Hear “Mr. China” speak to hands-on tech enthusiasts this weekend

There’s a great opportunity to hear Liam Casey, mastermind of global manufacturing, speak this weekend at Maker Faire in San Mateo, CA. I first came across Casey in an Atlantic Monthly article written by the excellent James Fallows who gave Casey the honorific, Mr. China, as “a campy way of indicating the person most in touch with the Chinese trends of this exact moment.”

I think of Maker Faire as a gathering of people who passionately want to work with their own design, resources, and hands to create things. What’s a guy doing there who knows better than anyone else how to work with manufacturing and product suppliers who are an ocean away? Here’s the description of his talk from the Maker Faire website: “Looking to get your ideas out your home workshop and in front of prospective vendors? Liam’s talk focuses on introducing the benefits and advantages of fabless manufacturing to bring your concepts to market. With over 13 years of hands-on experience in introducing clients to Chinese manufacturing, Liam offers a unique perspective on global supply chain.” It should be a fascinating talk.

If you’re in the Silicon Valley area this weekend, you can’t go wrong in visiting Maker Faire, especially if you want to be inspired by all the incredibly neat things people are designing and creating. This is a very hands-on event, with Makers and attendees reveling in metallurgy, robotics, animated film-making, electronic DIY kits, Steampunk, alternative energy, rockets – and this is just off-the-top-of-my-head list based on memories from last year’s Faire. (And for those of you with kids, it’s kid-heaven.)