San Francisco gallery YBCA has an exhibition running at the moment that sounds just up our street ! Called TechnoCRAFT: Hackers, Modders, Fabbers, Tweakers and Design in the Age of Individuality, it features projects like this awesome Rocket Bike project by Cyclecide and furniture hacks by Eames Hack Team.

The blurb for the show says:
The history of craft and design began with individuals making what they could not afford to buy, which created a deep and personal connection between owner and object. With the Industrial Revolution, the tradition of craft mostly disappeared as people became enamored with the abundance and affordability of mass-produced, high-quality goods. The rise of mass-production and mass-consumerism undeniably elevated the average person’s quality of life. However, the cultural sameness that materialized, combined with the loss of individual connection to objects, left many feeling dissatisfied. As a result, they took matters into their own hands. 

Hooray !
Certainly sounds like it’s worth checking out, any of you in that neck of the woods!

Fed up with the assumption that development ideas seem to flow in only one direction, Colombian Designer Carolina Vallejo is calling for designers, makers and do-ers in developing countries to submit ideas and proposals to help solve the problems of the first world.

The big issues she hopes can be addressed through the competition include Food Pro­duc­tion and Eat­ing Dis­or­ders, Aging Pop­u­la­tion and Low Birth rate, Immi­gra­tion and Inte­gra­tion to Soci­ety, Sus­tain­abil­ity and Over consumption.

“The Dx1W com­pe­ti­tion is addressed to the devel­op­ing coun­tries of the world: All cre­ative solu­tions depend on hav­ing a pow­er­ful idea. Whether it’s great resources, mil­i­tary, pol­i­tics or gov­ern­ment, power and size are not enough with­out hav­ing a pow­er­ful vision. The First World needs our ideas to solve their prob­lems. First World prob­lems demand Sim­ple Third World solutions. From today on The Third World will bring ideas to redesign the future of the First World.”

The Dx1W idea is a breath of fresh air, and I was lucky enough to meet Carolina recently. It was inspiring to hear her vision for developing the idea further into a Community of people working towards solving the worlds problems beyond the first world / third world way of thinking.

The question she asked “What does it mean to be a developing country anyway?” has really stuck with me.
“Among other things it means that the future is to become devel­oped. We are on our way toward devel­op­ment, and we assume that’s a great thing, but let’s stop to con­sider for a minute whether devel­oped coun­tries are some­thing we want to turn into. Are peo­ple in devel­oped coun­tries hap­pier or health­ier? Do they live a bet­ter life? Do they have a bet­ter under­stand­ing of nature and live in a bet­ter equi­lib­rium with the envi­ron­ment? Do they live in peace?”

The winning ideas from Dx1W will go on show in an exhibition in New York later this year, but this of course is just the first step, I can’t wait to see where this goes next.

Andrea: “I just fixed a tear on the front of some vintage bike shoes I have. The sugru looks awesome.”
Nice one Andrea! now I’m hoping one of my shoes is going to get a hole so I can do that puncture patch repair, it’s cool!

Doug says: “sugru worked great on my tramping boots. They are really comfortable and were quite costly five years ago but I didn’t look after them very well and so the leather cracked and broke where the foot bends up after I let the boots get wet and then dried them too fast. This meant that water and mud gets in when I go down to feed the horses, especially now during the New Zealand Winter when it is so wet and muddy. Now no water or mud gets in and it (almost) looks like the boots haven’t been changed unless you know and look really closely. As you can see, I have used them a lot since I fixed them and there is lots of mud all over them. I was initially worried that the sugru that is inside the boots (to give the repair some strength) might be uncomfortable but I was able to shape the sugru to my foot (by wearing the boots) before it dried and so now the boots are even more comfortable!

Olivier posted this on the sugru facebook page yesterday, his first sugru repair – I love that he chose to use orange on blue trainers – loud and proud!

OH, word of warning! in case anyone’s thinking to rush off and repair the ends of their shoes with sugru – don’t ! it’s not strong enough for soles of shoes, it’ll wear through when you walk on it. Seems like it’s really good for uppers tho!

LOVE it !!

Dothegreenthing.com is a cool website that aims to inspire people to lead a greener life. With the help of funny videos and sometimes whimsical / sometimes practical ideas from community members around the world, Green Thing focuses on seven things you can do – and enjoy doing, to lead a greener life.
One of those things is sticking with what you’ve got, …sound familiar?
We’re pretty proud that Green Thing has chosen sugru as one of 4 new products in their new facebook competition of products that can help you do the green thing – and the prize is £50k worth of video production for the winning product. £50k!!! Oh what unbelievable craic we could have with that ! seeing as we’re used to making our videos with close to zero budget, I wonder what £50k would do ?!… crikey!

Check out the competition and help us win! The other products they found are pretty awesome too :) but sugru is the most awesome !! hee hee :)
Vote for sugru and help us win !

We are about as excited as we’ve ever been in our lives this week. Why? We’re going to Bay Area Maker Faire! It’s on this weekend and, well, this has always been a dream for us. We’re pinching ourselves…

If you’re in the San Francisco area, come and see us! We’ll be in the MakerSHED, and we’ll have a demo / hacking workshop area with lots of sugru for you to try out there and then. Dig out those things waiting to be hacked and repaired and bring them along – we’ll give you enough sugru to do your project there and then. We may even have a few prizes for best hacks ;-)

And, well, how could we refuse an amazing opportunity to work with the supreme hackers at our favourite magazine in the world…. we’ve worked round the clock recently to make a limited number of packs for MAKE (on top of the sugru stock we’re building for sugru.com) that you’ll be able to buy from MakerSHED at the Faire.

VOLUNTEERS WANTED Come help us out at the sugru stall
The crowds will be huge, so we’re looking people to join us in our hacking area to show the masses how sugru works. If you’d like to help people hack and make with sugru over the weekend, and meet other sugru fans, we have a few free MF passes for volunteers – email me at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) if you’d like to help — even for just a few hours! We’d love to meet you :)

(Finally, as you can see from our timeline, we’re getting DARN CLOSE now. That means more exciting announcements soon.)

Jamie emailed me that he adapted the grip of his Sony a200 DLSR to make it easier and more comfortable to hold.
He explains: “You see, camera manufacturers think that cheap cameras should only be bought by people with small hands and the rest of us can just upgrade to their pro range of cameras. Or, you could sugru-ify your entry-level camera! I decided to improve the finger grip (particularly around the little finger) and fill out the palm rest to provide a bit more stability — I’m even more concerned about the ergonomics since my wrist is only out of a cast since last week.”
You can see lots more pics and the extra hacks he did with the bit left over on his blog.
I think it fair to say a fair few of us would chirp up… SURE it’s a jolly great hack but WHY OH WHY did you use orange and green?!?
“Well, I could have used black but there’s no point in hacking something unless everyone notices it. I’m sure it’ll make a good ice-breaker at a photo walk (and it also makes it damn obvious which camera is mine!).”

Jonathan emailed me this other lovely camera hack: “This is one of my father’s camera’s. He does nature photography all over the place. In some of those places, it’s raining or snowing all the time. Though the camera is weather proof, the shutter cable isn’t. It had the wire ripped out from over-use. Sugru saved the day!”

The big weekend in the UK maker calendar is nearly here! This is the second year for the UK Maker Faire which is a baby of the big beast in California every year, and it’s on this weekend March 13-14 at the Centre for Life in the middle of Newcastle.
We’ll be there !
Got a project that could use some sugru? Something broken waiting for a fix? Or a badly needed hack?
There’ll be a limited amount of free sugru available for hacking over the weekend, so email us at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), tell us what you’d like to hack / repair / make and we’ll book you in!

Skilled and crafted uses of sugru impress us for sure, but isn’t there something great about this ad-hoc style hack?

I have to admit to a certain thrill when someone successfully repairs or hacks something EXPENSIVE with sugru, so when Joe from Guatemala sent back this repair he did on his microscope I grinned :D

“I used sugru to lock in the adjustable eye piece. The threads normally tighten the eye piece to the body but they were stripped and someone had tried to repair it with superglue. The superglue didn’t hold the piece, so I removed the adjustable eye piece, pulled the lens assembly away from the body and pressed sugru into the cavity and used a small flat wooden stick to do the pressing and smoothing. The result is shown in the picture. I did not trim it. I was quite surprised and pleased to have repaired this equipment and save the cost of major repairs.”

If, like me, you have lots of jumpers that you love but they don’t look their best anymore because the moths have gotten too cosy with them, you’ll LOVE this!
Woolfiller is a new product by dutch designer Heleen Klopper. I repaired one of my favourite jumpers and scarf at the weekend and I still have a pile to tackle. The video on the website shows how it’s done – and it really is that easy – and very satisfying ! I love that you can choose nice colours and enjoy the repairs – it’s pretty much like sugru for your clothes !!

I just read the story behind this t-shirt on Matt Jones’ blog – inspiring!

If you got our newsletter last month, then you already know about HACKquariums.
Since we put out the call we’ve had lots of really brilliant applications sent back! Helloatto hosted a prototype HACKquarium last night in Belfast, and robots.ie are hosting another as part of the MAKE night at the Science Gallery in Dublin tomorrow night.
We’re just starting to get back to the people who have applied now, and wowee, you guys are cool !!!

So what’s the story?

Well, while we’re scaling up, we want as many of you as possible to play with and enjoy sugru, so we had an idea. Why don’t you lot host HACKquariums (HACKquaria?) … all over the world?
“What’s a HACKquarium then?” you might ask. It’s a good question – we just made it up.
A HACKquarium is a locally hosted night where you get to meet fellow hackers, have a few drinks and stick sugru on your stuff.
You provide the venue and the hackers, and we’ll provide massive blocks of sugru (for free!), as well as some instructional videos and a guide to making your HACKquarium kick ass.
We’re also looking for someone to provide the beer, but still no promises.
Apply to host a HACKquarium in your city, town or garden shed.

Didn’t get your order in quick enough? If your need is bad and you just can’t wait, then this is for you!
Send us a picture of what you need it for, or a story about why you need it – and if it’s interesting, unusual, nice or just downright desperate enough we just might send you a little pack to do the job.
Only condition is that you post / tweet / send us pictures !
So if you’re itching for it, tell us why at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) !

Peter sent in these photos of his first sugru repair. His ‘testing’ approach is just what sugru needs, afterall when it comes to it, every hack / repair is unique!
Peter wrote: “One 5g sachet was enough to repair my canyon boots with some left over for a doorstop too. I was repairing the perished rubber uppers of my canyon boots with polyester thread and neoprene glue, but I needed something to rebuild the broken buckle strap retainers. I sewed them with a few strands of thread to hold them in place and to give some composite strength, then squidged some Sugru on … better than new. The waterproof nature of Sugru will hopefully hold firm, I’ll test it out on the river and report my findings. I am interested to find out if Sugru sticks to polyethylene plastic and whether it can cure underwater or adhere to damp surfaces (by squeezing away the water droplets). That’ll be my next test.”

Scott Burnham has just published a really interesting paper about the growth of hacking culture. Download it from his blog here!

Earlier this year, Platform21 published the Repair Manifesto. It’s a bold call to arms and it stimulated a very big debate; they say it’s been downloaded more than a million times now. It seems the world really does want to get repairing!