June 1, 2012

Eight Ways To Break Down Barriers In Traditional Workplace Culture – Source: Forbes

A snippet of a recent article written by TJ McCue at Forbes that highlights a do-it-yourself (DIY) electronics enabler, SparkFun Electronics! For the full article go here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/tjmccue/2012/05/30/eight-ways-to-break-down-barriers-in-traditional-workplace-culture/ 

SparkFun is an online retail store that sells the bits and pieces to make your electronics projects possible. Whether it’s a robot that can cook your breakfast or a GPS cat tracking device, they design their products to be more accessible to the average person. Founder Nathan Seidle is an energetic and enthusiastic entrepreneur and has tapped into the rapidly growing maker and DIY (do-it-yourself) trend. The company is big into the open source philosophy and it influences how he runs the company, to be sure.

In the article, McCue highlights eight ways that SparkFun keeps employees loyal and seriously unbored. In a short phone conversation with founder Nathan Seidle, McCue learned that the company is big on letting people bring their canines to work and he recently saw a request for someone’s pet pig to have an equal opportunity to come join the fun, at SparkFun. With over 140 employees, that’s nearly 30 percent of the team bringing in their best friend. Pretty cool.

Learn more about SparkFun.

If you’re a teacher or parent home schooling a child: One of the initiatives that pulled McCue into studying SparkFun is their focus on education and helping young people learn about making things.

SparkFun launched its own Department of Education (DoE) devoted to bringing the world of embedded electronics technology into classrooms and promoting the concept of play and tinkering. It is meant to support the STEM initiatives set forth by regulators and President Obama. The online portal forms the cornerstone behind the company’s recently formed Department of Education, headed by Lindsay Levkoff, Ph.D. SparkFun has been working with schools and educators during this past year to help enable electronics education as part of the modern classroom.

SparkFun blog post today that talks about how a job posting had “The post had all the usual stuff you’d expect except one note at the bottom – “Must like and/or tolerate dogs.”