Aggravating Agersia Agiotage

[display_podcast] Lots of talk about CAD, Education, Startups and China today!

• Sparkfun is having a soldering contest!
• Just like paying for FedEx, people are almost always willing to pay for faster service.
• Dave is working on his MakerBot directly after recording the show today.
• Chris is off on a trip to go do a technology transfer on Monday. Dave has done this in Germany once before.
• Mike Demler linked here from the new newsletter he's editing for Open Systems Media.
• There's a new site called EE Forest that linked to us (or did at one point, looks like it might have changed).
• If you liked Leslie Green's book mentioned on here a few weeks back, be sure to donate and support him.
• MIT is offering their intro circuits course for free online...and you can get a certificate from it.
• Dan Pink's eBook tells you to try doing things reverse of normal in order to innovate...Chris liked the education example.
• Simon from the EEVblog forum found some fishiness with regards to Element14's adwords for KiCAD.
• Chris is working on his own KiCAD design and has been using a written tutorial to get parts made and figure stuff out.
• Erin (@RobotGrrl) did a great CAD comparison piece a few weeks back of all the different CAD programs.
• She points people to Wayne and Layne's KiCAD tutorial.
• Is the future of employment all freelancing? Chris thinks so (if US insurance gets a bit better). The HBR asks about "crowd sourced labor".
• Do you work at a shared workplace...for your everyday job? What kind of place is it? How does it work for you?
• The Sydney Hackerspace moved a little closer to Dave, who is now considering it a bit more. Jeff let us know he stepped away from the Austin space.
• Age matters, even in startups (however, older = higher success rate). Both Dave and Chris still have a chance to be successful when they get older! ;-)
• Chris got proper mad at the Mint blog for talking about investing in whiskey. Invest in people who are making stuff, folks.
• Is there value in starting up domestic chip/electronics/PCB facilities in the event that things go very wrong in China? Protests are on the rise and there is (always) risk that something could go wrong.

Did we miss something? Did our ranting and raving this week get you as worked up as Chris was? Let us know in the comments!

 

Next week, Bunnie Huang will be on the show! (for real this time) Get your questions in now!

 

Thanks to Uwe Hermann for the KiCAD photo!