NOTE: Doors open at 6:30PM

Abstract: You've been having the "Fun", now you're thinking about the "and Profit." Where to start? What challenges and benefits does an Open mindset bring to the Business table? Licenses: How do they work? While we can't tell you how to get rich quick, we can share our experiences in starting and running a small company based on Open principles. Hopefully we'll answer some of your questions along the way.

The Maniacal Labs team will discuss topics such as: Creating open hardware and software in your spare time, for fun and profit. Leveraging the power of open source to make a better product. What worked for us. What did not work. How open source tools make for a better open source product. Crowdfunding and engaging with the community. The ups and downs of open source licensing, especially in the world of hardware.

Company and Speaker Bios

Maniacal Labs is an Apex, NC based open hardware and software company that specializes in digital art and all things bright and flashy. Our first product, the AllPixel, is like a universal translator for all variety of digital LEDs and was quite successfully launched on Kickstarter in 2014. We aim to educate, enable, and help prove that open source can work for all aspects of business. By night, we are Maniacal Labs, but by day, we are:

Adam Haile - Senior Software Engineer at Red Hat, working on continuous integration of the Red Hat suite. Spends all of his free time working on a variety of open source code to facilitate a love of code and lighting as a digital art-form. Before the artistic calling, he developed other projects such as Elpis, an open Pandora Radio client with over 60k users to date.

Dan Ternes - Test Engineer at EMC, providing hardware Failure Analysis for Manufacturing operations. An appreciation for the meeting of Hardware and Software has lead to years of tinkering with microcontrollers to realize tangible, and occasionally useful creative works. By sharing his projects, ideas, and experiences, he hopes to give back to the communities that have taught him much.

http://maniacallabs.com