1. Quadcopter pilot
The ELEV-8 Quadcopter
Recently on the
ITP alumni mailing list there have been several job postings for experienced
quadcopter
pilots. These buzzing drones are increasingly being used in the
commercial space for concerts and other outdoor events and the companies
hosting those events need pilots. So in the last year or so a whole
bunch of people who built and learned to fly quadcopters for fun, are
turning it into their profession.
2. Crowdfunder
It took three years for crowdfunding site
Kickstarter
to have a project that topped the $1 million mark. But then, early
February last year, two projects broke the $1 million barrier on the
same day. Today, if you raise a million dollars, you wouldn’t even be in
the
top ten most successful projects. It’s become a go-to funding channel for makers, and influenced Congress to
legalize crowdfunding as a way for small businesses to find investors
3. Makerspace manager
The last 10 years has seen the rise of the
makerspaces, hackerspaces, and fab labs.
But like any place where people gather someone has to run the place,
make sure the bills are paid on time every month, the floors swept, the
kitchen kept clean. It might not be the most glamorous job in the world,
but increasingly even in volunteer run hackerspaces, it’s one that
pays.
4. Digital fabricator
The 3D printer has as become a symbol of the make movement
Earlier in the year President Obama
mentioned 3D printing in his State of the Union address, yet 10 years ago you’d be hard pressed to find anyone that knew what you were talking about if you’d mentioned it. The
recent acquisition of MakerBot by Stratasys should leave nobody in any doubt that 3D printing is now in the mainstream.
5. App Developer
The first generation iPhone was released on June 29, 2007, and it
really did change everything. Before it the were a whole bunch of
different form factors for mobile phones, afterwards almost every phone
was the same. A black rectangle hiding magic. Ten years ago nobody would
have credited the the arrival of the iPhone, the first rumors only
started to surface
back in 2004 and
the phone that people thought they wanted, and the one that turned up
three years later were very different. Ten years ago, you’d never have
thought you could make money developing apps for phones. Today, a whole
bunch of people do.
6. Bio-hacker
While biospaces, hackerspaces for biology, are
just starting to appear,
there are already people making money in the personal bio- and genetics
game. Ten years ago you’d never have thought that something like
23andme could exist, let alone turn a profit. It just wouldn’t have been possible.
7. Personal Space Engineer
A KickSat Sprite Spacecraft
It’s not something I’d thought to see, even at a major Maker Faire.
But there were representatives of more than one personal space program
at Maker Faire Bay Area this year. If you want to send an something into
Low Earth Orbit (LEO) then not only can you do that, you have a choice.
There’s competition in the personal space program business.
About a year and a half ago now the first ever project I backed on
Kickstarter was
Kicksat.
A project to put a swarm of small nano-satellites in orbit. The size of
a couple of postage stamps, each satellite has solar cells, a radio
transceiver, and a micro-controller along with memory and sensors.
I
awarded Zachary, and the KickSat project, a
blue ribbon,
the editor’s choice award when they were at Maker Faire Bay Area
earlier in the year. Launch date for Kicksat is now officially set for
Dec. 9 this year. Ten years ago a project like this, would not only have
been thought impossible, it flat out would have been.
8. Data Scientist
The rise of the data scientist has been rapid, although it is only over the last couple of years that
the term has become accepted.
But data science doesn’t just imply huge data warehouses, it can also
be personal. Back in 2005, in what would now be regarded as the infancy
of data science, Nick Felton started
publishing an annual report on his life and he’s
kept it up ever since.
But there’s also
a place for the maker, after all the data the new breed of data scientists play with has to come from somewhere, and that has led to an explosion of
sensor platforms and
distributed sensor networks.
9. UX Designer
The profession of UX Designer is really only now being recognised as a
“real” job. It was always done, but it was rolled, sometimes badly,
into other people’s jobs. However UX design is not just about software,
it’s
also about hardware and how the user interacts with objects around them.
10. MAKE magazine editor
MAKE Magazine, Volume 34
I couldn’t make this list without talking about
MAKE magazine,
could I? The first issue of MAKE was published in January 2005, making
us not quite 10 years old yet. We’ll be 10 in January 2015, and you know
we’ll have something special planned.
make mag