The Meetup

I recently attended a meetup in the center of San Francisco.
The focus of this gathering was to learn about the 3D printer world. The evening’s speaker list featured a couple of young startup CEOs. Meetups are a big deal in Silicon Valley, not only for the tech scene, but really for any interests at all. There are foodie meetups, art meetups, lifestyle meetups, anything imaginable.

I arrived at the meetup venue just in time. It was still about half empty (they were expecting over three hundred people), but filling up quickly. I found the typical mix of a male dominated audience, a handful of young women, and even one ten-year-old boy (accompanied by his mom).
Within a few minutes, the room was full. The hosts were still fidgeting with the sound system, and so things got delayed. Twenty minutes past the scheduled begin, the host announced pizza in the reception area (for three hundred people), and suddenly there was a rush to get into the queue. The room filled up with the smell of pizza, and finally, forty minutes late, the presentations began.

The CEO of Ologic told us how he became much faster at producing his ‘toys’ (robots), when he ditched his CRC for a 3D printer. The founder of Tempo Automation told us about the many opportunities of 3D printed electronic circuit boards. And finally, the CEO of Type A Machines told us about his neat modular 3D printer, why it’s great for education and schools, and why it’s hard to 3D print a 3D printer. He also addressed the issue of 3D printing guns. Obviously, he said, the first thing a kid wants to do when given a 3D printer, is try to print out his own gun. At this point, the little boy in the audience shouts out in dismay, this is not true! Three hundred and fifty heads turn his way and the speaker turns red. He then asks the boy what he would print first if he had his own 3D printer. The boy said: an iPhone…