 It's amazing. It's great to see everyone here. It's great to, I mean, we have a great event planned today. We have panels on all sorts of different aspects of 3D printing. As Martin said, this started what, four years ago, five years ago, as a kind of single panel event where the panel theme was 3D printing. And now we've moved on to the place where we say, well, no, a lot of people know what 3D printing is. Let's talk about why it matters to policy. So we'll be talking today about all sorts of issues, medical applications, small business, distributed manufacturing, you know, actual property law, other legal issues. And it's great. I think it really shows a maturity of the technology of the industry and the community. And I think this is true of a lot of new technologies, but it's especially true of 3D printing, that it really has been an incredibly community group. There are companies large and small in this space right now, and they do interesting things. I now have one. I recently have a knowledge to join Shapeways, but all of it really ties back to an incredibly vibrant and innovative community of people who are innovating not only in terms of making printers better, but also in terms of figuring out new things to do with those printers. And those paths are crossed and overlapping and very much build off of each other and respond to that. I think that besides a kind of model of a great technology in the context of 3D printing, it's a really model, great model for what we see in a world of open participatory innovation and creation, and potentially hopefully a model that many more technologies and many more communities will be able to follow on in the future. So it's troubling in a lot of different ways. Today, the first panel that we're going to have here at 3D and EC is all about distributed manufacturing. And one of the interesting things about 3D printing is that we have now, we're now starting to see people who have access to these machines, either at homes or at community centers or at libraries or hacker spaces, taking this technology and saying, okay, well, you know, we can actually make things ourselves. We can download them from the internet. We can collaborate on physical things, the way that we've all learned to collaborate on all sorts of virtual goods and try to figure out exactly how all of this works. And so I'm really excited about this panel. I'm going to have a panel, we're going to go down the line and let them each introduce themselves and give you, you know, two minutes or so, just kind of background as to where they are. And then we're going to discuss where distributed manufacturing and 3D printing are currently and perhaps more importantly, where we all hope to see it in the future. We'll then have time for questions at the end. So if you have questions, think about them, but hold them and I promise that we will get to them. But with that, let me stop talking. I'm going to let that talk because they're much more interesting than I am. We're going to start and go down the line. Like I said, have you introduced yourselves and then we will roll from there with questions. Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Michael and Martin and everyone for coming today. My name is Phyllis Klein and I founded Fab Lab DC, which is part of a global network of fab labs. The project started at MIT as a community outreach component of an NSF grant. It was an accidental love child. When the crew at MIT saw how people flocked to have access to this technology and they saw the high level of collaboration and enthusiasm and the ingenious things that were coming out of it, they couldn't help but wonder what would happen if this technology were made available to more people. So they boiled down the components of the mother lab into a suite of machines and processes and took it first to rural India and inner city Boston. And since then it's exploded. People want this in their own community. And if you can imagine this network of 500 plus now labs with more coming on every day connected through the magic of the internet and a polycom where we can share knowledge and projects in real time over the internet. We can collaborate instead of having to send a thing that we're working on. We send the data where if you're in Africa and I'm in Holland, you can print it out with my permission on site on demand. So the potential for one off one of a kind, small batch manufacturing and research because it's not just, you know, the technology being distributed among this network from the top down. The way the technology is being used and adapted for on the ground problems feeds back up to the high level research institutions to see how it's being applied. So the innovation is amazing. And as Michael pointed out, with 3D printing, it was largely developed at this consumer level through open source groups, sharing information and developing the project until some people then take it out and commercialize it. But I really would like to underscore that 3D printing is one component of a suite of machines and technologies that enable us to do rapid prototyping before it was not accessible to us. It was beyond our reach. We didn't have the funding. We didn't have the resources. But now with not only additive 3D printing manufacturing, but with subtractive, with laser cutting, CNC routing, mini mills to make your own electronics, you know, you can really have a whole suite. So I would the analogy has been made that the 3D printer is kind of like the microwave oven in your kitchen. It's an awesome tool, but you wouldn't use it to make the whole meal. And so if you look in a little bit to this type of digital fabrication, you'll see that with many of these spaces, whether it be a hacker space, maker space, the library and fab labs, there's a suite of machines where if you can think it, and you can render it in a computer aided drafting program, these machines can cut it, etch it, extrude it, you know, actually rapidly prototype it for you. So there's plenty more info, but I want to pass this along to my colleague, Todd. And actually, Todd, before you start, just for those of you who don't spend a lot of time in congressional office buildings, Congress is in session right now when you hear those those buzzes, those are signals for various boats and things happening on the floor. It does not mean that Godzilla is coming. We're in trouble. So feel free to ignore them. You'll know when you when there's an alarm that you need to pay attention to. Hopefully it won't be today. Yeah, right. Yeah. So don't worry. Also, there are lights on top of all the clocks. These are also that, which is all things that you can ignore. My name is Todd Blatt. I'm a maker, hacker, 3D modeler, mechanical engineer. Been interested in 3D printing since I first saw it in 2000 on a high school field trip. But, you know, back then it was, we had to go to a defense contractor, you know, check in. This is a big giant warehouse and we got to like walk by it. But now, like, people have them at home and you can use it every day. That's, you know, that's what's really exciting to me. So I also work for Tinkering Studios, and we're a 3D printer manufacturer in Vancouver. This is a public company based in Canada. And then I run a project called We the Builders, which is a crowdsource distributed manufacturing platform where, well, basically that means that everybody has a printer already and go to the website and download a block and print it out and then mail it to me. And these blocks get glued together into a big giant awesome sculpture. So, so far we've made two busts of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. And these are huge sculptures, like a meter tall, they're like giant things and each block's a different color from a different person. We had parts from France and Beijing and, you know, all over the US and UK. And it's just really neat that everyone can work together now on the same project. And the point of We the Builders was to show, you know, the world, like, hey, everyone can work together on one solution. That's just been really exciting for me. And at Tinkering, one of the things we focus on is education. So we're able to have, you know, we can develop lesson plans and curriculum in one place and then share it online for free to other people who want curriculum, so people who can bring free brain to the classroom. And then those people and other educators can develop curriculum and then share it with other people. So it's this, you know, distributed platform where anyone, anywhere can, you know, create something and share it quickly and easily. So we saw how that affected the music industry. I think most people nowadays don't go to the store to buy CDs or tapes or albums. It's all, you know, you can make it and have it for sale online or have it available online for other people the same day. So I mean, I'm a big user of Shaveways, you know, for the last, I guess since 2009 is when I first started. It's the same idea where one person somewhere can create something and have it for sale and have it be able to, you know, be shipped anywhere. So it really allows individuals to compete with big companies because now you don't need this, this manufacturing process where you have to have a relationship with the factory or you can just upload a thing and have it for sale right away. I mean, one of the good examples I have of that is when I made these accessories for Google Glass. Like it's a small niche product and it was like, not a lot of people have it, not a lot of people need it. I was able to make, you know, a thing that people needed and have it for sale the same day online, you know, anywhere. So it's been pretty neat with only like an hour or two of work that you can have a product available. The features are very exciting too. Oh, my name is Zach Leachah. I'm with the 3D Hubs. So we have the largest network of 3D printers in the world and essentially what that means is right now 16,000 printers in over 150 countries. Both desktop machines like MakerBots, as well as larger service bureaus who have, you know, multiple stratysys or 3D systems type machines. And we connect anyone who wants to print anywhere in the world with a 3D printer. It's a basic concept, but it has a lot of implications for, you know, what 3D printing is going to mean for manufacturing down in the line. We provide anybody with a 3D file with production on demand, whether they're in Iraq, Washington, or anywhere else around the world. That's the basic shield for Iraq. Great, thank you. I want to get into the experience with various aspects of distributed manufacturing, because I think we have three great cross sections of this. You know, Phyllis is in a fab lab, watching people print things and learn. Todd has run, among other things, he's run a distributed manufacturing process. And Zach sees a distributed network from a position that very few people can. But Todd, I want to start with you. That project, and for those of you who can't picture this, Ben Franklin will be around for their reception today. Sorry, 5530. It is amazing. It is giant and crazy in many ways. This is the second project you've done with distributed manufacturing. You literally said, we're going to make one thing and we're going to distribute the manufacturing of it to as many people as we can. What surprised you in that process, especially going from the kind of first, from George Washington, which was the first one, to Ben Franklin, what were the lessons learned, what worked, and probably more usefully, what didn't work? What were the things that you said we thought this was going to be fine, and it turned out to be much more complicated than we thought? Yeah, I mean, it was a lot of prep work. So people, I guess, don't realize that, but it was a lot goes into getting a project online, as well as maintaining it as people are printing, checking out parts and things. It's not just a web page where all the parts are listed and anybody can print whatever they want. So there's a whole backend that we had to develop to assign this part to that person, like a check process to make sure that what they printed is the right size or they didn't make a mistake or something. But what did really surprise me was how well the whole process works. We did the whole George Washington sculpture. We scanned a replica of, I mean, we scanned the original sculpture of George Washington and Toga in Washington Monument in Baltimore. We cut it up, made the website and everything was all three weeks total, including the printing and the shipping and the gluing all together. So how well all the parts came together really surprised me, where you look at it, it looked like it was, I mean, it was, but it looks like it was all planned out to be that way. I mean, I tried to bring it here last year to the show, but somebody metal plated one of the parts so it couldn't fit in the X-ray machine setting off the metal detector. So we weren't able to bring it in, but bends in two separate parts and can fit through with the blood in the back way this time. Yeah, just preparing and making sure, like one of the things that took a lot of effort was labeling each part. I would not have, I probably wouldn't be able to do it, but I wouldn't have been able to do the whole project in such a short amount of time if the parts weren't labeled. So everybody gets a block and it says, well, this is part, you know, six four or two. So it's like six over and four up and two blocks back. Without those labels, I think the project is a very difficult puzzle even when they're labeled because you have to, I guess three-dimensionally have to rotate the block and you have to figure out which orientation it goes and which rotation it goes in. But it was just really surprising that all the people wanted to reach out to us and help and news sites would write about it and people would log in. But we do see we get a big burst of interest right when we launch a project. And then towards the end, there might be only 15 people helping in the beginning of this, or 75 or 90 good clues and a lot. And folks, you're, like I said, you're kind of on the ground when we see people traditionally, at least in the last century, we think of creating things as something that happens in a very centralized way with a large factory or something like that. Now that people can come into a fab lab, I'm glad that you flagged it, 3 printing is important, 3 printing is amazing in a lot of ways, but it's one tool of many when you think about digital fabrication and manufacturing, when people come into a fab lab, what are they initially that they want to create? And then once they've been there for a while and they've learned the tools, what are the kinds of things that they say, now that I have this capability, this is what I want to be able to do with it? Yeah, I think to Todd's point, the social component of this type of movement is amazing. At fab labs, because each one is unique, depending on the community, depending on the location, when people come to the fab lab, they may be coming out of curiosity, they may be total neophytes, but by familiarizing themselves with the processes and some of the projects, it becomes an inspiration, it sparks ideas about what is possible. You know, the things people make can be for the economy of one, for themselves, they might make something that they think is just for them, but in the positive process and in this environment where you have a cross section of a diverse group of people. Typically, you find a lot of other people are interested in the thing that you're making, whether it be a piece of jewelry, whether it be a medical device, whether it be, and really the things people may expand all realms and disciplines from education to medical devices, things that make their lives simpler are more manageable. A few examples in Barcelona Fabla, the smart citizen was developed, it's a microprocessor that allows regular citizens to measure toxins and environmental hazards in your own community, and you might think, well, you know, that's great for, for over there. I happen to have the experience with a huge construction project coming up next to me right in DC where there was a lot of exhaust and output coming right next to my home, but the DC department of environment could not measure it, they didn't have the capability. But guess what? I could buy smart citizen and it's not just that I could buy it, it's an open source project where people are developing it, not only are they developing it, but all the data that we collect can be shared in a collective place where we can see what the health and hazards are in different cities around the world. Additionally, not only are individuals creating things, but Barcelona has actually become a fab city where they've committed to creating multiple fab lab hubs all around the city. We hope to do the same through, as we heard yesterday, the White House has commitments from mayors around the country to think about new ways of manufacturing. So people come as individuals, they come as groups, they come as small entrepreneurial companies. The draw is to learn these processes and see how they can apply it. So sometimes you come with a specific project in mind and you pick the tool that most serves the purpose. Other times you come and really, I've had this experience too, just being in the environment, it becomes a source of inspiration and ideas by seeing what's possible. Yeah, absolutely. I think anyone who's been to one of those facilities has had that experience of the world opening up to you. Yeah, and also to Todd's point, whereas he sourced and people sent him things, there's great potential to save a lot of energy, save all those complicated processes about, you know, interstate, inter-country, you know, working across oceans, working with customs. If I can send you the data, that's fine. If I ship you everything that can take, you know, months and sometimes years to get through that to you. So. Absolutely. It's exactly like I mentioned earlier, I mean you're kind of at a point where you can see a lot of these networks form and coming together and you have a network of printers all over the world that have all sorts of different capabilities. When people tap into that network, what is it? I'm sure there's nothing like like your ideal user or your average user. But what are people doing with this technology when they have access to it? Because access is part of the equation, but it's certainly not the end of the story. Right. So there's a big debate as to whether the technology will stay for designers and architects and basically people who are doing prototypes, which is, you know, for decades with the technology has been used for. That's still the case. You know, we see that looking at the tens of thousands of parts that come through our platform every month. The majority of those parts are for product designers, architects, industrial designers, people who are doing iterations in their R&D. But they are also making gadgets for their GoPro devices, for their phones, printing jewelry. So the consumer aspect is there. It's growing. Consumer brands are also dipping their toes in the water. They really don't know where to begin. So it's the job of myself and of Shapeways to teach them. Those are really the two areas that we see when you get into the high end industrial grade printers. You know, you're already seeing and use parts in the scan eagle for an example, which, you know, the Navy uses for reconnaissance purposes. So it's being put into high grade applications. You know, for example, Carl Bass, who runs Autodesk, which is playing very large in this space, said a few months ago that he doesn't think that the technology will really be used highly in the consumer space. And that's kind of been an area that people have gone back and forth on. The trend line on our platform is skewing a little bit towards that. But not quickly enough to contradict what he said. So so mainly it's still designers using it for the purposes of research and development. One has you all kind of a challenge question and the question that maybe challenges the premise of this panel entirely, which is if you think about the story of the industrial revolution, the story of the industrial revolution was a story of centralizing manufacturing, right? Of you had artisans, you had people who had cottage industries in their cottages, they were designing, they were building things very locally, and there were a number of forces that pushed manufacturing to a central place. With that as the kind of paradigm that we have known for the last century, two centuries, however long you want to think about it, why does this distributed model make sense? When does this distributed model make sense? Why should people be taking it seriously as an option? I'll start. The world's changed. Consumers, you know, and we've been counted as consumers instead of citizens for a few decades now. And this is sort of a synthesis of not only being a consumer, but also being the citizen where you can use this technology to solve problems within your own community or create those cottage industries, whether it be full-time or part-time, if you have an idea, you're able to have access. With our concerns about sustainability and the environment, you know, where people talk about their carbon footprint, if you don't have to ship something from a central place, you can have it manufactured through this distributed network, where even though I'm sending my file to Shapeways because I want it to be in this incredible material and professionally done, Shapeways is contracted with somebody right in my neighborhood, most likely or very nearby, so it's not coming from far away. I think the other thing that, you know, comes to bear is demand. You know, how many of you are interested in having more customizable products, the shoes that fit you just right? You know, this type of technology is bringing that kind of possibility within our realm. Maybe you don't want the earrings or the that everybody else has. You don't want that mass manufactured thing. And for the maker themselves, whether you're the designer architect or whether you just have a good idea that you want to test out, the thing is you get to touch it, you get to seat along that process until you feel that it's at the point where maybe you want to scale it, maybe you don't want to scale it, maybe you just want to make small batch because all your friends and family want it, but you also have the option then to take it to a higher level if you need mass manufacturing. So I think those are a lot of reasons why people are now interested in taking part in manufacturing and also taking part in telling this new Elko manufacturer what they actually want this whole movement toward human centered design and having a choice and not making so many things that just become inventory and in a place someplace or become waste. In essence, you can create things on site on demand. You don't have to make a bunch in store somewhere. Yeah, when you're making a whole lot of the same thing, when you're making cars and you get one big giant factory, you put it in one spot, you make the same thing over and over again. When you're making 16,000 different products that are different each day, then it's great to have 16,000 different places to make it and then they're already where they need to be. You just send the raw material to that location and then the printer can print that thing for the person that's in walking distance, that's in a three house model where you just like find one thing that's right and you're by it and go and get that. And what's needed is that these factories are kind of two way streets because somebody who operates a printer also can design a new thing. So if they share that thing, then it can instantly transport its light teleportation where you have a thing here and then all of a sudden it's on the other side of the world and that's what's really exciting. Yeah, so this is kind of a fun example, but I do think it's practical. Sure many of you saw the International Space Station received a file that was, I believe it was a wrench that they're able to print in space. You know, you can take that and bring it back here down to earth and, you know, if you need whether a spare nail or a spare screwdriver, you can now print these things on demand. Materials are going farther and farther out in terms of their complexity. Obviously, it gets more expensive to turn in metal. But as the materials continue to evolve, the tools that we can use become greater and greater. So I think it's the ability to have things that you need on demand. Also, a speed in R&D, I don't think should be overlooked. You know, large companies who have had the resources have been able to take advantage of this for years, but smaller companies can do this now as well, where if they need to do five or six iterations, they can go to Shave Ways or they can go to 3D Hubs and they can take advantage of the technology and customization, which was touched on earlier. It really doesn't where with injection molding, you know, you may need to make five or 10,000 parts and have it shipped over with 3D printing. You can make that part on demand and in a single form. So I think speed, the on demand nature of production and customization are two huge value ads with AM additive manufacturing. Yeah, I just like to add quickly. The FAT Foundation is also working with some of our governmental agencies when you think of these applications in defense where typically the supply chain, you know, can take years and years, but you need something right away, whether it be on the battlefield or an emergency response center. These technologies are coming into play, which, you know, are real benefit. But I would also ask how many of you are factory workers or have worked in a factory? And how many would you aspire to work in a factory? Factory work, you know, is has a reputation of being mind numbing and boring. And that may or may not be the case, but there's a lot of people who are interested in manufacturing, but they're interested in changing the paradigm. So, you know, as Todd was pointing out, your role is compressed. So you become, you know, the conceptual person, the designer, the production person and the marketing. So it opens up so many opportunities for people to get involved. And it also, you know, these these types of technologies don't necessarily create more jobs in the factories. They reduce jobs. They just create specialized jobs for people who know how to use this type of equipment. So anyway, those are a couple of things that have been noticed across the field, just in terms of the draw of what the demand is for people's changing needs. We'll hear more about this in the next panel. But when you when you hear these prosthetic hands that people are printing out kids who are born without hands, like, you need to actually do things to the print after it's printed. So a lot of people expect this 3D printer makes whatever you want. But a lot of times there's, you know, additional screws that you have to add or assembly that has to be done or, you know, strings and elastic bands and Velcro that you add. So when you have these kids that need to come and get fitted with a hand, you know, it's better to have it more distributed instead of everyone come to one location and we'll, you know, all wait in line and put the hands together there. So I mean, one of the efforts that I was able to help Maria Esquelos here in the audience and I met at Baltimore Naval Conference and we followed up with a series of events where people from, you know, I put a message out to the We The Builders group and to anybody on the line who had a 3D printer to print out these parts needed for a prosthetic hand and mail it to this church in Baltimore and we're gonna, and what we were able to do is get hundreds of hands and build them and teach the scouts how to teach other scout troops and have those scout troops, you know. I think it's this weekend that there's Canadian scouts coming down and we're teaching the scouts here how to teach the Canadian scouts how to build the hands and, you know, that's something that's, you know, distributed that everybody can come together and print these parts that wouldn't work if it was just one centralized location because, you know, you need all of the, you know, working hands to build the new hands and fit them to the kids that need it. So, I mean, that's one of the really inspiring things where, you know, We The Builders kind of started as just a cool idea, let me, you know, assemble people who want to work collaboratively on a project. But then when this opportunity came across where we could start, you know, printing out these hands for people and really make a difference and make something useful instead of just, you know, something pretty to look at, that's been really inspiring, too. Yeah, there's other groups. I mean, there's something called 100K Garages which is a collective of people who have this type of equipment and they post themselves online, so it's regional. So if you need something made, you can locate the person with the 3D printer with the CNC router or with the laser cutter. And again, it's distributed. People make themselves aware through the internet, through these networks, so that the economy grows from the opportunities of connecting us all together in this way. It's funny, I was talking to my brother on one day, he, about a year ago, he moved out of Brooklyn to the Catskills to open up a bed and bar, which if you're interested, I can get you a great, great product. But he was lamenting how, you know, it was spring and so, you know, they're been switching over seasons and all this stuff kept breaking and it all was random things that had just pieces that were breaking off and he had to wait weeks to get, you know, these are small pieces that were mission critical, it wasn't expensive, it wasn't complex, it was just, they were a special piece for the thing. And he was saying, I don't know how these guys in the space ship do it, on the space station do it because everything breaks all the time. That's the same thing, you know, we need to get you a 3D printer and it's maybe able to help you solve these problems without waiting for civilization to reach the Catskills in whatever case that it does. So, no offense to the Catskills. Here's what we're going to speak about. So when I ask, you know, when we think about these models, when you think about distributed manufacturing and all these stories and these use cases, is this something that is going to compete with traditional manufacturing? Does it complement traditional manufacturing? Does it exist kind of stove pipe completely separate? What is its relationship to manufacturing and fabrication as we know it traditionally today? I think on the consumer end, it's going to be a long time. I say that mainly because of the consistency of the quality of the products. So the outputs of industrial 3D printers can give you a few hundred toys a week. You know, you put 10 of them in a room, sure you have a few thousand parts. But when you, we're talking about distributed here, so if you have a few machines in Boston that are working and a few machines in Chicago, they can produce pretty much the same piece that comes out, but it's not going to be exact. And that, unfortunately for us, is something that the consumer brands don't like. But when it comes to short and medium batch runs of products, absolutely. I think it's, I actually think we're already there on a daily basis. I work with companies who call us for these things. We've seen an influx of it just in the last few months, whether it's promotional items, consumer brands want to design their own products in-house and then put it on the web. They don't have to order 10,000, they can produce them on demand. And we can make 500 in a week if we have to. But when you're getting into 10, 100,000 pieces, it's just not there yet. And I don't know if you guys agree or disagree, but it's going to be five, probably 10 years out before that really becomes the case. So I think growing up and probably still today, my favorite holiday was Halloween. Because we had so much candy and so many different kinds of candy. Nowadays, when you go and you go drink and treating, which I'm sure you all do, you get the same label. You get Snickers bars and you get three musketeers and M&M packets, and it's the same thing that you get from Walmart that everyone else gives out. But when I was little, I remember spreading them all out on the floor, and there was 100 different kinds of candy. I was still little, I didn't know all the candies that existed, but the variance back then versus the variance that I see today, I don't go to Subway, I don't go to Pizza Hut, I don't go to these really common chain restaurants because I don't like seeing the same thing over and over. And with 3D printing and with all these different new creators that don't have to have that deal with Mattala or deal with the factory where they only make 20 new toys a year or something like that where it's not toys or us where it's just the same thing over and you can only get those brands and there's only those six toy companies or whatever it is. Each designer can make the new thing that's in their brain and that's why I love to do modeling because it lets you take the crazy thoughts that you have in your head and share it with the world and show everyone this is that cool thing that I just designed and that I'm able to compete with big companies at the same scale by designing the things I want and allowing for more different choices. That's what I really love about this technology. I don't think big factories are going away and nor would we want them to because there's a place for them. And there has been great interest on the part of big business about what has been tagged, the disruptive technologies, oh dear, we're gonna be undone because people can make a similar or more desirable product in their garage or their home. I think that there's a place for both but to the point about the larger industries being interested in this technology, many of them are producing the 3D printers, they've gotten in the business and I think too that for instance at the World Economic Forum for two of the sessions running we've actually set up a fab lab there and so the biggest and the richest have come to see this and they were pondering what effect this would have on traditional manufacturing and business. So I think they've been really interested in what's happening particularly as it's labeled disruptive, how it might interfere but more and more I see collaborations, I see the entrepreneur developing their prototype, getting it to a certain point where they can actually sell the idea or turn the manufacturing over to a big company and much of the manufacturing happens abroad in China. So there's some of that that we can do here as we're developing it and as the others have said with small batch and with personal manufacturing but there are factories right here in the US that are implementing digital fabrication as part of their manufacturing process, quite a few. In terms of 3D printing, I wholly agree that at the consumer level, this isn't just plug and play, like it's not the Star Trek replicator now where I could just push a button and say I want the bottle please. I mean, I can download things from Thingiverse or other open source sites that the files already done and it will print it out for me so I could do that. But if I truly want to create something that's unique, I have to know how to use 3D modeling and software to be able to do that. But again, in this whole line and chain, I can have an idea but with these networks I can find the expertise and people willing to either share in that process or to teach me how to do it because distributed education is a whole nother part of this and it's a huge opportunity. We have something called Fab Academy where it's modeled on MIT graduate level courses where you tune in between June and May, once a week for a lecture and people all over the world tune in and then you carry out the assignments in your local lab. So the knowledge is being distributed, more people are having the skills and more incredible inventions are coming out of it. I just want to add, it was brought up that designers have the ability to make their own things, basically download something from Thingiverse and we call it remix it. That's what's making its way into corporate boardrooms and management teams at big companies. Their products are already being messed with and they know it. So the very progressive one is it's under a percent but the very progressive, large companies are coming to companies like ours and saying it's risky, we may lose our intellectual property on these items but we want to test the waters. We want to see if there's another, if this is a new way to engage our customers who already exist in the millions, many of them have registered with us so we know who they are, we know the products they have bought. So if we know that these five products are being remixed dozens of times over and being printed via Thingiverse and then 3D hubs or Shapeways, then let's endorse that, let's allow them to do that, let's put our name behind it and let them produce that piece in Shanghai or in New York or in LA. It's quietly happening but it is happening and I think their biggest fear is that they lose control of their monetization but when I talk to them, I tell them it's just a new way to monetize and you can either figure it out, go along with it or not and then you lose. That's up to you. Yeah, I love this because one of the things this panel is doing is finding a bunch of things that we're gonna have panels later on. So we're gonna talk about education because the education component is incredibly important. We're gonna talk about IP because the IP stuff is an important question. Now we're here in Washington and so I wanna ask, but I'll ask a question to you before I open it up to the floor for questions is a policy question. You have a room full of people here, many of which are Washington policy people. If you want them to know one thing or be thinking one thing about how this technology works, how it's evolving, what's happening, what they can do to help, what is that thing? What do you want them to take away from this, especially in the context of distributed manufacturing? Get this into mainstream education. You can start in kindergarten. It's really important for people to understand how things work, how they're made, hands-on education, self-directed learning, and having the adventure of discovering things for oneself. Three about education, it's a very important thing, especially at Tinkerine. We've got all this course content and lesson plans online. It's all free and teachers can incorporate the content lesson plan curriculum into the classroom. So I think it's really important that the younger people, I mean it's all written at eighth grade level, so it's really important that younger people know that this technology exists, and of course not everyone's going to go into design. Not everyone needs to be a product designer. Not everyone needs to know geometry and all the different math that we took, but it's important that you know that it exists so that you know that if you have an idea for a product or if you have something that you want to make, you have the stepping stones, you have the right footing to stand on to get started in that. So just being exposed to it at an early age can do great things. I mean, for example, for me, I got exposed to it in middle school life when I started 3D modeling, and today I can make whatever I want. So imagine a society where like so many people knew how to use these tools, knew where their local maker space was and where they could go to have access to technology and how to use it too. It would be a really different place and I think the job force would be a lot different if you didn't say, oh, I don't know how to do that. I'll tell someone else how to make it. Somebody else should make it. But if you can do it yourself, you knew if you had that know-how. It would be a really different place. Yeah, I agree. Jobs and security is a big one, which I'm sure someone else will touch on later. But training people how to operate these machines because that's not an easy thing. So that's the technical schools. I know the department of education is working on that. Content creation, design, I think is also a useful tool for schools to teach their kids. But also the ability to understand and I don't want to use the word track, but be aware of what's being made. There are disadvantages to this and that is the ability for anyone in this room to create something that can harm the public and it is Washington's role to protect the public. So I would be, and I know they're paying attention to it already, but without stymying the innovation that's going to come along with this, but being responsible from policy perspective to protect people. When we think about the thorny problems that we're facing in terms of education, the economy, crime, again, the social component bringing people together to solve problems and if they have the literacy that's required, one of the really inspiring aspects of the FABLAB project is that it's gone into places and neighborhoods where there's been very direct ramifications of these problems. When you take a young person who's failing a traditional education and you put them in an environment where they can realize ideas that they have, that type of empowerment, it's really engaging a whole echelon of people who beforehand didn't have role models, didn't have opportunities. There's an amazing example of this in Detroit if you look up Insight Focus, it's the Detroit FABLAB. Check it out sometime, it's just amazing the transition of people who have been over-reliant on the justice system, welfare, who looked at the world as a place of shortage, they weren't included in processes, this is turning that around. So when we think of social policy and opportunities and creating, not just a workforce, again, but a citizenry that takes pride and stock in solving the problems that are part of our common concern. Well thank you, so at this point I want to open the floor to questions. I will issue the standard Washington disclaimer which is questions end in a question mark, not a period, so thank you all. And yeah, just raise your hand, we're all friends here, it's a small enough room, we don't need mics or anything like that. So just please let us know and we'll go through a couple of questions and then we'll move on in the back. Hi, yes, my name is R. I go to have a 3D hub in Virginia. My question in terms of policy is IP, what is being done to protect my hub and get orders all the time? I don't have time to check if there's a patent behind it or if somebody has a copyright or whatever. So what is being done currently to address that issue as to who's responsible? I've spoken to somebody in the music industry, IP explains to the music industry, and they said at this point, both the person sending me the 3D file and I as a printer will be liable if whoever created or has the IP decides to sue. So I'm just curious, what is the latest development in terms of legislation on that? I think the first answer is, mark 130 down on your calendar, get a whole panel on IP and intellectual property. So if the panel wants to respond, I'm happy to respond, but when we talk about that in depth later on. I'm not sure what the latest legislative update is, but in terms of the tools that we have at our disposal to track these things, you know, like I said, we have tens of thousands of pieces that come through our platform every month. We have human scanning of this. So, you know, it's not a full proof system. You know, we're not tracking things based on their geometry. It can slip through, but we do use the human eye as one element. And then, you know, I'm not sure you mentioned the music industry, but there's a team, a company called Source Three. They actually tracked songs, copyright in the music industry, and sold that to YouTube. They're actually trying to do the same thing with 3D files. They're trying to track intellectual property, 3D printable content. They're looking at it from a monetization perspective. Those are two ways and also streaming. This is, you know, the industry's been talking about for a few years now, the ability to wirelessly stream a file and that's supposed to be protecting the content more. We haven't seen a product that we love yet that seems to be a little bit more hype, but, you know, streaming, the human eye, and companies that are focused on tracking the content would be the three tools that come to mind. Yeah, as a content creator, I've streamed some files to customers before using some services. I've done it four times and had two problems, so it's not great yet, but also there's no guarantee that that streaming thing is not gonna get broken in the future and they'll be able to capture it. But yeah, it's not a solid problem yet. You know, this used to come up when we'd go to Kinko's, remember? We haven't really had any problems yet, but we do have documents that people sign, you know, attesting to the fact that this is their original work or that they have permission. It's really the best that we can do right now. And we will have Tom Kirk from Source 3D here later on, so 1.30. Next question. Just a quick, because just to make sure I don't understand anything. When you talk about streaming, so that if you go up with an idea and you sell it to someone else for five dollars, if you send them the file they can print out as many as you want, you're saying streaming being like, I'm gonna host the file, you can print it out, but you never actually get the file. Yeah, there's a couple services set up like that where I upload my file to a website and then someone can pay that website money and then that website sends a stream to their printer directly and it supposedly is safe that they can't make multiple copies, but there's lots of concerns and it's not a solved problem yet. But yeah. Thank you. Are there other questions? Yeah, with the growth in service bureaus and not even just kind of desktop printers, but also people having two, three, four larger industrial v-app printers, clients of the service bureau and talking about everywhere at this point. Yes. What does it look like, maybe with 3D Hubs specifically, maybe just in general, a distribution model for commercial and not so much as consumer? From the customer's perspective, the commercial? Yeah, and not even just consumers, but as companies producing, say low-run. Oh yeah, sure. So we've traditionally been looked at as a platform against 16,000 plus printers that has desktop machines available. While that's mainly true over 90%, we have hundreds of large-scale service bureaus that also have quite a bit of production capacity. You know, listen, the average order value in that area, 10X what it is if someone's ordering something at least at home. So we obviously see it as a large opportunity. You know, the way they view us is a way to get orders. You know, it's a marketing platform for them. Our, at a very basic level, we connect people who want to print with people who own 3D printers, whether that's a MakerBot sitting in your basement or whether that's at a professional 3D print service bureau in Arlington, we don't care. But we obviously, those guys need unique tools that are very different from somebody who's printing at home, and we intend to give them to them. Are there other questions? This will be the last question for this panel. How big a problem has it presented in terms of their operability with prints and getting this consistency out of different devices? Are you guys running into that issue a lot? Did you see any standards evolving that helped solve that problem? With the Weave the Builders project, the prints came in in a variety of qualities. So like some were great and some were really bad, but all together, it still makes a great looking part. If you look really closely, you can see the differences, but overall it came out nicely. What about? It's a problem. Is there a short answer to it? Is there anyone it's being used for? A different printer is going to produce a different level of product, and even the same printer will spit out something different. So there are big companies like Microsoft and HP that are looking at changing file formats because they think that's going to help. I think it's a mixture of the hardware improving and the materials. We didn't touch on materials here, but from a growth perspective in this industry, I think materials is huge and anything the government can do to incentivize research in that area would be extremely useful. Absolutely. I think that right now at the consumer level, we're limited in how big we can make something and the materials that we can make it out of. And then there's an issue about, when you're prototyping, you make mistakes. You have a lot of blobs of plastic. You'd like to reuse those. So we're talking with some of the manufacturers about how to immediately recycle and reuse so that we don't create more waste. But whereas there aren't standards, there's a lot of evaluation amongst users and sharing that information. Make Magazine does an annual review of the consumer level products and it's actually a good resource because they test them amongst many people. I see some of the testers in the audience here. But that becomes at least a gauge because you have a lot of people who feel like they have to have this for their school or their home or their library and they're rapidly challenged with the upkeep and the quality and the sheer demand that's placed on the machines that they're really not. Yeah. All right, so I'm gonna end this panel here. I'm gonna do two things. First, ask you to please thank the panel. They were fantastic to say about a five-minute break to switch between panels. The next panel will be on medical applications.