You know what else I got to do last month? I visited the GE Garages Indonesia!
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It is a surprise that Indonesia became the first ASEAN country which got the opportunity to host one of the GE Garages. Partnered up with MakeDoNia Makerspace, GE held one week exhibition and hands on workshop for free. Although it was rather a small exhibition and kind of way below my expectation, there were some interesting things there. Especially the 3D printing machine!
They showcased MakerBot machine, which you can get here at klix3D (Indonesia authorized reseller), the price range for small sized machine is about IDR 42 million :)) They also showcased local 3D printing machine, Replix, that you can get for about IDR 13 million. The representative said the difference between US made and local made are only the production time and durability.
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3D printing has been a hot item in tech industry lately, with company like Hershey’s introduced 3D Chocolate Printer called CocoJet 3D, only God knows what else will come next.
The workshops were all interesting in my opinion, from making drone to Hour of Code for Kids. Too bad that all the workshop were held on office hour so I couldn’t make it to any of it. But I managed to come to one of their Meet Up called Social Enterprise and Networking #2: Tinkering – Women and Technology. I recently got interest in this field so I skipped half office hour to come to this meet up :P The talk itself was interesting. It was great to see many women communities that empowers each other in many ways.
Read more about GE Garages Indonesia report here and here.
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Other thing that I found interesting about GE Garages Indonesia activity is there were some session involving kids. Like Maker Kids and Hour of Code activity. Not so long ago, I also found Engineering for Kids, which recently opened their Indonesia chapter. EFK is basically like activities center for kids. The programs are packed up with topics ranging from Aerospace Engineering to Robotics that designed for a certain age period. I think finding programs that made S.T.E.M (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) topics become fun activity is quite cool. We should encouraged more of these programs to be run here in Indonesia, rather than making more tutoring center for exam preparation. More of Engineering for Kids Indonesia activity can be found in their Facebook page and Instagram.