SXSW, 3D Printing and Science World

In less than a week, I’ll be making my annual trek to Austin, Texas for the South By Southwest Interactive conference (aka SXSW). I said last year I likely wasn’t going to go again, but things changed when they added a DIY/Hacker/Maker category which meant I could pitch a talk about 3D printing. I was only going to go if it got accepted and it did, so I’m heading back.

It’s been interesting to watch and see how SXSW can sustain it’s incredible growth. Definitely expanding the types of talks they offer helps attract more people but what does it mean for the chaos that comes with so many people in Austin? One step they’ve taken is to spin off a few different tracks to their own smaller versions of SXSW in different cities and dates than the main conference – SXEco, SXEdu and SXSWV2V for example.

So I’m actually pretty excited to go again, thanks in part to a few close friends finally going as well.

A key point of my talk is my passion for sharing what I know about 3D printing with people, in particular kids. In a bit of serendipity, I’ll be returning from Austin and then a few days later, will be at Vancouver’s Science World featuring many different 3D printers from the club I helped create, 3D604. It’s going to be like MakerFaire in that we’ll have a 3D Printer Village in a large space over two weekends during spring break. It should be a lot of fun so if you’ve always wanted to check out 3d printing in person, come down to Science World March 16/17 or 23/24 between 11am and 5pm.

Hope to see you there!