Fun at BAMF

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One of the things that is pretty neat about a Glowforge is that it has sprouted a pretty interesting community around it. A community of people that will hopefully soon actually own a Glowforge.

One of my favorite things at the Bay Area Maker Faire this year was getting to meet Glowforge users who don’t work at Glowforge (though getting to talk to the amazing @Shell in person was awesome too). It was fun to see familiar people from the forums. They’re familiar to me because they’re so generous with their time and post often.

It was pretty awesome of @karaelena to talk me about the Fusion 360 workflow and talk about cool CNC machines to boot. As we all know, the gracious @marmak3261 has been great at keeping the hope alive (while also making us all a bit jealous). It was great to talk to @rebecca. And to check out @takitus’s booth (he was busy every time I stopped by, so didn’t get to chat). Great group of folks.

So the good news is that people are starting to get e-mails to ask if they want their glowforge and getting ready to receive it. Which means that the first production unit reaching customer hands soon. Also, the units at Maker Faire were (as I understand it) shipped direct from the factory and they looked good!

The bad news is that the first production units are going to arrive a couple of months later than we were hoping and it looks like there’s a bunch of folks hoping that they’ll be able to make up the time between now and July, but my guess is that there are enough unknown unknowns between now and then that I’d now rate it as a pretty good chance they won’t be able to accelerate the ramp faster than originally planned. On the flip side, seeing the production units at Maker Faire increased my confidence that I’ll actually get a Laser some day and maybe even soonish.

It looks like some of the forum members are super happy about the recent news of e-mails going out. And there are some that are bummed that Glowforge appears to be behind. I can see it both ways and understand both reactions because basically, I have both reactions. I’m super happy to see them getting ready to actually ship some production units and I’m bummed that I still have some time to wait before my Pro shows up.

But either way, I’ll get to read the forums and see all the cool stuff y’all are doing and observe the excitement and appreciate our community while I wait.

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What is this blather? You’re wildly speculating. Please don’t state it as fact. No one has any facts to say they can’t make the established deadline yet.

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I thought “pretty good chance” wasn’t stating anything as fact, just probabilities. And I had hoped that the first production units would have been sent out in April. That was just my hope, but looks like, hey June. A couple of months later than I hoped. But hey, still real soon now either way.

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Ah, I get what you mean now… You’re in the optimistic glass-half-full earliest early release camp rather than the pragmatic glass-half-empty shipped by end of July camp. Sorry! My bad.

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It was great to meet you. I regret that I didn’t take more time to just stop whatever I was doing and spend more time talking to folks. I felt that I had to do my best to keep the Glowforge operating at all times and that kept me from being more available for discussion.

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