the King of Italy because back then nobody even knew what was going on at the other side of Italy there was no internet so it's kind of self-proclaimed Arduino in Italy and then so the people in Ibrea call Arduino everything there is the Arduino Street the Arduino Square the Arduino Crane Company the Arduino Sports Club and there's also the Arduino Bar so that's when I used to go get rings hahaha and I was like when we had to find a name for this thing I was like oh let's call it Arduino like the bar and then later on we'll figure out hahaha and later on there was March 17, 2005 and then still still called Arduino sorry, sorry I have two kids they are 5th and 7th and we watched a take home three years ago and somebody asked me to take home but finally he gave us a few fun projects and you mentioned the few back then and somebody in the program that Arduino to make a tactical distance and the kids loved it and like since then I don't know what else says in it can you think of anything that might be fun for the kids to look at but I can't think of anything like anything about parks and animals and all these things one of the examples I read in the tech talk is how you made the chair that was the neatest part hahaha my son is 5th and my daughter is 7th and they already met Arduino and like they're aware of the red one thanks to this lab we're all playing around with little things but I'm not a creative person if you can so just a few fun projects can you find a way around what could be a good idea well actually I mean it doesn't have to be Arduino but for example if you look at little bits there is this kid called little bits and the common components that you can snap together magnetically that are designed for kids and you can build some fun projects with it and you don't need to do any programming or anything so that's a very good way to get kids started thank you I'm trying to understand because normally somebody who is like 7th is just on the edge of being able to use Arduino because using Arduino requires you to understand written text and so normally young kids don't they're not necessarily they don't understand written text until they are probably 70 so I'm trying to at the moment I have a very good idea one of the things that we we've done now is that we made this model in there that's called the Arduino 101 and kind of looks like the basic Arduino but the processor is much more intelligent so a couple of things it has is that it has an motion sensor so if you move around the board with the text movement it also has blue to blue energy so there is this guy in the US who wrote the software that turns all the movements you do with the board into MIDI notes so if you have a computer you can connect the Arduino to the computer as a MIDI controller and so as you shake it in different ways it may sound so we did a workshop for the notes one of these with that one and it was very fun by making some code that you can find online then kids could just make different sounds and also on the computer if you have a Mac if you have a Mac you just need a garage band which is free on the Mac and essentially you can associate that to a specific musical instrument and then you basically play while you're shaking it's a cute application that doesn't require you to do it so that one was I used that in a workshop with adults and they love it because it's a simple concert you have an existing software you just make a few modifications and you get different variations and I think that's kind of funny I think everything they kind of make sounds and music and school work somebody years ago built a vinyl again they used like old CDs and they glued this very simple sense of the kids old sense of the CDD then they are doing the text when you hit that particular old CDD and send the signal to the computer which turns it into notes and plays the music and the presentation video was like a one year old kid with the drums they go I think totally wrong but they constructed the sequence you recycle old CDs old mouse pads or something and you build it and it becomes a concert so this kind of stuff you can find online as projects to be another thing that I would recommend is that there is a company in London that sells those online called Technology Will Save Us and it's started by this kind of a very very nice very intelligent people and they make a few kids for kids one is like it's a game console made with Arduino but the display is an 8 by 8 pixel thing it's just a very super low resolution console if you play a few video games another one is a kit that helps you take care of a plant so you can connect sense into the plant and the third kit is a so it's a musical instrument they move their hands near the window and it makes different kind of sounds but it's a nice toy because you buy the kit the instructions are very simple any one day you can assemble if you have kids and they play with it so it's kind of a it teaches kids about the fact that you can actually build your own toys which a lot of kids you have found this stuff that you made yourself oh yes we're actually building some visual interface for Arduino and all we have is that I'm giving that topsy-turvy light user unit so actually thinking of doing all those I mean a server and so it can power the club there's no way to meet a licensing issue that I should be aware of that we need to power the light so as long as you don't call it Arduino I mean if you call it Arduino not SG clearly that's a problem but no actually so we a few months ago we launched an online version of our ADD it's called Create and at some point we are in the in the list of things we want to do we have also a scratch like interface but so we also produce this software called Arduino Builder you should look at the Arduino Dash Builder so basically we took out all the compilation part of the regular AD and we put it into a command line too so if you use that one you compile the code it's exactly the same code that comes out of the Arduino ID so we put that in the cloud and the license is very I mean if you make improvement for modification you should share it back that one gives you the ability to it compiles so you get the same exact code as the Arduino IDE and also we add these features that make it easier for Arduino to find where your libraries are so that some parts of the compilation are better automated now so if you make other ideas like I don't think it's the right way I'm not sure if it really goes right in the end I think normally if you put the libraries of the server in whatever form as long as when people download it they understand that this library is from datafruits they made it that exactly to own anything that the library is GPL so you need to basically provide people with a link to say where you would download it from so that they know that this is a datafruits product datafruits is happy if you use that code they don't they only get a set where there's been a number of situations datafruits are really good because they make hundreds of libraries and they call that datafruits underscore something so people understand that they have to send datafruits over the world and there's a number of people who download that they remove that datafruits underscore they maybe modify a couple of lines and then they put it out as the wrong library so they kind of take away the questions from datafruits which is not not nice but if you don't do that then you're okay so basically most of the audience are all they knew all about Arduino who is do you use also Arduino in your profession is anybody using it in your profession can you show me the hands oh wow that's nice so what do you build with Arduino? not me, my staff so what we did was we connected the resolved oxygen sensors and tied it up to a actuator to turn on an aerator okay so we put them in fish funds from a lot of possibilities oh wow, very cool any other application that you build that somebody wants to talk about? yes I got an intern at the company starting in January used to work with the rest of the time okay many companies started me so I wanted to put the sensor the airport sensor tied to a drone so we can start mapping the airport to the city oh wow, yeah I'm not an expert in Arduino so maybe you have some tips where we can start well effectively almost any Arduino would work because you just need to start the data somewhere we're about to launch a board which is kind of like this small and it's basically the same processor that we have on the Arduino zero which is a 32 bit R processor it also has a micro SD for example so you put the micro SD you protect the sensor and when it flies around you download the position and the value from the sensor you install it in the SD card and when the drone comes back hopefully you take out the SD card and you get a CSB file and essentially this board was designed for this kind of activity and it's going to be called NKR0 are you processing this? no no yeah, that's gonna be a board or it'll replace a big old Fiber that's it question I have a question from my friends they're asking what's the most impactful in a project that they've been helping so far? Oh wow, yeah, that's a good question. I should prepare for this question like every month, I should decide. It's very difficult because every time I feel that we found something that's very impactful, then sorry, I'm sorry, something else is crazier. I don't know, to me, it's very interesting to see, for example, if you look at the open source particularly first, including the data part, they all kind of started off with Arduino as their hardware platform, and the work that a lot of people have done using Arduino to understand how to control motion in these kind of machines has generated a body of knowledge that gets used in printers and people made CNC machine based on the same idea, people made open source laser cutters, people made even cake decoration robots with that, somebody made a machine that tattoos your wrist, like you put your wrist, your arm inside and tattoo stuff on your arm. And it's interesting because this is your base and it's very interesting phenomena of this layering of technology. So we, in a way, simplify the access to the performance and software and somebody started building something that was about the most emotional goal and they worked this thing called George Orwell, which is like a software that makes Chico that you're using in CNC machines and controls the setup model. And then on top of that, people started to create all the different things. I think that this thing called Ramps, this shield that a lot of the people use, Ramps. And then that particular combination of Arduino and Mega Plus Ramps still powers like a ton of printers. And so it's interesting how these people understand that they build and somebody else comes and builds on top of that. And then now we have a lot of these big printers that are enabled by the work that people have done, by collaborating in different ways. So that's probably not like a crazy life saving project, but it's very important because it shows that if you work together, you can create a body of knowledge that becomes useful. So if somebody wants to build some kind of a machine that's an x-y set, acts as a machine, living like a free breeder, they will start from skill. They can take that and build something great and create that kind of knowledge is an important tool. Then obviously, people have built machines to analyze the DNA and they build machines that can incubate us for kids, but tools for people that cannot speak. At the big event this year, somebody built a glove for people that cannot speak so they can use sign language. But then there's a certain device from Arduino that understands the signs and uses the mobile phone to speak the words that somebody cannot speak, they can sign and the phone can speak, which enables people to use sign language with people who don't understand sign language. I think it's a very important information so we gave this project 100,000 euros a price to make it fair. But the second project was somebody made a sensor that allows blind people to go on bicycles. Yeah, it was kind of like in cases. It allows blind people to participate in bicycle races. So they have a special three-wheel bicycle and this sensor has a bunch of sensors that detect obstacles and so the person rides the bike and the sensor tells the person that there are obstacles around and they just race. So they think that with this tool they could have blind people racing and the power he fits. There was another group that built the video game for dogs. The reason they spoke dogs. This is essentially a box with three buttons and it releases little pieces for dogs. So the dogs is like on the road, they hit the pole and they get it. And then the more they learn how to do this, the more the game becomes complicated. So the dog has to control the sequences and everything and apparently it keeps the dogs busy while they're born. And then they have to take selection of this kind of projects and every year there's more and more. So it's kind of hard to... Yes. So you mentioned the Arvino 101 just now. I read about how the Arvino 101 the trip that is on there, did you tell him he already has the financial for all the different levels given that he is? Oh yeah. And I'm wondering what we'll be able to expect that we don't have any discount neural networks. Yeah, actually you can use it now. There is a decode, the Intel pattern matching library. You can tell that Intel is not really great at explaining to recall how cool is the product. Because with this name, nobody would tell you it's a pattern matching library. So basically what happens is that in the silicon, there is essentially a neural network implemented. There are some neurons implemented in the silicon. So the idea is that you can either train the neural network directly in the Arvino 101 if you have a simple learning process that you want to do or if you want to work on more complex stuff you should get the data, use some kind of software to train the neuron and then you download the information in the network. But essentially the idea is, for the potential user you connect sensor to this network and the network can basically interpret the data from the sensors even if the processor is off. So for example, if you are making like a fitness band like Fitbit, the neural network can use the accelerometer because the ball has a six axis sensor. You can interpret the data, you can understand that there was a step or somebody was planning or they were going to have the processor and then you count that but you wake up the processor, you have to say it took a step or she was planning for two seconds. So by doing this you can save dramatically the power and also it's kind of motion construction algorithm. They tend to be very, very expensive with the development source, huh? So if you train the network to do it for you, it's, you get better quality with not having to license those things and at the moment the examples you find are mostly inside you press the button, you shake the boarder and the board learns that movement and at the same time you do that movement that works as all you do, movement. So the examples are not exactly exciting but they show you that there's a lot of potential in that thing. Westworld, I know you don't want to speak with Westworld. Sorry? Westworld. Oh, yeah. Westworld. Westworld, I don't know. Westworld, the neural network is not powerful enough to create the same thing we need. Actually, what is the last episode? Is it this week? This is the next episode. The nine. The nine, okay, yes, I'm waiting for the last one. Yeah, no, it's not enough to create, it's probably like the equivalent of the grain of a tiny insect, but still you can train it to do some useful stuff and mostly you know, you can do it optimizing the power or optimizing the computing capability. So that process has a lot of features in there. Is anybody here a teacher about William? Have you ever thought about doing a workshop to somebody else? Okay, good, good, good. Have you ever thought of doing a two kids? A one, okay, that's great. It's not always easy how to teach kids because they, we don't like super excited or you have to kind of teach them how to do stuff. Did you ever teach a two kids one age? Then this was my son, I was four, and I'm doing it. I was like a four year old. I think I really think it's okay. I know you were more thinking about the four little guys but they're still in the library, no problem. It's like it's very fascinating. Wow, I think one frequent ask question which I always get from teachers. One of the frequent ask questions I always get, not only as a teacher, but from teachers would be, yeah, all these, I do know it's cool, but what has that got to do with education? What has that got to do with, I don't know, I, I, they were saying, say, oh, my kids are young, or we are from the arts stream, you know. What does this have to do with, so when you hear this kind of remarks, what would you say to them? Oh wow. Well the funny thing is that sometimes you hear people say that people who are technically committed to technology, they don't really like the arts, but I have to say that sometimes people who are into arts, they are a little bit, you know, they don't say, you know, in a way, they're also the ones who don't understand the technologies. It's also a creative activity. And a lot of arts, art is done now with technology, like contemporary artists are using computers, they're using electronics. One of the first community to adopt Arduino after my students were musicians, building new interfaces for, there was even a conference for new interfaces for music expression. So, you know, and they, people build a bunch of stuff using things like Arduino, and a lot of the current interactive installations defined from artists are built using technology. A lot of exhibitions in museums are Arduino. Even the New York Times, where there are people like five years ago saying that if you use an Arduino, you could build installations for museums that would be cheap. So, one of the things that I think is very interesting that's happening right now is that if you use something like Arduino to teachers, for example, you can, you tend to use a lot of the knowledge that you have all in the same place. Like a lot of teaching, unfortunately, is divided by subjects. So, you do things in arts, and then you do math, and then you do literature, and then you do, and you do it like all, you know, we call them silos, sometimes. They're separated, no? Well, if you're building a project using Arduino, you might need to put together some of your understanding of physics because you're trying to make something cool. You know, once I was trying to build some kind of a robotic armor to draw something on paper, and I realized that, oh, wow, now I have to remember all those phenomenons before that I always hated those people. Why did I hate them? Because people don't read those phenomenons before, but we have ever explained it to me, why would I hate them? And then I had the problem that I had an X, Y coordinate, and I had to turn it in two and three angles. I said, oh, take a moment. So, you know, in this kind of project, they were learning by doing, I said, but you put together all your knowledge and then suddenly you move from one discipline to another. They say that you're trying to make some kind of a toy that uses physics and then uses music. Then you need to produce sound from the Arduino. You're like, oh, I need to make a sound. So I need to know about frequency and I need to know about notes. I need to know about tempo and all these kind of things. So suddenly, all the things you learn in music, they go into your project. So building projects with this kind of technology, in my opinion, is very powerful because it teaches kids that when you're trying to solve the problem, you bring in everything you know about life. That's why, for instance, I would say the farmer learning about Arduino. Because in a way, they bring some life skills about that subject that unless you're also a farmer, you don't know or you have to ask. So I need to know. So I teach a lot of music and what? Okay. There's a few parts. So the thing now is a lot of students are very excited that they will start to program it. But the thing is, a lot of students want to learn syntax but it's always teacher do not allow the students to say that. So what do you think, in your experience, teach a lot of syntax learning, that's it. Well, I mean, scratch is really good. You get going really quickly. But then only there is a point where if you become an expert, there's also a personal program. So if you're an expert, then you start to want to... I know that there's been, the big people who have built tools for Arduino where actually even the NBOT tool shows you the Arduino code generated. So that one is a good idea because once you build the project and you kind of start things that's too complicated, then you generate the code, you cut it basically to Arduino and you continue. And then carrying on, then kids can map the blocks to the code. But they need to get to the point that they are trying to do something that they cannot do in a different tool and then they are motivated. Even with adults, it's like when I start the teaching, the first lectures I did it the way I saw people teaching in the university. So I started teaching people about the electricity, electrons, current, atoms. And then everybody was getting distracted or browsing the internet or the wifi. I thought, oh wow, either I turn off the wifi or I become a different teacher. So I decided for the second option. And I realized that when I was a kid I learned by doing things. And when I started learning what voltage is as a kid was the moment something I was trying to do required me to learn about voltage. So in that particular context, that piece of knowledge connected with my situation and I was open to that concept. But if I try to learn a bunch of things completely in abstracture, with no connection with my life, that's the point is knowledge goes away. So if the kids get to the point that they wanna do something but they can't do it because the visual tool cannot do it, in that moment they are ready to invent the energy to move to the textbook. Yes? If you had to put out video and all of this making community, what sentence would it never heard of before? Oh wow. Because a lot of people ask me this about what it's like. I can't get my hands on it. Well, the reason of the visual definition of making which is kinda boring, it is difficult to create like a simple one sentence with vision. Also because I hope that in the maker community a lot of people have a different way to think about it. To me the important part is that it is in a way a movement that is connected strongly with essentially a DIY attitude. So do it yourself attitude. Which is essentially a technological extension of the DIY community. Which in a way is, uses different learning by doing and this kind of constructive, constructive is a little bit too technical as a term. But in education these methods are called constructive. You build up your knowledge. But in a way, so the idea is essentially it's a DIY community that embraces every activity with a technological angle. So they use digital technologies to be able to achieve certain amount of goals. The people who do this are not necessarily an expert trained in that field of technology. They may be somebody that's getting as other technology. And they use another field in this technology and they do a learning by doing, learning by making projects. So it's a hands on learning. And I think another aspect that makes make it different from other previous communities that is learning from other people. It's also called peer to peer learning. It happens because makers use internet, they communicate with people. A number of makers have taken complex concepts to learn them with a lot of pain and then wrote articles online to explain them in a different language. Making it easier for other people to do that. So I don't know, I should think I should sit down and probably try to come up with a very elegant phrase to the surface at the moment I don't know. That's a couple of people who ask, a couple of different publishers who ask me to write a book about makers. But that would require me to do all this kind of thinking come up with clever definitions. Intelligent ideas. And so sometimes, yes. But to give you an example, I think, when I started working on microcontrollers before I made Arduino, I was working with pictures. Because before I started teaching, I was working and I was doing software for a long, long time. And then I was working in investment fund in the venture capital fund. And after that, this is not for me. I don't like this. I wanna go do something that has got something to do with, you know, making something and really helping people. So I started teaching in the school. That's why I use pictures. Because they were the very, the most easy one to find on the market. Because Italians were using the pictures to hack satellite leads. So they could watch the football games. So they could buy them anywhere. But then after a while, we found a lot of limitations in the pictures. And we wanted something that would have a good free open source C compiler. And in the end, we ended up using the ADR because none of my sort of key weight mentors, yes, the user bank told me, have a look at the ADR. But I think the reason why we ended up using it is because the whole community, which was not cold makers like them, who had all the ADR documentation, which wasn't beautifully written, digested it. And they wrote a ton of articles that explained the same stuff in the language that humans could understand. So we started to work with ADRs for so far that reason. Because the documentation was available in a format that wasn't the official leadership, but also articles by people explaining how to do this. So I think in a way, at least it's a community that we're kind of helping each other, it's kind of part of the sharing part of the package. Okay, we are, someone who is hoping to go beyond I've been able to be a better designer, is there like, easy wood, or rather a better, easier interaction into the embedded systems? And by using Arduino, is that better than Arduino? Yeah, but beyond having on coding and doing many more. When you use Arduino, you're doing same as last. So the question is that, unfortunately, because a bunch of people who called themselves professional developers, where not all of them are professional, are sometimes called as self-professional. They basically say, oh, Arduino is not real, so you're not doing embedded. You're doing embedded, it's because last. So you can actually take it out of the Arduino IDE and use the command line, if you want. And there's a bunch of people that use Arduino to build actual formats. Somebody even wrote an article a few years ago, saying that they were using Arduino in industrial equipment, and they thought that it was functioning, it was robust, and that it should stop, in a way, considering Arduino, just like, because it's kind of stable. And one of the advantages of Arduino is that it's productive and it seems to be, because this company's team has to make this small enabler computer that's based on the inter-core area of it. And the official documentation shows you how to use the official Intel IDE for this processor. And setting up the environment environment takes the first 20 pages of the language, 20 pages of like hard core, C language to read energy. Option B, you take a USB cable, you plug it in this thing, you download Arduino, you select IntelliGal Neo Generation 2, select link, press the button, 30 seconds later, there it is big. So the instructions, you can write it in a fortune cookie, if it says it's right. You snap it and the instructions are on the fortune cookie. So to me, that was very important because I know a lot of people who develop software that goes into industry, they run companies. And they have been doing software in different ways and they will have a lot of, they will waste a lot of time trying to learn and better development and you know, whole style. While Arduino allows them to be productive today, no? So one of the things obviously you want to do is maybe start looking at the ARM-based Arduino's or the Intel-based Arduino's because they are more powerful. Also the interesting thing is that if you start with an Arduino and you make it a little bigger, if you look at a place where you keep your sketch, Arduino converts the code into full-blown C++ and then compiles it and you can even keep the assembly language that was compiled. So if you want, you can use the Arduino code to see from the function to the binary. And then you can open the source code and go, let's say a digital drive, okay, go, let's look for digital drive does. And by looking at the source code, you can then go back and understand every single thing that's happening to the code down to the meta. Which is something that you might not be able to do without the code because they don't get the source or the source is insane, this is like a million files. So in a lot of schools, they use Arduino to teach the meta-developer because if you look at the APA yards, the code is so simple, they're a natural student and learn everything in a few days from high level to what happens in the process or something. Now, I think you can make more complicated, you can make use more complex Arduino but you can use Arduino as a way to move to more complicated. Well, the open source culture are becoming less and less. And the biggest example to me is Microsoft. So Microsoft used to be, officially from the outside, the worst enemy of open source, that is the famous Halloween memo against premiums as like makes the history of open source. And now I work with Microsoft, they are completely... Now they completely, they are so sold on the open source concept that they say to me that now they are an open source company that then selectively decides to protect the source code. Before they were a proprietary company, selectively they released it. They even shut down the open source group they have because now they don't need a separate open source code. Every team I work with releases code. They release the code for everything for the net. So in a way, obviously they don't release the code for everything, everything, but they made a huge transformation because they see the multiplication, the value, multiply the open source. Last year we participated in a study that people were making about Internet of Things developers. And this survey was like a worldwide survey of thousands of developers. And they estimated that there were 4.5 million people in the world that define themselves IOT developers. And they defined that around 80% of them felt that either they would only work with open source or they only work with open source tools or they even imagine to open source but for their technology. So in a way, right now, any same company knows that in order to convince developers to use their technology, you have to make people with source. Even you have to make the company knowledge a day or a night. So back in the days, there was this company.com that was making this Wi-Fi module. They were, they are still making that. They are still doing probably some of the best Wi-Fi but the documentation was impossible to actually do. Okay, then they sold this kind of the division of the sacrifice and one of the first thing the second thing was to open all the documentation into the Wi-Fi. And your openness of information, open source clearly multiplies the value of whatever problem you're doing. And I think there's less and less people that can defend not being open source. Clearly, there are things where you should take some code in order to open because we have to be honest and admit that open source community it's not always, not always everybody plays a fair game. There's a lot of people that are basically, they take from the open source community but they don't give anything back. And the people who are making this compatible Arduino boards and they're making hundreds of thousands of them. They are using all the work that we did and they don't contribute anything back. And if you email them and say, okay, you're comping Arduino, okay, you at least put the files for the board online. Sometimes they'll even reply to you, sometimes they don't get lost. So clearly there is a problem right now in the open source world that there's a lot of people that are not playing safe. They're taking from all of us. They're also taking money but they're not either giving back software or work or they're not giving back money. So that's one issue we have in the open source work right now is to remind people that open source work, if we both share, if only one shares and the other one, if I have, you know, cashes the money, people, it doesn't work. Yes. I have to know, there's a lot of hard work I've been doing for a long time, and it takes so long. And particularly when you started working like a friend, you're seeing how much you're studying, something happened, and it's been doing for a long time. Now, it took many, many years. At the beginning, I think my co-founder, David Martinez, we put a total of 700 euros, which will probably like $1,000, to buy one, a few, and 350 pieces that people could use to assemble the one I'm doing now. And then after a while, we're gonna get some money together to build 100 USB Arduino schooling out there, and it was very slow at the beginning, you know. It was slow. We spent a lot of time explaining to people what Arduino was, and so it was very gradual. So I remember that in 2009, we were six, when we sold the first 10,000 Arduino, make, make, and build an Arduino. Because it was like a big build in the major community. In 2006, somebody selling 10,000 units was like, you know, when Apple makes an Apple, it was just, oh my God, 10,000 units. So it was very, very, very slow. And it required a lot of work from our part. Like at the beginning, we spent an insane amount of time going around Europe convincing people to use Arduino, teaching free workshops, you know, to save people on somebody's floor, and doing all this kind of stuff to get people to adopt Arduino, and working on the website to make documentation accessible. And then slowly, some people started to use Arduino. They started to build good projects. They started to share the fact that they used Arduino to build those projects, and the people start to go, what's Arduino? And then they've got a multiplying effect. You know, now it's 11 years that we have released Arduino, so it takes a few years. And at the beginning, a lot of people are like, you know, stupid. So, like, people who do that professional development, like Arduino is stupid while you're creating a project. Yes? Do you think you're thinking where will the electronic projects you've seen on the internet, where you came across the designer, that you decided to do? Yes, there's a lot of projects in the area. There's actually a product called Arduino Neapot that people use a lot for that. But anything that goes with it, does it impress you in any way? Um, there's a lot of nice projects that are based on like turning, maybe closing into like displays, or using an S-sensor to make music or stuff. I mean, there's a lot of nice things like that. Like, there was a fashion designer from Iran, she made this corset that uses an equinole, it's like a special metal that can contract and expand it, so that this kind of corset expands and contracts, teaching you how to breathe properly. Or it uses sensors together like air quality and stuff like that and kind of uses that. So it was interesting because the corset was kind of displaying data, but it was also kind of teaching you how to breathe properly. So there are some interesting projects like that. I think right now the problem is that the technology is still a little bit rudimentary. So these processes are very simple. There's not a lot of... A lot of projects are made with like connecting an Arduino to a lot of LEDs, and you didn't have to flash me in the face. So I wouldn't really define that as fashion. It's kind of, you know, that kind of tacky. There's not like the real work to use that in fashion properly. So there's still a lot of work, also on the tools. I think rudimentary is the more... Also... Internet promise. You have to design it properly, because then you cannot really take the clothing to the washing machine. So, you know, there's quite a bit of work to do to make that exit step after this generation of products, which will bring them to work by this global... ...each week. And it will also be able to work, but especially if they are the same, they didn't do the processing, you know. Yes. Oh, yeah, thank you. Bye. Oh, wow, yes. That's another thing that I should... Well, you know, to me... To me, Arduino is a tool that allows people to use electronics as a creative means. So maybe it's a little bit too... But in a way, you know, it allows people with no backgrounds in electronics or software to be able to use electronics to be creative and innovative. And so... I never really suspected a better elevator pitch, because people also use Arduino for all sorts of different things. So my generic elevator pitch sometimes does not apply to what they do. So depending on who I talk to, I give them a different interpretation. But to me, it's a tool that enables people with no background in electronics or programming to use electronics to be creative and innovative. That's like a generic pitch. Yes. Do you want me to think about the project and how about, you know, how does the program design itself and the production? Oh, wow. Yeah. It was a great creation with projects. So when I... When I spoke teaching in Israel because the school closed, and before Arduino was able to give me enough money to make a video, I did a lot of projects. I was working a lot in distribution design in the land. And so in the land, there was a number of events during the year where people build different kinds of... So that's when I did the most projects. Then there was a number of things I did with my students that are... So in a way, now I did a few projects that are most before me or for understanding was needed. I think one of the things we project I did back in the day when we were developing Arduino is that with one of my friends back then we developed a wallpaper that can work as a display. So a wallpaper that's like a display. So it's actually magic. There was a wall that was like four meters by two meters covered in wallpaper. But then you could turn the paper from black to white and there were every piece that was like 50, yeah, five centimeters basically. And you could use it as a display to write things on the wall and we developed that for Prada for their store in better reviews. What we developed it as the thesis project of this field that value was needed. And then after that we showed it to Prada Prada gave us some money to develop it. Then in the end they even put it into the store. But we still had a four meter by two meter prototype that we showed to a lot of people. And one of the applications was that people would send you a text message and these are doing the work to read the text message and display it on the wallpaper as a feature again. That one was we worked on it a lot. We developed all the technology to be able to control the details and this would be a lot of work on that. Yes. You know, Bill, I know you have a lot of I think of the idea of the reality and what does it imply for young entrepreneurs? When I started working on it we are essentially enjoying this design school and I was teaching students how to use telecomics and the tools were kind of, you know either they only worked on windows they were expensive and and also there was this problem that we used the board which was a genius idea when it came out but the problem was that we bought it from the US there would be something that would be less powerful than an Arduino mini it costed $100 and for that time it was considered a very cheap piece of hardware and better development was much more expensive. So the problem was that if a student buys something that costs $100 they're not going to make a lot of prototypes because they're going to be constantly afraid of blowing this thing up and so if they don't do prototypes and they're afraid they don't create because the only way to have a good idea is to have 99 cheap ideas and then suddenly like idea number 100 but it's something you wake up in the morning and the first idea is good you have to go to the 99 craft ideas in order to get to number 100 so you need to make a lot of prototypes you need to be unafraid of blowing this up you need to be in a position that you feel you can fix so that's why Arduino has this chip that you can replace so I started to bring the tools for my students to take chips and together with the students in the physics where we started using BDRs and then either that looked like part of the part of the some of the commands in Arduino and then we made Arduino so in a way it was kind of we did the most unidentifiable problem unidentifiable problem was not immediately perceived as something that could make money so sometimes when you try to create something successful you have to identify the problem and try to work towards solving that problem but don't believe it by the fact that now you cannot make money because back in those days there was the perception that it was not money to be made with Arduino because professional developers thought they used it to give you views now the issue is if those are not your customers you don't care what they think so they made fun of us and they said that we were stupid and we made people stupid because Arduino was stupid and the examples are still there the web is great because stuff stayed so the people who told me that Arduino was a baby talk language for pop heads which here is a lot of Americans think that obviously artists are people who smoke drugs and somebody has found that we know that tools were women and painters which was like what happened so there was a lot of there was a lot of racism towards making stuff simple for people so the professional developers thought it was a stupid idea but that was not the market so then we ended up creating mediums of people who do a better development that completely outnumber their professional developers and now they challenge their market because some people started to realize that a lot of problems can be solved with illusionary on the internet and so in a way sometimes if you are a young entrepreneur you should not be deleted by the fact that the current way of doing something tells you that your project might not have success because maybe you're trying to work towards another group of people that haven't understood yet that the tool is changing their life so clearly that requires that we maybe have another way to support why people understand what we do okay, here we have last question last question very important okay, I will have last question that question related to business so it's only if engineers are great in some cool stuff the market has scaled because engineering cool stuff it's firm, it's working it works well it has a prominent impact marketing has a lot of different goals it makes different creativity but you can say that the light is bad the light is the dragon flash so what was the journey of beauty in these jobs I have a background in engineering I started electrical engineering but then I dropped out of university so I actually don't have a degree which is not all I actually do have a degree now but it's actually ceremonial I have a I have a honorary degree I have a honorary PhD in education it was a funny day which for me when that happened some of my friends are like that's what these people they understood this is not about electronics it's not about software it's about tools for teaching people about so I was very honoured to see that they used this bar I get to dress like Henry D. A. C. it's kind of like a Harry Potter situation where you're kind of walking to the Abbey and you're like wow it's kind of a win I was super honoured the other guy who got the honorary degree the same day was John Keats from all the market so it was a very, very cool it's about for me not having a degree I did software for a long time but I always worked with designers and also being from the lab I always had a new people who were either designers or worker designers so you know what I mean with those I was in a way at the crossroad of being an engineer but understanding what designers do but appreciating what they do and working with them because I did a lot of websites in my past career so I was working with all the graphics designers so that's why when I went to give the interview to go to this school in Rhea they tried to keep asking some quick questions to see if I understood about design and I was able to show that I understood enough of design to be there so in a way this thing was created at the beginning not for engineers it was never the idea to create this for engineers it's always for people that are not engineers already know how to use it they already know how to do stuff so they don't need they don't need Arduino then they use it for some engineers they use Arduino in the crossroad they don't tell their families they don't tell their friends then they use it because my theory is that Arduino makes beginner enables beginners and speeds up engineers so I know engineers that they use Arduino to kind of sketch something very quickly and then maybe they review it with some other tools they use for work but Arduino keeps them speed so to begin with it keeps the speed so professionals need to speed so in a way that was the weird thing an embedded development tool created in a design school by technically a guy that never graduated an engineer who was also an artist a guy who believes in theater lighting who teaches at the ITP before learning about doing the masters and then when you reach he was basically doing lighting in theater so it was like a group of random people with weird ideas so I guess I don't know if I answered your question more or less yeah also I have to say it seems to be the use of the word marketing because there are some when I deal with some some engineers they consider the word marketing as like some kind of an insult oh yeah it's like saying your mother is questionable more often well effectively the very problem everything that you create in life is that nobody knows that you are a genius if you are a genius by yourself in your room it doesn't help anybody you will be frustrated with your genius and nobody understands what you do so you do something that's useful that adds to society it is your duty to spend time explaining to people what you do it's not their fault it's your fault if people don't understand what you say and what you do it's your fault you cannot say oh nobody understands a genius no you are a bad communicator nobody understands what you add to society because you are not able to explain and then obviously engineers oh that's marketing to me it's about they need to be communicated convince people to adopt these ideas that's why sometimes people adopt stupid ideas because there are people that have very little ability to think but they are really good at selling their shitty ideas so we need more intelligent people that are also able to spell otherwise the world will still adopt stupid ideas that's the way I don't know mainly like I'm doing you know other people who do projects that challenge the stuff in a certain area of human society and people will say oh that it's stupid that doesn't make any sense so obviously you have to be prepared you know I get a lot of criticism people rightly hate emails you know hopefully your shitty company fails and I'm going to see you cry so anyway thank you and I just wanted to invite anyone who would like to express their form of gratitude like how Arduino have changed this is important because