*This Editor’s Note will appear in the September Edition of ECN.
I can recall countless stories from my consumer products editorial days in which an original concept came to market with merely a product design…and dream. Without any funding or marketing skill, some manufactured product on their own dime, selling initial pieces out of their garages, using word of mouth as the easiest (and cheapest) of marketing form.
No Shark Tank. No Crowdfunding.
I’m sure most of you have heard similar tales. And, you may have even thought you had the million-dollar idea but not the wherewithal to make it come to life.
By now, some of you may have learned of our new initiative here at the Design Engineering Group (DEG) of Advantage Business Media: TinkerEng. From Concept to Completion. Essentially, we are calling all creators to submit an original concept, idea, design to us by September 29. From there, we will choose ten projects/concepts that will be the focus of an online, reality-based video series and will follow each of the products from prototyping all the way through to potential crowdfunding.
Co-hosted by James McArthur, CEO of Formtap, and Peter Ragonetti, a visiting professor at Pratt, co-founder of Formtap, and the managing director of PTR Design Studio, a full-service product design studio, as well as DEG editors, the series will air at least 3x per month at TinkerEng.com and many other DEG sites.
This is quite an ambitious undertaking but one that we believe can catapult makers to their end goal: a marketable consumer product. To learn more about the criteria to submit to TinkerEng, visit TinkerEng.com.
In other ECN news, we are happy to announce that Spencer Chin has joined DEG as managing editor, overseeing ECN, WDD (Wireless Design & Development), PDD (Product Design & Development), and MDT (Medical Design Technology). With a history in electronics and technical writing, Spencer has served as a managing editor for Power Electronics, as well as a contributing writer for How2Power.com, Electronic Products, and IEEE GlobalSpec’s electronics360 Website. Feel free to welcome Spencer by emailing him at spencer.chin@advantagemedia.com or via phone at 973.920.7182.
We look forward to you joining us every month on our adventure with TinkerEng. We can’t wait to bring new innovations to the world of design engineering and the market.
All my best,
Joyceann
