Joanne and I had a stimulating time in Queens last weekend, at the premiere World Maker Faire New York, installed at the NYSCI Hall of Science.  With over 25,000 people attending, and 500 Makers, it was a meaningful happening.

You’ll see plenty of “weird” in my photos.  But I failed to capture the many, many ordinary-looking families, and a lot of the more tech-y and geeky aspects of the Faire.  They are simply not that photogenic…things like Arduino controllers and people in normal clothes can’t compete with colorful crafts, crazy contraptions, and kooky looking characters.

(The photos of us outside the back of a truck are actually of  a secret “pop up” restaurant.  Noodle Bar.  Fun!)

I love this blog post by Anil Dash that does a wonderful job explaining the Maker Movement.  He eloquently makes the case for why this “revolution” is enormous and matters:

Today, Dale Dougherty and the dozens of others who have led Maker Faire, and the culture of “making”, are in front of a movement of millions who are proactive about challenging the constrictions that law and corporations are trying to place on how they communicate, create and live.

I also loved what Joanne said, after having an exhilarating day connecting with the smart and creative Makers, several of which could be future Grommet partners:

There are parts of the Maker Faire that were weird, but all parts of it were wonderful.

Two weeks ago we had fully vetted a potential cooking tool Grommet and had it scheduled to run imminently.  We used the product multiple times.  We made the final video, wrote the story, negotiated the commercial terms.  I think we had done everything but shoot photography.  It was a “go”.  But then Katherine tripped on a negative review in a Dutch publication (the product is a European import).  She doesn’t read Dutch but she could read “trouble”.  She dug deeper, found enough to worry about, and Joanne cancelled the Grommet.

It caused all kinds of headaches for Joanne to make this decision.  Someone on her team had to face an upset product supplier.  Hours of lost work.  A messed up Grommet calendar.  A need to accelerate another Grommet.  Yet everyone knew it was the right thing to do.

But here’s the rub.  This will happen again, and we might miss the bad news and release the Grommet story.   The internet is our friend, we can find negative reviews in a nanosecond.  But if a product is new, or if the bad news is slow to surface on the Web, we could get “caught” by a disreputable new player or product.

I’m very pleased we are developing a new submission process which will openly publicize the ideas we are seeing.  What is now visible only to our team will live in a  public “Citizens’ Gallery”  on our site.    This change is going to be huge:  people will be able to get more welcome exposure for their submissions on the Grommet site, and that will also continue to raise the quality of them.

Here’s a first mockup…it’s undergoing revisions, but we want to share it anyway:

Bigger than that, to us, is that we will have a broader chance to hear multiple points of view on a product.  We will open up ways to comment on a Grommet idea.  By exposing our incoming submissions we will have a much better chance to learn about the possible Grommets from people who are committed to helping us maintain the quality and trust we have built, together, at Grommet.

But….for brand new products even this new Citizens’ Gallery is not enough.  Sometimes products fail after months of use.  Sometimes social entrepreneurs do not really give the share of revenue that they commit to at the beginning of their endeavor.  Sometimes they green-wash a product.  Sometimes the front-facing part of the company is professional but the service and operational ends are not.  We have so much experience in figuring this stuff out that we haven’t yet had a massive disappointment.  We don’t cut corners.  We have a nose for the truth, at every level.

But we will miss something important someday.   It’s just inevitable.  We are a small team.  We don’t pretend to be Consumer Reports or Underwriters Laboratory.  Our evaluation of a product, and the people and company behind it, is very holistic (more on this in a later blog post).  We will get duped or just make some errors.

For this, I will ask for all the input our community can give, once we start exposing our idea submissions.  But I am mainly, here and now, apologizing in advance.   When we get caught short we will move swiftly and powerfully to correct any errors.  It will be deeply upsetting to me and to the Grommet team, and our community.  So I am apologizing now.

Jesse Buckley

It feels busier than usual around here these days, but maybe that’s because I’ve been getting out more. This past Tuesday I accompanied Jules to MIT where she presented Daily Grommet to a room full of undergraduates participating in an orientation week for the MIT Ideation Lab and their program, Discover Product Design. These are students entering college for the first time, and their enthusiasm was infectious. It made me want to go back to school myself.

We met at 8 in the morning, and Jules kicked it off by having the students bring an object with them that was important to them. I tried to keep track of the objects, which fell into four categories: items of curiosity (1), items with sentimental value (5), personal fabrications (2), and what you might expect from MIT, items which were particularly functional (10). These are students interested in designing better objects, so to see what they valued and why was fascinating. When I looked up, Jules had drawn pictures of them on the blackboard:

Jules then ran through her PowerPoint deck, telling the story behind Daily Grommet — the ideas which have crystallized around Citizen Commerce, and the stories of the Finders & Founders which surround us. Seeing Jules present was fascinating — she’s a natural! But what was even more inspiring was the reaction from the students. They said things like:

“Hearing about thoughtful creation and consumption was a good way to remind us as designers to think about both sides of the equation.”

“Daily Grommet is different, because although you’re buying really interesting things, you actually feel good about doing so.”

and

“You’re the kind of company we want to like.”

For some reason I was surprised that purchasing is such a conscious process even for people at that point in their lives. Of course it’s not a fair sample — this was the MIT Ideation Lab after all, and Jules certainly set the stage. But it made me realize that there are simple pleasures, an intuitive appeal to the “boutique on a mission” that is Daily Grommet. There were two points that I’ve continued to think about through the week. One was “don’t get too big.” There’s an inherent mistrust in larger companies and the buy it and leave facility they promote. Of course we want to grow, but I wonder if there is a glass ceiling to the personal relevance we strive for. The other was Tweeted out by @MITIdeationLab :

” It’s been hard to keep up with our thoughts… but we’re at least taking notes. Hopefully we can start to reflect and synthesize.”

I feel the same way, taking notes (ecosystem ‘artist’ book) and trying to make the time to reflect and synthesize. Is there an App for that?

I encourage you to visit this article from Boston.com to learn more about MIT’s Discover Product Design program, they are doing really inspiring things.

We all have many jobs at Daily Grommet, and one of mine is to make sure that each day’s Grommet partner is set up and available to interact on the message board that day.

In our quest to put an end to nameless, faceless business we host a ‘Talk About This Grommet’ message board where you can interact directly with those who have created that day’s Grommet. Although it isn’t always possible, our goal is to have the person who is most responsible for the existence of a product be the person who interacts with our visitors. We don’t allow ‘ghost writers’; you are interacting with the person pictured.

The person interacting is often the head of the company, and heads of companies big or small are very busy people.  To make this aspect of the feature as easy for them as possible, I will do whatever it takes for them to be in communication with our visitors. I have texted questions back and forth to a partner who was in China. I have called a remote island where our partner was unable to access her computer  reliably. Most recently I had a wonderful,  ongoing Skype conversation with a partner who was vacationing at his summer cottage in England. He sent me a picture that I didn’t think to save but it was as charming as this one below:

I encourage you to take advantage of the fact that you have a direct channel to the chief visionaries of a  company to ask them the questions you have on your mind. As Jules mentions often, each purchase we make is an act of citizenship that amplifies something, good or bad, in our world. We want to make sure that you have the means to make an informed decision about what it is you are amplifying.