My thoughts on I3D- finally, with apologies.

[Oceanconcepts]

I told a number of Autodesk people at AU I would write up my thoughts on I3D and forward them.  It's been six weeks now, and I've been too snowed to do much, so I thought I would just post general observations here.  Apologies for a lack of coherence. I'm not going to be able to do much editing, just a quick mental dump.  This is a subject with a lot of permutations, and one I've thought about a lot.  It is very much related to Fusion 360 in my mind. 

First, I3D was a terrific start, and I hope to return next year. I'm critical of some aspects, but I don't want that to mask the fact that I'm incredibly impressed- and grateful to Autodesk for trying to get out in front of what I believe to be a profound sea change in the economy.  I can't think of a company better positioned to help this process along, and to benefit from it. And after many years of being on the bleeding edge of the entrepreneurial product development space, I'm gratified to see the support that's developing. 

My biggest criticism focuses around something of an emphasis on the more flashy, top tier, high visibility aspects of entrepreneurship- particularly those aimed around building the Next Big Consumer Product, seeking VC funding, and hopefully making millions- or billions. That wasn't true of all presenters- Alice Taylor, for instance, was talking about a kind of down to earth project, and seemed more concerned about making a difference than about making money. Several others were in that mold as well.   But what I was hoping for with I3D was an opportunity to hear more about and from people doing the kinds of things I have been doing, our kinds of issues- and we're not, by a huge margin, going to be rockstar entrepreneurs.  As much press as these handful of big money making success stories get, and as much fun as they are to listen to, I don't think they are the most important part of the change that we're undergoing. 

So what's the story, what's the big change I think a conference like I3D should focus on?

It's the story of the person who has worked for many years in a particular field and knows it well, who probably has significant education and training and is highly qualified to understand their particular area of manufacturing or technology.  It could be energy transmission, or some corner of aviation, or medical devices, or like us, a specialized recreational or industrial market.  This person can have an idea about how to do something better, or how to design a product that meets a currently unmet need- that's what happened to us. A generation ago their only option, almost always, would have been to go to their employer with the idea and offer it up hoping it would be able to work its way through the bureaucracy and find favor- and that perhaps he would be rewarded with a promotion or a bonus. A lot of ideas died.  Very few were able to muster the resources to strike out on their own. The barriers of access to capital, to tools and suppliers, and to manufacturing facilities, were just too great.   

Those barriers have been shrinking for a generation or more, and they are becoming quite low. These people are now starting businesses. In most cases this new class of entrepreneur will never get rich or attract public notice outside their field- their markets are too focused and specialized and often small. Yet our electronics sales reps tell me that an ever increasing and quite significant part of their business is now coming from small scale or kitchen table startups- that's a big change.  This type of entrepreneur may never employ more than a few people directly- though they may generate far more employment from contract manufacturers, services, or by making parts of the economy more efficient.  Their product probably won’t be the next big consumer hit. It won’t put them on the cover of Time, or find them hanging out at backyard barbecues with Sergey or Elon. They won't attract venture capital money- as one presenter at I3D said, if a project does't have 100 million plus potential, they aren't at all interested.  But the point is they don't need to attract VC money- costs are coming down to the point that significant market impacts can come with fairly small investment. That changes the dynamics a lot. Most of these businesses are not a big deal in themselves, but I suspect they will add up to a lot in the overall economy, and will have an outsized impact when it comes to design and making incremental improvements to many areas of life. 

When we started our current business 17+ years ago the tools that made it possible for a couple of individuals to design and actually produce sophisticated electronic products were just beginning to become accessible. We were very much on the bleeding edge of that trend. The internet was coming into full flower, with companies like Digi-Key stocking and shipping millions of parts almost instantly- with no minimums.  Circuit design tools, embedded development tools, CAD tools, were all becoming more available and less expensive. Fab houses were established that could take your electronic design files and turn them into finished circuit boards in days to weeks. Companies like Proto-Mold or Quickparts could take CAD designs and turn them into real parts in days and even do small run production. None of this was hobby-level cheap (then, anyway, it's closer now), but if you were coming from a design environment where just keeping track of electronic parts required a parts librarian on staff and a full time purchasing agent, and where building any prototype required an investment of hundreds of thousands, rather than just a few thousand, the possibilities were pretty astonishing. 

This makes possible new models for business. When asked, I sometimes say we run a family farm- we just happen to grow technology rather than vegetables. In our case, we wanted to stay on the design side rather than run a factory and work at marketing- so we licensed our technology and designs to an established company in the market, and work with them to keep designs current and oversee production, which is contracted out. We still have only ourselves as employees, yet I can point to several people at a circuit board assembly plant who have jobs working on our dive computers, and several more people in Southern California who work assembling, testing, and servicing them. Note that this is assembling and producing electronic products in the US.  We export to Europe and Asia, we got top ratings and "best of" awards in domestic and international publications, and compete successfully with established companies that employ large teams of engineers. They would probably be shocked to know there are only two of us. We are successful mostly because we focused intently on making our instrument very easy to use.  Making something easy is hard, but it may be easier for a small group than a big organization.  This is a design and development model I expect will become more common. 

That's not to say it was something just anyone could just decide to do-  I had had 25 years spent designing and marketing in the business, understood the customers and market well, and had good connections. My wife and partner is a physicist with an advanced degree in Scientific Instrumentation Design and 30 years of experience in embedded systems, electronics, and software. It was very hard- it just about did us in. But it was doable, and it would be far easier today. 

There are a lot of questions that come up for people in our position- questions a future I3D should address. A few off the top of my head:

• Outsourcing vs. domestic production- we're incredibly happy we chose to build our product domestically and nearby- but that is a real question for many, and it's one with a variety of answers, this would be ideal for a panel of folks with various experiences. 
• Isolation is a real problem for small scale entrepreneurs- some I3D presenters talked about groups of 50-75 in a startup- but what if you are three, or two, or one? What about incubators, or shared spaces? 
• How do you deal with technical problems you don't have the knowledge to solve? How do you locate resources? 
• What possibilities exist for creating networks of independent entrepreneurs who can help each other? We have electronics and embedded design expertise, we're weak on mechanical design. Can vendors (GrabCAD, Autodesk) provide platforms for collaboration?

There are a ton of such questions that confront entrepreneurs on the level I'm speaking of. Very few of them were addressed at this I3D session. I'd love to work on what comes next. 

This change in technology has profound implications for the economy, for the nature of business itself, and for the larger society.   I don’t begin to understand what all those are. But my background was in anthropology, so I'm interested.   I like to look back at popular predictions for the future made 50, 60, or more years ago. When I do, two things are striking. One is how much of the technology they got right (jetpacks and flying cars excepted).  The other is how completely they missed the social and cultural changes these technological changes engendered.  Domestic conveniences helped change gender roles.  For a number of years, a majority of higher education students in the US have been female.  Increased communications have helped lower levels of conflict and have led to an increase in the global standard of living, education, health, and almost any other metric for general well being.  The world is changing in a positive direction, by most measures, at an unprecedented and accelerating rate. I believe that the democratization and decentralization of production that is now possible will have major implications for our future.  I don't think we are going to be 3D printing our toasters anytime soon, but I do believe we will see a proliferation of great design, more "long tail" options, and less reliance on major manufacturers for many types of products.  Autodesk is making powerful and very sophisticated 3D CAD tools available online freely, worldwide. What happens as gifted teenagers in Mumbai or São Paulo get their hands on these tools- and the tools for manufacturing? And can learn how to use them online as well? I don't know, but it's going to be fun to find out. 

Apologies for scale of the mental dump- if it starts a conversation or thinking, that's a good thing.

[rishivadher]

Hi I went to AU and didn’t meet any of Fusion team our forum, was in Student expert program activates our on classes, and first time in Vegas. So sorry not meeting and having a conversation.

I think Autodesk is great place to work (I’m not an autodesker), you can see that reflect on the people.

The grow of computer and the capacity to everyone make a cad model our change it, is essay and almost free, for that the reason there is great shift. And the system of index that has grown the ideis are hard to die (just by intent of killing it, by delete).

The MGF is always changing and the manufacture of adn, and amorfic manipulative forms of the machining is going to grow.

In 2014 is going to be an election year in US, so the market positions.

Outsourcing our domestic, is the question of where you’re sales are bigger, and where market to grow, relationship is a two side business.

In isolation sometimes can be more productive than hanging out with people how don’t undersand.

Usably people don’t want to pay for technical, because when one has to sell technical issues makes it easy but has price or not.

 Networking, is about how much can people participate, platform is not relevant has process and trust.

As a Student Expert, I’ve meet some interesting people from Brazil, China, and see that good ideas our good design is for a helping other make a better place, and not some marketing stun.

In an interview I gave AU I referred “learn by doing” is good way (as I think today).

Sorry for the bad english

[stanh1]

It's hard to add much to Ron's work here because he has thought the issues out so well and expressed them so eloquently. I will only add that the worlds economies contain far more of the small entrepreneurs who produce employment for many others than is ever suspected or properly accounted for in the economic calculus. The capital investment structures and systems that we rely on to invest in and create growth sadly are unable to perceive, much less help, this class of highly valuable people.