Where To Look – 3D Printing Events

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Feeling a little lonely in your 3D Printing endeavor? Not to worry because in this Ask Us Anything segment, Tom and Tracy Hazzard has the perfect topic for you: 3D Printing Events. There is just so much out there to learn and even meet in the 3D Printing space. No matter where you might be, there is a 3D Printing connection that is waiting for you! Read about how you can start finding these events and why attending one can help bring your business to success!

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Listen to the podcast here:

Where To Look – 3D Printing Events

This is the Ask Us Anything segment.

It’s Fall Events Week. That’s what we decided to call this week.

Events are some of the more popular subjects on our show.

I didn’t think we talked about them all that much, but I guess we have and there are many events coming up. It’s a conference and trade show season. The kids are back in school. Let’s all go on in our little mini junkets and take a trade show vacation. I would love to, but Tom and I make a practice of never traveling on business together except for a couple of times a year.

We do avoid it so someone is at home with the kids.

It doesn’t feel like too much of a vacation, although it’s nice to sleep in occasionally. Our first question is, “Where should I start looking into 3D printing?” You should start at an event. It’s a good place.

I think that you should start locally.

I don’t think you have to travel all the way to New York for Maker Faire. You can start at your local smaller ones. There are mini Maker Faires all over the place. There are all these things coming up. You should start local because you want to be able to follow-up and go back and see something. Maybe you see it at a trade show but keep in mind that they’re printing something. They probably printed it 10,000 times and you might want to go and try out your what. You might want to test out a print that you make. You want somebody, you can go in and get feedback back and forth. Making those local connections are going to be good for you. If you don’t find that your timing allows you to wait for an event, you could also try and find places like the UPS store or service bureaus that are right there.

There are local Meetups at a makerspace. There are fab labs all around and there are different kinds of makerspaces locally in your community. You need to start looking them up on the internet and there’s probably an event going on, if not every week, certainly every month.

We’ve talked about this a few times on the show, but as we were thinking about starting this show in the spring, early part of this year, I was on an airplane and I was thinking about it and I was traveling up to Seattle on business. I thought Seattle has got to be a hotbed for what’s going on in 3D printing. I happen to be in this little town outside of Seattle called Issaquah, which is where Costco is. As soon as I got off the plane, I typed it in and said, “3D printing events in Issaquah and surrounding areas,” to see what would happen. Sure enough, there was a Meetup that night at Issaquah. It was crazy, but that was my first exposure to it. It’s not that I hadn’t seen it and we already had a 3D printer. It was my first exposure to it being out. What I was shocked at is the age demographic of people who go. You get a lot of young and retirees as well and everyone in between. It was a broad age demographic of people, women and men. It certainly wasn’t all techies or anything like that. It shouldn’t be intimidating.

At this event, the doors were busting open. You have a hard time getting into the building.

3D Printing Events: Making those local connections are going to be really good for you if you don’t find that your timing allows you to wait for an event.

You’ll find that that’s the case. In every event, we’ve been in the same way where there’s been a young and old. There have been all sorts of broad groups and interests and people wanting to look at 3D printing for all reasons.

People wanting to help you learn about 3D printing. They’re there to answer any questions and help you start to learn and get involved if you want to.

The one thing that I felt like with the whole 3D print community around the world is that everyone wants to further the education of it, whether it’s your personal education, whether it’s the education of our youth. It doesn’t matter. They want more information out there. They want to spread the word and excitement. Start local.

I’ll be surprised if you don’t find something in your area.

If you don’t, let us know and we’ll contact a fab lab and some of the other places and say, “There’s a desperate need here.”

There has got to be a way to find people to reach out to.

Also, there are a lot of them that run Google Hangouts. If for some reason you can’t get to the event. Some of them put them on Periscope and run a Google Hangout.

It could be a YouTube Live event. We’ve seen some of that.

They may have an online component to it. You should contact them. If you’re unable to make that particular event, it can happen. Good luck finding information out there, but go out and see it.

Check our resources page for some events. We have a lot of events listed there and if your event is not listed and you want it to be, reach out to us at HazzDesign.com.

You can send us a tweet, an Instagram or whatever. We’re everywhere on social media @HazzDesign.

Thanks for reading. We’ll be back on our next episode with another question.

Important Links:

HazzDesign.com
Instagram – Hazz Design
@HazzDesign – Twitter

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