STEPHEN

TRANOVICH

Stephen Tranovich

INTERVIEW

54

HackSpace magazine meets...

STEPHEN TRANOVICH

Want to win $50 000 for your open-source hardware project? Read on!

he world of tech is full

of hyperbole. Even

though companies exist

to make money for their

shareholders, it’s de rigueur

for every tech-bro, Silicon

Valley startup to have some highfalutin

slogan, along the lines of making the

world a better place, promoting change,

or challenging humanity to do better.

Nice sentiments, but at the end of the

day, meaningless.

It is, therefore, our pleasure and honour

to report that, over in San Francisco, a

bunch of people are running a project

not to fund their little space program or

to see who can buy the biggest yacht, but

help makers do brilliant things that will

change the world through open hardware:

the Hackaday Prize.

This annual contest for makers has so

far given out $1 000 000 in prize money,

and helped hardware hackers turn ideas

into viable products. And yes, we did say

open hardware: this is about building

ideas for the world, not just those parts of

the world that can afford licensing fees.

To tell us more, we turned to Stephen

Tranovich, Technical Community Leader

at Hackaday, and the person in charge of

pulling strings, working with participants,

and generally making sure it all works.

It’s their job to sift through the hundreds

of entries, and decide what the world

needs to see more of, so we were naturally

all ears.

T