Starting November 17th we will start shipping the latest BUGbundles to customers with a goal of having ALL backorders fulfilled by December 1st. From that point forward we will be in a position to ship all our customers their new BUGs within 2 days of placing their order. We also have a number of exciting, new modules coming available within the next few weeks so stay tuned!

But others were! Lots of others in fact! And we have pictures and cool stories to prove it. Rather than me share some interpreted anecdotes as assembled by the gang who could make it, we’ve put together a short collection of vignettes.

Matt C: “I enjoyed talking with Cynthia – she said some are saying technology is keeping kids indoors. She wants to use technology to get them outside (BUG scavenger hunt is an easy hit).”

Amie: “I met a handful of people who are considering or have already applied for a job at Bug Labs. That made me feel good.”

Melinda: “There was a woman that showed up last night who had no tech experience and wasn’t working in the tech industry, but when she heard about BUG she was so excited over the possibilities that she had to stop by to see it in person. I think one of the most rewarding aspects of the evening was talking to people that aren’t geeks, but who still see the potential for something truly great in what we’re doing. ”

Brian B: “I spent most of the night demoing a simple BUG application. The app lets you snap a photo, draw on and annotate the photo, and then upload the photo directly to an rss feed. Most people get uncomfortable when you point a BUG at them, but once they saw the beautiful art we made, they relaxed.” (more on Brian’s app here, expect an update from him soon!)

Peter: “I had a terrific conversation with a woman interested in getting more girls into technology. We both agreed the Test Kitchen could be a great resource. Alicia wants to have a “GeekGirlz” nite ” (JT’s note: after a lengthy lecture on appropriate terminology, we determined that the discussion was actually about encouraging young women to pursue technology-focused careers. Good job Peter!)

Amie: “I talked to Dan, a software developer from hedge fund company, who found out about us on the day of open house and decided to stop by with two of his colleagues. It’s always good to see such enthused reaction from fellow developers!”

Matt C: “100 beers gone, and plenty of Bug shirts awarded…. Awesome to see so many people so engaged – and trying out applications (like draw pad)”

Big thanks to everyone who could make it and join the crew. Maybe next time we’ll have one in San Francisco and leave them New Yorkers jealous?? Of course they do have the awesome new Test Kitchen there, not to mention the engineering staff and everything. Oh well, at least we’ve got better burritos!

You can watch the video below (first ~30 minutes are my presenting, rest of the time is Q&A), or you can check out the slides (also below) – but I will say the deck doesn’t really “work” without the voiceover.

Lastly, don’t forget the FREE BUGBUNDLE CONTEST is still live until this coming Friday! So easy to enter…

Live Streaming by Ustream.TV

The video doesn’t necessarily capture all the slides, so if you want to see them raw (read: out of context), here they are:

The contest we’re doing is detailed here, but the basic gist is – invent a gadget, add it to the Gnomedex Wiki page, and possibly win a BUGbundle! Easy stuff, eh?

There’s also going to be a discount on the BUGbundle between now and Monday, August 25th, 12pm PST. All Gnomedex attendees can get the normally $629 BUGbundle for $399, all those who watched the show online for $499. The process to claim the discount is pretty easy:

1. Place an order at www.buglabs.net/store (again, this is *only* for the BUGbundle)
2. Your credit card will be authorized (not charged yet) for the full amount
3. Send an email to support [at] buglabs.net with the words “gnomedex attendee” or “gnomedex audience”
4. We will automatically update your order
5. When your order is fulfilled (late September-ish), the correct amount will be billed

Also, I’ll put the entire Gnomedex presentation online next week. I think there’ll be a video online too, if so, I’ll link to it when I find it!

This is exciting news for us, as this financing lets us execute upon our business plan to expand and add resources to the company. As you may have noticed on our blog recently we’ve ramped up our manufacturing to handle a larger volume of orders, and we’re also staffing up the team. We’re currently planning our international sales efforts, which we hope to have in place by the end of the year. We’ll also use the money to enhance our marketing efforts, with numerous programs to get the word out to many more programmers, coders, developers, hackers, tinkerers, inventors, makers, entrepreneurs, and hackers (you said hackers twice! we know, we like hackers).

Thanks go out to our investors for their continued support!
-Team Bug

This is our first year exhibiting at the show, and we’re located in the Linux Garage area (as you walk in to the Exhibit Hall, go straight until the back area, then take a right – you can’t miss it).  Our booth is #1234, and, much like CES, it’s a “pod” so we’re going to make the most of our space.

We walked by the area this afternoon, but the showfloor was still quite the mess, and they haven’t finished setting up our area.  Not a big deal for us, since we’re bringing the most important assets: our team and our BUGs.  Please stop by and say hi to Angel, Brian, and Ken (from NYC), and I’ll be there with Andrew (from SF).  As always, during any downtime we’ll be writing new applications and building some gadgets.  If you want to hack around with us, just bring a laptop and maybe an extra Red Bull if you have one.

Some brief backstory is important. As a small developer of electronic hardware, one of the biggest bets you make is your choice of contract manufacturer (CM). We had initially chosen a well-respected, domestic CM and everything was lined up to go. To make a long story short, they left us at the altar. I’m still not sure why, other than the fact that what we’re doing is completely new and did not fit neatly into any of their existing product categories. So we scrambled to find another one. Luckily we came up with a good alternative quickly. But we then had to start the long process of getting them geared up for production. This took longer than it should but we got it done.

As the new CM got up to speed, a few other minor setbacks occurred. We had quality issues with some of the plastic molds and the snap-on feature for our modules was not working as advertised. Any of these issue by themselves would not have added up to much of a delay but when added together they complicated the delivery schedule. By the time we cleared these up, we had already missed our original target ship date (we *did* ship some units, but not the entire batch as we had planned). Over the next four months we worked literally side by side with our second CM to get production up to the pace we were trying to hit.

This week we’ve made an important new change. We have moved on to another, bigger CM. One who is used to projects like ours and will be able to quickly scale to meet demand. Which is critical as we continue to receive more and more great coverage from outlets like LinuxJournal (cover, w00t!) and the Economist.

So where are we now?

• Completed fulfillment of all initial orders (placed prior to March 17th)
• In process of moving production to new manufacturer
• Delayed on shipping the camera module (the details of which I will spare you for now, but suffice it to say – complex manufacturing issue)
• Starting production on von Hippel, WiFi, and one new module (which we’ll blog about next week)

What should you expect?

• Camera module to ship in September
• von Hippel module to ship in September
• BUGbundle to resume shipments in September

But more importantly – a lot more updates from us. We’ve made the decision to open the kimono with all production issues moving forward. Whether good news or bad, we’ll give you an update and keep you as informed as we possibly can about shipping updates, new products, and fun stuff we have cooking in our labs (yes, thats the Bug Labs labs). Please let us know if you have any questions and thanks for your support!

Now you too can have your own Bug Labs hat, mug, t-shirt, mousepad, and, uhm… necktie.  Yes, that’s right, a Bug Labs necktie.  Perfect for the occasion where you need to dress it up a bit, but still want to represent open source and DIY gadgets in a fashionable way.  All the options are available here.  Have fun!

Our goal is to have the voice of the community at large play a loud part in our product planning. This means we’d like to know how the ideas you are all sharing really rank with each other. One person’s all-important laser range finder module is another person’s worst. idea. ever. And the forums don’t really let you express that very easily. Enter IdeaScale.

IdeaScale is similar to the Starbucks and Dell “idea crowdsourcing” systems. Basically anyone can come to the site, and vote or comment on existing ideas, or create their own suggestion. We’ve organized the site to have 4 categories for your feedback:

1. BUGmodules – suggest a module for us to build
2. BUGbase – suggest a technology or other aspect of how you’d like to see a future BUGbase be configured
3. BUG+ – suggest a location for us to come have an event
4. BUG+EDU – suggest a school or program to do with an educational facility

Please come check out the site. At present, no registration is required for basic participation (voting), and we are hoping to create a single-signon process so your BUGnet or forums ID will work across both sites in the future. Also, please feel free to use the forums (here) to give any feedback on IdeaScale itself, how it could be improved, if there are other categories we should add, etc.

A few Bug Labs team members have gotten the ball rolling (myself included), but really this is about the community. Hoping to see you there soon, the very future of the world might just depend on it. Well, that may be a bit of a stretch.