3D Meetup Sweden 2019 (Patreon)

I just got back from 3D Meetup Sweden where I was invited to give two 45 minute presentations covering a bit of the history of the maker scene and (of course) the future of Marlin Firmware. (The presentations will be posted online soon.) The event was amazing and transformative, and I look forward to attending again if they will have me!

Most exciting for me, also in attendance were Gina Häußge, the creator of OctoPrint, and David Crocker, who has taken the reins of RepRapFirmware, sponsored by Duet3D.  It was really great to have these two great luminaries in the open source world to share experiences with, and we all found many things in common.

And you know, I've been working with Gina in my capacity as Marlin maintainer for 4 years, always on fiddly technical matters, so this was finally a chance for us to get out of that narrow space, share our humanity and get to know one another. As the maintainers of two very large and demanding open source projects that require full-time attention, we found much to share and laugh about. (We love our users, but some days…)

If you look carefully at the selfie above from Round 1 of my presentation, you might see some other familiar faces. The event was well-attended, though not nearly as sardine-packed as MRRF, and we even got a brief visit from Josef Prusa. He showed up shortly before my talk was starting, so we didn't have a chance to confer about our respective secret projects. But he was good enough to drop by after my talk to say "hello" before flying out the door. "Keep in touch, Jo — you nebulous Czech bastard!" I was heard to yell, or something like that.

I also had the great privilege to meet Paris Kyung-yeon Lee, the inventor of the BLTouch probe. Her presentation on the development and principles of the BLTouch was very enlightening, and it was a pleasure to talk to her about her work and design choices.

The next big event is the East Coast RepRap Festival in October. Unlike past events, I will have a small booth or table so that you can always find me. My trusty assistant Luu and I are working on getting more stickers and other Marlin-branded merchandise for the event so you can show your support in style.

I would like extend a special thanks to Jonathan Lundström for inviting me to the event and helping everything to go smoothly; Tony Lock for putting me in touch with David to hash over ideas — and for bringing together the best host, firmware, and hardware developers generally. The future of RepRap is looking very interesting!