Missions for Makers

Dale Dougherty

Thursday, May 4, 2017 at 2:00 P.M. in the Pearl Young Theater

Abstract

Makers often start a project to pursue a personal interest or challenge. Increasingly, makers undertake missions, realizing they can have positive impact by exploring the unknown, creating new products, or solving tough problems. The Maker Movement is inspiring people to organize missions and join missions that contribute new ideas and innovations to society. How can business, government, and education leverage the Maker Movement and support missions that allow more people to participate in a future that requires everyone to be literate in science and technology?

Speaker

Dale Dougherty is the founder of “Make:”, a magazine that launched in 2005, and the Maker Faire, which was held first in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2006. Both of these were catalysts for a global Maker Movement. In 2016, there were nearly 200 Maker Faires in 40 countries.

Dougherty is the CEO of Maker Media, Inc. in San Francisco. In 2011, he was honored at the White House as a “Champion of Change” through an initiative that honors Americans who are “doing extraordinary things in their communities to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world.” At the 2014 White House Maker Faire, he was introduced by President Obama as an American innovator making significant contributions to the fields of education and business. Dougherty believes the Maker Movement has the potential to transform the educational experience of students and introduce them to the practice of innovation through play and tinkering.

Dougherty is the author of “Free to Make: How the Maker Movement Is Changing our Jobs, Schools and Minds” with Adriane Conrad. He is a co-author of “Maker City: A Practical Guide for Reinventing American Cities” with Peter Hirshberg and Marcia Kadanoff.