7. MIY | MAKE IT YOURSELF

Let's have a more in-depth look at the 'participation sphere'. For years, we've been going on about GENERATION C, with the C mainly representing 'content'. In other words, digital creation. Pictures. Movies. Blogs. Music.

It's a mainstream trend now, one that keeps giving, with millions of consumers uploading their creative endeavors online, and tens of millions of others enjoying the fruits of their creativity. User-generated content, at least in the online world, has grown from a teenage hobby to an almost equal contender to established entities in news, media, entertainment and craft.

And yes, as predicted, GENERATION C is increasingly being rewarded for its output. In fact, with some members of GENERATION C attracting mass audiences, there's real money to be made. In its first year, video sharing site Revver, which matches every video uploaded with advertisements and splits the ad revenue 50/50 with the video's creator and then shares 20% off the top with the video's distributor, has paid USD 1 million to video creators and sharers.

So what's next for GENERATION C? With (in particular younger) consumers having come to expect to be able to create anything they want as long as it is digital, and to customize and personalize many physical goods, the next frontier will be digitally designing products from scratch, then having them turned into real physical goods as well. In fact, expect MIY | MAKE IT YOURSELF (and then SIY | SELL IT YOURSELF) ventures to become increasingly sophisticated in the next 12 months:

• New Zealand-based Ponoko (which works like a CafePress for 3D objects) is offering consumers a new way to turn their creative ideas into real-world objects. After uploading their own design to the website (in EPS file format), or choosing a free design, users can choose from a variety of materials. Ponoko then runs the design through a laser cutter. Besides offering access to professional tools to manufacture products, Ponoko also helps users bring their products to market. Once they’re ready to sell, members can add photos of their product to their profile page, together with a description and pricing information. Products can either be delivered to the designer for assembly before being shipped to customers, or self-assembly products can be sent directly to the end-customer. Ponoko currently only offers two-dimensional sheet cutting, which limits designs to flat objects or three-dimensional objects that can be assembled from flat pieces, but plans for 3D printing are in the works.
  
  As well as being a manufacturing platform, Ponoko also serves as a community where fledgling one-off fabricators and designers can exchange ideas and help solve each other’s problems. The larger goal, according to Ponoko, is to be a catalyst that helps bring personal manufacturing of individualized products to the masses.
  
• Swedish design group FRONT has launched Sketch Furniture, which is a method to materialize freehand sketches. Pen strokes made in the air are recorded with Motion Capture, and the resulting 3-D patterns are output digitally to a laser sintering machine. Over several days, the machine produces the object by shaping and hardening 0.1-mm layers of liquid plastic. Sketch Furniture is on view and on sale (about USD 10,500 per piece) at the Barry Friedman Gallery in New York.
  
• Fab Lab Bcn (Barcelona) is part of the worldwide network of Fab Labs, an initiative of MIT Center for Bits and Atoms, and provides a laser-cutter, water jet, 3D printer, mini-mill and other machines for participants to use. Fab Lab Bcn's 4x8 Workshops focus on creating objects from 4x8 feet sheets of plywood using digital tools. One of Fab Lab's initiators is Neil Gershenfeld, professor at MIT and author of FAB: The Coming Revolution on Your Desktop. Other Fab Labs have been opened in rural India, northern Norway, Ghana, Boston and Costa Rica.

Even sweeter? Designing something and then have it made at home (which reminds us of INSPERIENCES):

• The Desktop Factory 3D printer, with a list price of USD 4,995, uses an inexpensive halogen light source and drum printing technology to build robust parts from composite plastic powder, layer by layer. Desktop Factory envisages that within three years, Desktop Factory's 3D printers will be affordable for home use.

Now, we're not saying every consumer is going to design and manufacture his or her own furniture or appliances. Rather, MIY is yet another piece of the participation puzzle: enabling those consumers who feel like it to call the shots, bypassing traditional players. In future briefings we’ll address the implications of what this choice – being able to consume ready-made or create their own versions of anything and everything – will mean for the behavior and expectations of younger generations.