President Obama recently announced a new “Educate to Innovate” initiative to help build the US education system’s performance in STEM…Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. And it even had robots!

There are lots of  proposals but one that seemed especially interesting was “National Lab Day” and the quote that’s right at the top of their homepage:

“Encouraging young people to be makers of things, not just consumers of things.” — President Barack Obama

That’s one of the missions of 100kGarages, and it’s something that we think all of us that work with Digital Fabrication tools believe in, if only to help us find employees with the basic skills that we need. Is there a way that 100kGarages, and the Fabbers the use and Makers that design for these kinds of tools, can participate in this movement and help open not only students but everyone’s eyes to the potential that these amazing tools have? I know that everyone that come into our shop is fascinated and surprised at the kinds of things that we can do with our CNC tools (and now our MakerBot), and we keep looking for ways to show more people what we do.

The official “National Lab Day” is not just one day but a week… the first week of May, 2010. Should one of those days be a 100kGarages “Digital Fabrication Open Garage” day, when we open our shops to local designers and Makers?