Mengmeng Chen on demystifying manufacturing

In this episode of the Hardware Podcast, we talk with Mengmeng Chen, head of U.S. operations at Seeed Studio.

Discussion points:

• Chen’s work on—and thoughts about—the Pop-up Factory, a production line that manufactured connected devices on the floor of the Solid 2015 conference
• Ways to start manufacturing in Shenzhen without a gigantic first order
• Seeed Studio’s “Open Parts Library,” a standard library of approximately 1,200 parts that can be assembled quickly and inexpensively
• Differences between the component supply chains in the U.S. and China
• Seeed’s Wio Link Kickstarter campaign

Watch the Pop-up Factory keynote presentation, featuring Mengmeng Chen, David Cranor, Marcelo Coelho, and Will Walker from the Solid 2015 conference

This week we introduce Clickspiral, a segment where we talk about the most interesting stuff that wastes our time on the Internet. This week’s spirals are:

• The “School of Life” Youtube channel, from Chen
• Fallout 4, from Cranor
• Morgantown, West Virginia’s Personal Rapid Transit system, from myself. Contemporary documentary here, and additional photos here.
• The HyperLoop high-speed transportation system proposed by Elon Musk