In December 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek reported that LEGO Friends was launched, a LEGO product line aimed to appeal to girls. The product line, which consisted of predominantly pastel-colored bricks and stereotypical themes, drew worldwide attention and controversy. Now, according to CNET, Adafruit Industries founder Limor “Ladyada” Fried (who has a Masters of Engineering from MIT) has worked with LEGO artist Bruce Lowell to create Ladyada’s Workshop, a LEGO version of Fried’s Adafruit workshop meant to inspire girls to pursue interests in engineering. The set has been submitted to LEGO Cuusoo, a site where LEGO set concepts can be voted on to become a real product. If Ladyada’s Workshop concept can get 10,000 votes, it will be made into a real LEGO set. “So now it’s up to you, if you want to celebrate art, design, science, engineering and open-source hardware place vote for ‘Ladyada’s Workshop’.”
Ladyada’s workshop is a place where you explore all the cool things you build and use when you’re an engineer! Computers, pick-and-place machine, laser cutter, soldering station and more! In Ladyada’s workshop you can run your own open-source hardware electronics company, complete with Mosfet the cat.
This is Ladyada’s desk, she uses a computer, a soldering iron, microscope and other tools to design electronics!
This is a pick-and-place machine. It uses cameras to pick up super-tiny parts to make the circuit boards you’d find in computers, cell phones, TVs and pretty much anything electronic!
via Geek Gestalt
photos & images by Bruce Lowell for Adafruit Industries
