The first South by South Lawn was held at the White House on October 3rd, 2016. After visiting the tech and music festival South by Southwest® earlier this year, U.S. President Barack Obama was inspired to give the call for action to all citizens to roll up their sleeves and discover their own way to make a positive difference.
I was lucky to represent the Shapeways community there because of our effort to enable everyone to bring their ideas to life. Our community is dedicated to allowing everyone to become a maker by simply supporting independent designers or by embarking on bringing a product to market. I was even able to catch a panel with not one but two community members speaking about the how making real change is a huge challenge and takes a whole community working together: Nina Tanden, founder of EpiBone, who is wearing a Kinematics necklace by Nervous System and Jukay Hsu, founder of Coalition for Queens, a tech nonprofit in our home borough here in NYC.
The festival was packed with amazing speakers and exhibits, a performance by The Lumineers and a discussion between Mr. Obama, climate scientist Dr. Katherine Hayhoe and actor Leonardo DiCaprio who was also premiering his new documentary film Before the Flood.
The SXSL letters were made with the help of Myth Buster’s Adam Savage and the hard work and ingenuity of several student and community makerspaces in the Washington D.C. area.