On Tuesday, September 4th, instead of going to our Object class in the ATLAS building, we visited the headquarters of Sparkfun Electronics! Their factory is located in Niwot, CO, just a short 20 minute drive from campus.
As soon as we arrived and walked into the lobby, the Sparkfun building and general company vibe reminded me of the ATLAS building. Their lobby features various exhibits and interactive installments, full of whimsy, creativity, and movement. In addition, there are a few different exhibitions of Sparkfun history, including a humorous timeline of important company events. My friends and I explored for a few minutes while we waited for things to get going, but it was a lot to take in. My favorite attractions were a motion-detected musical wall and a set of trampolines embellished with LEDs that visitors could play memory games on.
At last, the tour started. Bob, the director of operations, introduced himself and explained how the company began when Nate Seidle was a college student at CU Boulder. Nate accidentally fried a component in his dorm room and ended up selling parts to his friends, which snowballed into selling parts to customers and eventually developed into the company we explored today.
As we left the lobby, Bob explained that the building we would tour was custom built specifically for Sparkfun, which allowed them lots of opportunities to design features and systems to make the company a fun and innovative place to work. They are currently renting out part of the space (they have 80,000 square feet total!) to smaller businesses, but eventually hope to expand fully into the rest of the building once their operations demand more space.
Much of the artwork on the walls of the factory is actually from parts of the company’s history or the employees themselves, which helps to create a fun and community-driven company culture for Sparkfun. The mural on the wall below was painted with conductive material, making it so that visitors can simply place their hands on one of the logos to trigger a sound effect or jingle. There were plenty of other examples of these interactive components on the tour, all of which keep the workplace both interesting and artful.
One of my favorite stops on the tour was Melissa’s office, where she showed us some of her projects and explained a bit more about her specific job. It was cool to hear about how she was able to produce work that delivered on Sparkfun initiatives but was also highly motivated by her own interests. While many of her coworkers focus more on the engineering side of things, Melissa likes to really incorporate art into her work. This inspired me because I can definitely see myself producing work for Object that revolves around the aesthetic experience of the piece. Of course, I would love to create things that are beautiful but also have some level of functionality.
Another highlight from the tour was this full-scale climbing wall on the first floor of the building! Alongside more traditional workout equipment, this wall offers employees a space to exercise during the workday or take a break from sitting at desks. Little parts of the tour like this one convinced me Sparkfun is a company that really cares about its employees.
Once we got down to the actual manufacturing area of the factory, it was pretty impressive how many machines, parts and people were hard at work on the floor. Machines like the one pictured below really speed up the manufacturing process by automating tasks such as soldering components onto circuit boards. One of them could place something like 24,000 parts per hour!
On one of the last stops, Bob explained a little bit more about the actual products that Sparkfun offers on their online store, from obscure connectors to full “starter kits” designed for beginners in the world of electronics. There are millions of dollars worth of products in this factory, which isn’t surprising when you consider how many orders they have to fill every week.
The very last stop was for a tiny offshoot of the company called SparkX, which essentially is given complete creative freedom to create new products, make manufacturing processes more efficient, or anything else that might be interesting or important to the company. The original founder of Sparkfun, Nate, works at SparkX, and apparently his team there can move from the conceptualization of a new product to production in as little as five days!
When the tour was over, we were brought into the lobby to pick up the parts we had ordered for the rest of the semester. I loved being able to see a little part of how the electronics industry works, especially all of the creativity at work in the Sparkfun culture.
nate bennett 