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Introducing the YouMagine team: Ronald Scheer

ronald 2

Hi, I am Ronald and I am in charge of YouMagine’s educational outreach and I am working with the team on developing our business models.

When did you start with 3D Printing? What drew you to it?

In the summer of 2010 I visited NOVU, the Dutch organization of inventors, product developers and researchers in Utrecht. In the Novu-building I went to ProtoSpace, (a fablab) to attended a workshop where participants could build an Ultimaker. This was the first time that I learned about 3D printing.

Involvement in 3D printing-projects
At the moment I am involved in the ‘3Ducation’ project in the Netherlands, where 24 schools (with children from 6 until 16) will be offered the first lessons in 3D design and 3D printing in the school year 2014-2015. Together with KWTG (a platform to promote Science & Technology at schools in Gelderland) we are preparing a new curriculum that teachers can use.

Involvement in Maker Community
Of course my Ultimaker2-printer is listed on 3Dhubs.com. Last month I visited the mobile fablab (owned by Frysklab) where I started to experiment with a full spectrum laser cutter.  In September 2014 I will host some workshops concerning 3D design and 3D print at MiniMakerFaire Kerkrade in the Netherlands. These are examples of how I would like to engage the wider community of Makers, Hackers and Tinkerers.

What do you think the main advantages of 3D Printing are?
3D printing will have a profound influence on Distributed Digital Manufacturing, As a result there will be major changes in Logistics and Distribution as we know it today.

Were you involved in education before?
At the University of Twente I studied at the faculty of Educational Science and Technology. I finished my Masters thesis on Instrumentation Technology with a focus on ‘Open Computer Supported Collaborative Work (OCSCW). So my interest in Collaborative Work (from an educational perspective) has held my interest for a long time already….

You were an educator before, weren’t you?
Yes, in 2002 I graduated as a qualified teacher from Windesheim, University of Applied Sciences. After that I became an Economics teacher.

How will 3D printing help kids?
Children can intuitively work with 3D printers. Children do this much better than adults. I also fully support Youmagine’s initiative to embrace Enablingthefuture.org.

Why YouMagine?
To me, YouMagine represents my values and passion for open source, collaboration and sharing.

Other interest or hobbies
I am also interested in

  • the ‘Internet of Things’,
  • ‘Open Data’ and
  • ‘Quantified Self’.

Last but not least
I was born in 1971. I am married to Wendy van Krimpen. We have two children (2 boys: 2,5 years old and 4 months old) and we live in Vught, The Netherlands.

Google Glass Interviews

As an experiment I took Erik’s Google Glass to Wikimania. I used it to interview several people there. We wanted to see if it was possible to quickly make engaging interviews using Glass. We were inspired by the excellent documentary Fog of War where the subject Robert McNamara looks directly at the viewer and wanted to recreate this simply using Glass. We’re happy with the results but want to know if you want to see more of this from us? Do you think this is something we should be doing?

About the use of Glass:

Pros

It was easy to make the videos.

  • Glass is very portable and so there is less equipment to carry.
  • The interview set up takes a minute.
  • Audio was surprisingly good.
  • We think that the videos are more engaging than other video because the interviewee is looking straight at the viewer.
  • Looking for interview subjects and moving about is much simpler because of Glass.

Cons

  • Because people don’t know you are recording, bystanders talk or walk through your videos.
  • Uploading and backing up the video was difficult due to the conference WiFi. Speaking from experience this problem will always occur.
  • The Glass only lets you record for 15 minutes or so of video. We made the clips short in order to offset this.
  • The battery life of the Glass is sapped very quickly when recording video.

Best practices

  • It is difficult to keep your head still when listening to someone talk. Concentrate on doing this.
  • Inside the conference hall itself is almost always a terrible location for video. Lighting and noise make people difficult to see and hear.
  • Go outside.
  • Don’t let people play with your Glass because they will delete videos.
  • Ask for and interview people during non busy periods at stands or events. Seems like a super obvious suggestion but people will say Yes to an interview and then be distracted.
  • Clearly explain the goal and what you want people to say.
  • In Google+ there is this Rotate button above your video. You may out of curiosity want to click it. Don’t. This transforms your video and significantly degrades the video and audio quality. Also it takes hours.

The first video we will be sharing is a short two minute segment with Nick Shockey, the Director of Programs and Engagement of SPARC. SPARC, is “the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, is an international alliance of academic and research libraries working to create a more open system of scholarly communication. SPARC believes that faster and wider sharing of the outputs of the scholarly research process increases the impact of research, fuels the advancement of knowledge, and increases the return on research investments.” A laudable goal certainly! 

 

 

Tech update: Improvements to YouMagine R1.2

Hi!

Last week we enjoyed working on and improving YouMagine. This is what we did:

Carousel working again for latest Chrome (the 3D viewer still broken, working on it!)
Performance upgrades
Extended support for external editors / 3D tools. We started with OpenJSCAD, but more tools will follow. If you upload a .jscad file people will be able to press edit and tinker with or adjust your design:
openjscad
Some small fixes in the navigation bar
navigation
We have added support for the following licences:

  • Creative Commons – Public Domain Dedication
  • Creative Commons – Attribution
  • GNU – LGPL
  • BSD License

Clicking favorite/download will update the counters without a page reload!

Some small bug fixes

We will continue introducing cool new features and performance upgrades so you can do what you do best: Inspire, Create, Share and Make!

In the meantime, if you encounter problems or have suggestions, let us know! We like to hear from you!

Wilco & the rest of the YouMagine team