Steve Roberts is a maker OG (original gangsta). With his amazing Winnebiko and BEHEMOTH projects, and his longtime evangelizing of "high-tech nomadness," he's been a leading light in the maker movement for decades. I definitely count him as one of my great inspirations in pursuing artful-engineering (or is it engineered artfulness?) as a lifestyle. Steve has recently published an awesome book, called Reaching Escape Velocity. I review it in the current issue of MAKE, Volume 21. The book is subtitled: "Launching gonzo engineering projects with sponsors, media, volunteers, and other potent forces." It's a thin volume, but it's jam-packed with grand inspiration and practical ideas. I asked Steve if we could share some of it here, and he kindly obliged. -- Gareth
From the Foreword:
A Grand Vision is only the beginning. No matter how much passion you bring to bear on the project of your dreams, the odds of actually escaping the "gravity well" are low... unless you find a way to leverage larger forces. This document, derived from 25 years of audacious feats of gonzo engineering, presents the keys to six tools that are essential to a large-scale project:
[ ] A Business Angle
[ ] Your Own Education
[ ] Corporate Sponsorship
[ ] Media Coverage
[ ] A Public Presence
[ ] The Team of Volunteers
I have contemplated publishing a book on this subject for years, and only now (2009) have decided to do so. It can be considered the collection of "trade secrets" that have made my adventures possible... the art of working with sponsors, media, and volunteers to get an insanely ambitious project off the ground and keep it moving on its own momentum.
From Chapter 1: The Business Angle:
The best generalization I can give you is that the boundaries between specialties are where it's at. It is no accident that most projects in the domain of gonzo engineering are, by their nature, comprised more of new ways of combining existing technologies than of linear envelope-pushing; the latter, while honorable and necessary for ongoing industrial progress, is less likely to yield the kinds of breakthroughs that make the media flock to your door. It's not that there's anything wrong with it, it's just that individuals have a much harder time with "straight ahead" advances in the state of the art than do well-funded companies... that sort of work does lend itself well to structured engineering methods and thus tends to be the most likely course of corporate product development
(think Moore's Law).
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