IT Blog

Right now, all over the world, people are engaging in the construction of critical supplies and Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), respirators, and other clinical items, using tools and techniques such as 3D printing, sewing, repurposing factory equipment, and other skills and ways of thinking. These innovations, in part, seem to have risen up from an early foundation of Maker Faire education. This education, and the communications describing it, have created a pipeline for information of how to innovate PPEs rapidly across the globe.

That’s not to say that every PPE innovation can be attributed to Maker Faire. But without Maker Faire, we may not have built the skills and the networks to rapidly innovate in the way many of us are able to do to keep ourselves safe and save lives.

Maker Faire was founded in 2006 by Dale Dougherty—who’d launched Make magazine the year before—as a type of “county fair” for hobbyists and those who were…