Thank you very much.
What is the relationship that exists between ...
a Lima street-seller known as "Don Churrito" ...
and a digital manufacturing machine like the ultimaker?
Don Churrito or Emilio is a Peruvian as many others we know
who came to Lima many years ago, in order to find a place.
He evidently found a very rough town.
But he knew how to open his own place into that aggressiveness
within a city that was alien to him.
He came and, after trying multiple possibilities,
working in several part-time jobs he found in the city
he realized that his real vocation was to be a street businessman.
An entrepreneur that could make a business
out of any idea he could find on the street.
Over time he refined and improved it
and went on to develop various mechanisms.
One of which is best known in the northern area of ​​the city.
Is the standardization of churritos.
This friend entrepreneur not only developed this machine
to optimize the process of churritos but he set up a whole popular network
in the city ​​in order to provide these opportunities to more Peruvians that, as he did,
come to the capital to seek opportunities.
He created a distributed network across the northern area providing these opportunities
to more families, to more young people, to more children.
But as Don Churrito or Don Emilio, many Peruvians, many people
in Latin America had to face this situation
and work in an alien city, as we said, in a city, that probably ...
demanded a great spirit of survival
various mechanisms to adapt to it, to live and create, as mentioned,
a place for oneself.
Drawing, finally, the face we all know in our city.
Where do we go, finally, with all this development?
What is the future that awaits them, or that we expect, in this society ...
of a group of Peruvian and Latin American entrepreneurs,
seeking a different way to cope with a system that sometimes
may have certain inequities or may have certain injustices?
Could it be that we expect them to be coupled to the macro industrial system?
Or to large established or standardized processes?
To simplify what happens at a general level, we know that
for a product to reach our hands it needs to go through a series
of process from extraction, industrialization, commercialization
until it finally reaches the user, who consumes it.
But this has made us all consumer agents,
with little power to decide on the final products we consume.
It is in places far above us where those decisions are made
about what is "ideal" for us as a product.
But, hopefully, digital manufacturing arrives to the world.
Digital manufacturing is planning something radically different to this,
it means to give power to all people to do almost anything.
Moving from raw material to end user, we will be able
to do what we want: from a ring to a house.
Moving from a mass, standardized production system to production systems
that are collaborative, cooperative and personalized.
This whole initiative, digital manufacturing, or Fab Labs, as this network is known
the largest network in the world dedicated to research
and develop this theme, was born at MIT a few years ago,
and developed for this purpose. The democratization of access to the new industry.
A digital industry that just as a few years ago, such as phones,
or computers were huge machines that only some people could have
but that, over time, became digital and personal apparatus
or devices. The same is beginning to happen with the industry.
Within a few years, we will all have our factory at home.
We will be able to share information from the Internet and with the same ease
with which we download a video or photo, we will also be able to
download physical, real items.
These machines, in addition, these personal factories
become much more accessible to the general population because of their low cost.
Similar machines can found in the market from $ 10,000 to $ 15,000
up.
but thanks to the Fab Lab network, thanks to the concept of Open Hardware
where we can access the Internet, download the models and with a little patience
and certain knowledge, develop our own machines...
...we can have it for less than even $ 1,000.
That is, this range of possibilities, to be able not only to consume
standardized products but to develop our own products, customize them
and create them, is made possible by digital fabrication.
How did digital manufacturing arrive to Latin America?
Well, a couple of years ago we had the opportunity with Victor Freundt
and me
to participate in a program in Barcelona, ​​organized by the Fab Lab Barcelona
and the Spanish Agency of International Cooperation (AECI in spanish)
where we got all this training and we participated
on one of the largest projects that have been done
with Fab Labs which is the Fab Lab House from which this shirt comes.
Where we participated making this house that tells us how will
the habitat of the future be.
Houses in the future will also be, literally, printed and
as in this case, they will be able to generate more energy than
is needed.
This program, to extend the Fab Labs around the world, planned the opening
of a Fab Lab in Latin America. Fortunately Lima was choosen
as the first location.
And another in Africa.
Clearly, there is a prospect for development in Europe or the USA
or in India different from our prospect in Latin America in terms of
how to connect these technologies in our context and the first question
we asked ourselves when we returned a year ago was how to connect...
...these technologies, how can we make digital manufacturing,
the most advanced in industry, to be linked
with structures or emerging mechanisms like Don churrito or many others
that somehow exemplify the mechanical production systems and
we started to think how, in the future, each of us when
going to buy a churrito, a picaron, an ice cream, whatever you want,
will be able to customize it before consuming it.
Suddenly churritos will not all be linear but you will be able to
access a device where you design what you want, press a button
and the machine is going to be able to print it.
Or, maybe, other urban machines we find in the city,
like this orange peeler are not going to be mechanical, manual, anymore
but you will be able to program it and it will not just peel oranges but
it will draw or cut different structures and different materials.
It will be capable of using, for example ...
... plastic bottles, where we will be able to cut various shapes, etc..
Another major challenge was how these technologies are connected
with the great cultural baggage we have, with the artisans.
When we talked to several specialists, they told us:
"Hey, but this can actually wipe out all this culture we have."
How is technology finally seen as a kind of monster?
That cannot connect with society, but on the contrary, helps or
more than help, contributes to segregation.
But on the contrary, we find people like Don Oscar.
Don Oscar is a craftsman as many generations before since his grandparents,
weavers, which also, like Don Churrito, came to Lima looking for
an opportunity and well, cities or metropolitan areas are usually
good in killing dreams. This man that had a knack for
the loom but had to devote many years to be a bricklayer, roof filler, and so on.
until suddenly, and that's another peculiarity also in cities,
these encounters by chance happen, he met a person who provided the opportunity
to return to his looms.
To return to his passion, return to what he liked, to explore again
ancient techniques, Incas, in tissues and begin to develop them.
When we talked with this character and told him the benefits digital manufacturing
could offer, with the help of Walter who is a very passionate designer
with the need to connect new technologies with different systems ...
cultural or craft systems we have, we got to this product.
which is a product, a mini loom that emulates what they have
but that is made with digital manufacturing.
And this mini loom, thanks to digital manufacturing, can be developed within half an hour
the device, as opposed to what they take now that is two days
to develop a mini loom, in addition to the facilities that you can provide
when developing the looms, and so on.
Not only that, but the world, somehow also receives
this feedback, this technological development.
Thanks to digital manufacturing, we can optimize various processes and from
giving power to those who handle or who have this
cultural reserve we can create new devices, giving more power.
But what other options does digital manufacturing provide?
Not only is the development of machines but this can also can be applied,
as I was saying, in various areas. The Fab Labs are the bridge
with the shortest distance between your idea and reality. We can make any element
we have, say, inside the computer, in bits, into atoms again.
Imagine, taking again the case of our friend Churrito,
he suddenly wants a new car, but he wants to give it special characteristics
not only will he will be able to do small-scale objects but he will be able
to work items in various sizes, in different sizes.
If we suddenly want a new chair or table, or a new house,
in the same way we will be able to go online, find a model that we like,
download it, customize it, which is the most important, and manufacture it
without this meaning a greater cost.
There are a number of mechanisms that allow us to integrate not only
structures, but also energy, also information generation
and share information through the combination of what is called the world
of bits to the world of atoms.
Then the new revolution that is coming now is this connection
to pass again from the world of bits, as we have lived all this
revolution that has allowed us to connect the real world with the virtual world.
Now, thanks to digital manufacturing, we can connect the virtual world
with the physical world again, customizing products we want to and,
in a short time at low cost, make them real.
Make all our ideas light and shine.
But digital manufacturing's goal is not only to democratize access to technologies
but, more important, to democratize access to the knowledge
behind these technologies.
Fab Labs are working on a network of different ages, different cultures, different
disciplines that are integrated to create, innovate and develop new projects
adapted to their means, but shared globally.
Experiences like the one worked a few days ago in Lima where
many children were able to have their ideas materialize quickly
and to experiment with them, provide feedback to them and re-innovate.
That is, we are also on the verge of a new generation
a Fab a generation of people who have the ability to make
their ideas real, to have their ideas quickly impact
society and can, with them, also create a new society, a society of
not only consumers, but a society of creative "prosumers".
Finally, the great challenge before us, before us as a Fab Lab
and how, with this need to connect the top, the most advanced
technological development in the new industry that is reshaping the world
with the local culture we have, again using the example
of emerging Peruvians, emerging Latinos that have already created networks
of social and economic development, but that are both an inspiration and a stimulus
to search for the creation of popular innovation networks.
It is in this connection where we hope to find new opportunities.
And finally, to finish with all this history and return to the initial question
"What is the relationship that may exist between Don Churrito and Ultimaker?"
I would like to present the author of the script for this story.
Master Emilio, Don Churrito, please.
And, an emerging Latin American Caco Valladares.
On behalf of these two worlds that find each other, please.
Carlos Valladares comes from El Salvador with all the motivation to spread and develop
these technologies.
Don Churrito is the character and the hero of our story that finally symbolize
this connection between local development and all that we can develop from now on..
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Don Churrito.