Season 1 Episode 8 – Bre Pettis: Utopia, Hackerspaces & the Early Days of MakerBot
Plus a sneak peek of Season Two with Ian Schon, Aaron Panone and Will Langford
In this last episode of Season One, Bre Pettis, co-host of The Edge, talks about the early days of MakerBot. As co-founder and former CEO of MakerBot, Bre played a huge role in popularizing 3D printing and making it accessible to students, educators, and makers. What many people don’t know, however, is where some of the early ideas for MakerBot originally came from.
In this founder story, Bre also shares memories of some influential people from the early 2000s maker days, like Phil Torrone of Adafruit, Mitch Altman, co-founder of Noisebridge, and the folks behind the Hackerspace Design Patterns at Chaos Computer Club.
SHOW NOTES
- For two years Bre hosted Make Magazine's Weekend Projects
- In 2007 Bre went to Chaos Computer Camp in Germany along with the rest of the Hackers On a Plane crew organized by Nick Farr. Upon returning, Bre gathered a team to form NYC Resistor.
- Other notable hackerspaces formed at that time include Noisebridge (co-founded by Mitch Altman) and Pumping Station One.
- Hackerspace Design Patterns document
- A video of the Makerbot Cupcake CNC kit being assembled
- INC article on Bre acquiring Other Machine Co
- Bantam Tools is hiring :) .
ABOUT BRE PETTIS
Bre Pettis has a history of empowering people with creative tools. He did this as a puppeteer, school teacher and as MakerBot’s CEO before he acquired Bantam Tools which makes desktop CNC machines with reliability and precision at an affordable price.