To kick off our marathon month, Savannah Peterson, Director of Community at Shapeways gave a talk at the Gasparilla Interactive Festival, Tampa Bay’s showcase for cutting-edge technologies, digital innovation, and entrepreneurial inspiration, and served on a panel about women and millennials as entrepreneurs and innovators.

On March 8th we sponsored a Printathon at Brandeis University where our master of social media, Eric Ho, and customer service agent Andrew Thomas served as judges for the students projects. The event featured two Teams from Brandeis, one from UConn, one from Columbia and one from Waltham High School. The theme of the competition was social justice and students were encouraged to print products that can help humanity. The day was followed by a meet up with Voxel8, an electronics 3D printer.

Brandeis University Printathon participants and judges

In the next two days three members of the Shapeways Community Team will be on stage talking about different aspects of 3D printing in three different time zones: On Thursday, March 12 Natalia Krasnodebska, Community Manager, will discuss 3D printing and intellectual property at the Copia Institute Inaugural Summit; On March 13 Lauren Slowik, Design Evangelist for Education, will lead a workshop on 3D printing in education at the 3D Printshow Summit in Madrid, Spain; finally, also on March 13 Savannah Peterson will speak about “Decoding Gender Diversity in Tech” at SXSW Interactive in Austin, Texas.

Setting up for the 3D Print Show in Madrid

Lauren will also be making stops in Barcelona, Paris, Amsterdam, Eindhoven and Berlin for the 3D Print Show – please check out her blog entry on her European road trip for updates on meetups and events throughout the month.

Me and author Michelle Ward at Craftcation in 2014

Finally, at the end of March I will be heading out to Southern California to speak at Craftcation, a conference for creative makers in Ventura, California held March 26 through 29. I will be talking about funding your creative business and creative business models, plans and goals and will be talking a lot about business lessons from our Shapeways shop owners. I’ll also be hosting a meetup in the LA area on Wednesday, March 25 and a High Tech Meets Handmade Happy Hour in Ventura on Friday, March 27.

We hope to see you while we’re out on the road this month!

The post Shapeways Community on the road in March! appeared first on Shapeways Blog.

The final stop on my Irish, British and Scottish roadshow was ancient Edinburgh. A city as cloaked in history as it is moss. Scotland is a lovely country, making up the Northern UK territory and producing some of the best Whisky in the world, it has always been high on my list of travel destinations. Full disclosure, the original impetus for this roadshow had been a wedding I was asked to officiate in Edinburgh, and given the success of the Shapie community there it made sense to combine work and play. After making some great memories with my old college community, I was excited to see how Scottish Shapies got inspired! I spent Monday with the esteemed Vijay Paul of Dotsan and the evening meeting up with Steven Gray, Chris Dobson and Michael Inglis, three other incredibly talented Shapies. Not sure if it was the gloomy weather or tasty spirits, but Scotland greatly impressed me with the magic of its design culture.

If you’re interested in talking with any of the super friendly designers mentioned here, there is a specific forum thread dedicated to Scottish Shapies you can engage with here! You’re also encouraged to start threads for your own local or digital community.  

Monday morning came with typical Scottish mist, limiting the amount we could shoot for a video series with Vijay Paul, the designer behind Dotsan. I had selected Vijay for a video because he has the ultimate Shapeways story. He is a self-dubbed “Digital Nomad;” a designer so successful through 3D Modeling and Shapeways that not only does he get to travel the globe and design from exotic locations (when we set up the shoot, he was in the foothills of the Himalayas), but he’s also had to hire a team of freelance designers to handle all the “designer for hire” work he gets. There will be more on Vijay when the videos we created together are ready, but suffice to say, he’s a great resource for design and entrepreneurial inspiration. 

Michael Inglis was the first to arrive at Hollyrood 9a where we were having our meetup. He’s a notorious minifigure accessory designer on Shapeways, and his work has gone viral before. Admittedly, I was not expecting him to still be a student at University, but sure enough, he’s another example of a young and successful Shapie supplementing his income through his Shapeways shop. He’s created impressive products over the last year, and is looking to start experimenting with our API over the summer. I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next!

Eggbot Cufflinks and Egg Cup by Steven Gray

Chris Dobson is an architect familiar in making and fabricating models and products using many materials. He’s just started dabbling in the Shop Owner space on Shapeways, but his mini (pictured below) and wired skull show a lot of promise. Chris uses Shapeways for work predominately, but we hope he continues to use it for play!

I have been following Steven Gray’s work since before I joined Shapeways. Not sure if it’s his need-finding or playful form that attracted me to his work in the first place, but regardless I was elated to see he’d brought a plethora of models. His lizard coasters were much larger than I’d assumed from the product shots, which was awesome (protip: always use a few points of reference for scale) and his eggbot cufflinks (pictured above the micro skull) as delightful as I’d anticipated!

He iterates until the product is perfect before posting it for sale in his shop, and the precision he uses during the day in construction management is echoed in practical and beautiful form of his models. 

Scotland was truly magical. Perhaps it was the mist, or the flock of great designers, or the general fun and creative vibe, but it’s safe to say Edinburgh won a bit of my heart. I hope to see the Shapies in Scotland get together on their own more, and hopefully create more reasons for UK roadshows! 

Galways was great, London was lovely, and Edinburgh was an exciting close to a fabulous trip. Thank to everyone who joined me along the road and those of you reading about the journey. Meetups are an incredible way to connect with our community and they’re a lot of fun! Interested in hosting one of your own or just want to talk to 3D Modelers in your area? Add your city to the Shapeways in your Community thread on the forum!

I’ll leave you with one final question, where should we go next? 

The post UK Roadshow: 3D Design and Printing in Edinburgh, Scotland appeared first on Shapeways Blog.

After an inspiring meetup in Galway it was time to head to Big Ben and meetup with the London Shapeways Community. It was overcast and slightly misting when I arrived, in typical British form. 15 Shapies (and even some of their family) met me at The Riverside, on the South Side of the River Thames. 

The post Shapeways talks 3D Printing in London appeared first on Shapeways Blog.

Stephen Best, a designer here in Galway, printed this seal from a commercial printer he did work on for a company in Australia.

Stephen prints at home on his Ultimaker 2 before he sends it to Shapeways. Resolution on home printers is fine, but seldom fantastic. As he made the jump to Shapeways, trying the model first in our WSF, he realized the translation from animation to physical product requires more polygons. He adjusted and then printed in FCS. The results are awesome! Side note for inspiration: the seal’s mouth is the escape hole!

Tycho Schenkeveld, a dutchman living in Galway (also interesting to note, only one attendee was born in Ireland, the rest had found their way to this glorious place through love and work). He modeled this dog for his “mum” as a present.

Tycho was smart and got user feedback even before printing, adjusting the model to have bigger ears after talking to 

his aunt. After one reassuring pricing in WSF, he was ready to go for the gold plated steel. The results were awesome!

Paul Dunne, our true Irishman, is a product design student at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin. He’s a design thinker at heart, and is currently working on finding ways to use 3D Printing to enable the visually impaired, especially those affected later in life. His aspirations and work are incredible! I elected him to be our education and crew ambassador for Dublin last night, and I look forward to seeing the other designs he comes up with in solidworks. He had great insights and requests for tutorials on Shapeways side as well. We always love people pushing us to be better! Here’s a ball he did in both steel and elasto plastic (the bounce of the elasto was awesome!)

A very big thank you to everyone who came out in Galway last night, I can’t wait to see what else you all create; and come back for more Guinness! 

Time to hit the road again this morning, next stop: London! 

Cheers!

Savannah, your Shapeways vagabond. 

The post 3D Printed Greetings from Galway appeared first on Shapeways Blog.

Savannah, Shapeways roaming gnome here, and I’m hitting the road again! This time, for #ShapewaysRoadtrip part two, I’ll be in Galway, London and Edinburgh hosting meetups along the way. In addition to mingling, I am also looking to showcase designers who use Shapeways to power their businesses and enhance their lives. Send me an email, Savannah@Shapeways.com if you’re interested in being featured (and comfortable being on camera). Now, for the details:

The post Shapeways 3D Printing UK and Ireland Roadshow appeared first on Shapeways Blog.

This is the final part in a four part series highlighting stops made along the first ever 3D Printing #ShapewaysRoadtrip across America. Over the last week, I visited Las Vegas, Denver and Chicago before a final and momentous stop in Cincinnati. Thank you all for following along on my journey; I look forward to the adventures yet to come!

The post #ShapewaysRoadtrip Recap Part Four: 3D Printing Savvy in Cincinnati appeared first on Shapeways Blog.

Last week I posted the first two parts in a four part series covering my 3D Printing road trip across America. After Las Vegas and Denver, I headed to Chicago for the biggest meetup of the trip to date. My final post on Cincinnati will come out tomorrow.

The post #ShapewaysRoadtrip Recap Part Three: Chicago’s Bustling 3D Printing Ecosystem appeared first on Shapeways Blog.

This is part two in a four part series highlighting my 3D Printing #ShapewaysRoadtrip across America. Yesterday, I featured the Shapies of Las Vegas. Today is a recap of my stop in Denver, and my adventures in Chicago and Cincinnati are still in store.

The post #ShapewaysRoadtrip Recap Part Two: Digging Denver’s 3D Printing Scene appeared first on Shapeways Blog.

I left my temperate California home and garden in the sleepy Silicon Valley around happy hour on Saturday, June 1st. Hitting the road later than initially targeted, Martini (my 19lb rescue mutt co-pilot) and I pointed the minivan for Tehatchapi, the halfway point between the Bay and Sin City, the first stop on the #ShapewaysRoadtrip. Traveling with a dog, and literally every material possession I have, we were poised for the comedic adventure that lay ahead.

Waking up in the desert, I realized the travel information I’d received the night before was inaccurate, and subsequently I arrived in Sin City three minutes before the event was scheduled to start. I’d called ahead to warn Pawel, the host of my timeline, and took the 3 minutes of luxury to walk Martini, assuming that after 6 hours in the car she would need to relieve herself. She did not. Shocked by the 100+ degree temperatures of Nevada, she was clueless. Without a blade of grass in sight, she stared at me wagging her tail, confused but happy to be off the road.

There was a smiling group of empathetically sweaty makers packed in the SYN Shop in downtown Las Vegas. HyruleFoundry, a recent Zelda fan art success on Shapeways, was in attendance and after a gregarious discussion about where we are now and how Las Vegas is leveraging 3D Printing, told his story of success on the marketplace. The creators of Las Vegas were full of questions and ideas, continuing the discussion over pints at the Gold Spike casino across the street afterwards, and pleasantly prolonging my drive to southern Utah that evening. SYN Shop even had a retro powder printer they were in the process of restoring, all in all a very refreshing and empowered group of hackers!

Back on the road zipping through the desert (literally- Utah is the only state I’ve enjoyed 80mph speed limits in), I felt the first #ShapewaysRoadtrip dose of warm-fuzzies. There is something truly magical going on in downtown Las Vegas; Tony Hseih’s incredible personal investment into the entrepreneurial ecosystem of a city written off as a weekend getaway is as impressive as it is inspiring. Pete, our CEO, and I have both had the opportunity to workshop and discuss the future of the project with the #dtlv community and look forward to working more with the makers and masterminds in the future. If you haven’t left the strip in Vegas, you are truly missing out.

Be sure and check back for more #ShapewaysRoadtrip adventures with Martini and I as we make our way from the desert to the Rockies. If you’re craving more content, you can find it here courtesy of RebelMouse or via #ShapewaysRoadtrip on twitter and Instagram.

The post #ShapewaysRoadtrip Recap Part One: Viva Las Vegas 3D Printing appeared first on Shapeways Blog.

Hi Shapies!

I’m Savannah, the latest addition to the Shapeways Marketing team. I’ll be splitting my time here between social media management and Shop Owner education.

The post Shapeways Roadtrip across America with Savannah appeared first on Shapeways Blog.