BRE PETTIS

Most people don't feel empowered to make CAD models. The MakerBot Digitizer solves that problem.

The people who are getting 3-D printers at home are pioneers, kind of like the people who bought Apple IIs in 1981. Adults are usually the last people to get it. The kids are like, 'Get out of my way, I want at this thing.' They immediately start getting creative.

We have always moved with this approach of sharing and educating people with what they can unlock with 3D printing.

While at The Evergreen State College, I met Doranne Crable, and she was so dynamic and adventurous that I decided on the spot to take whatever she taught.

The self-driving car is coming. And right now, our best supply of organs come from car accidents... Once we have self-driving cars, we can actually reduce the number of accidents, but the next problem then would be organ replacement.

I've watched with amazement as Local Motors has pioneered a co-creation and micro-manufacturing model that has democratized the development and production of complex machines, effectively transforming consumer choice from supply-driven to demand-driven.

I like to make things. It's been part of my identity since I was a kid.

When people have a MakerBot, they have a different mindset from everybody else who grew up as a consumer. Instead of thinking, 'I need to go buy that,' they first think, 'Do I need to go buy that? I could just MakerBot that.'

What I like on Kickstarter is when I see real innovation and I see people building something new. It makes me sad when I see things that are just the same technology; you aren't passing the technology forward.

Before I started MakerBot, I was creating cool stuff and sharing it with the Internet. That's how I knew all the folks at BoingBoing, at Engadget and Gizmodo.

We got involved with the RepRap Project, a community focused on making 3-D printers that could make copies of themselves and help create a world without money. We started making prototypes.

I talked to a guy who has old cars, and there are parts that don't exist any more. So he makes radio dial knobs for obscure cars.

My father was a ham radio geek, and I remember the glow of the vacuum tubes from a Hammarlund receiver that became a hand-me-down to me.

If you want to be a person who buys stuff at the dollar store, you can be that person. If you want to make really cool stuff on your desktop and be the manufacturer, that is a lifestyle.

I still have the first bottle opener I made on my MakerBot. Things you fabricate are things you care more about. I think there will always be people who go and buy crap at the dollar store. But I think it is cool when people craft things themselves.

Learn how a 3D printer works. Get inspired. Make your own stuff. It is a wonderful time to be innovative. Connect things together. If you're into electronics, get an Arduino.

My parents had a software company making children's software for the Apple II+, Commodore 64 and Acorn computers. They hired these teenagers to program the software, and these guys were true hackers, trying to get more colors and sound and animation out of those computers.

We're on the brink of the next industrial revolution. Instead of buying things, you can make them on a printer. When you have a 3D printer, you can iterate more - what used to take months, now takes hours.

My personal mission has always been to empower people to be creative. But the Holy Grail of a tinkerer is to make something that makes something.

That's the beauty of living in New York City is that a good chunk of the media is here and willing to drink with you.

For me, when you put a MakerBot in a school, you add a manufacturing education to the environment where I think we can really empower the next generation to compete in the global economy.

We wanted people to 3-D-print anything, not just more 3-D printers.

We started MakerBot in 2009 and made a conscious decision to educate people with the possibilities they could do with 3D printing and share with people what is possible.

One of the criticisms we get is, 'Does the world need more plastic crap?' But you have to look beyond the plastic crap, to the design, to the experience, to the empowering nature of the MakerBot and the community.

I feel like I've lived a life of making mistakes and learning from them and doing my best to only make each mistake once.