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'America Makes' Rebranding Widens NAMII's Appeal
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -– The rebranding of the National Additive Manufacturing and Innovation Institute to "America Makes," announced Tuesday during a closed-door meeting of its members, enables the organization to better reach out to entities and individuals in the additive manufacturing community, officials say.
The institute -- often referred to by its acronym, NAMII -- will retain that as its official name while America Makes serves as “our superbrand or hyperbrand,” said Scott Deutsch, manager of communications and special programs for the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining. NCDMM is the program manager for NAMII.
As the pilot program for a proposed network of manufacturing innovation institutes, part of the institute’s mission is “to reach our beyond traditional manufacturers to the people that are making stuff in their homes with 3D printing,” Deutsch said.
In discussions over the past year with individuals inside the additive manufacturing community as well as ones outside, “[who] we would like to embrace into our community,” Deutsch said, officials found that “we have a very bureaucratic and government sounding name. We also compete with some other people that have similar initials,” leading to the America Makes branding, he explained.
“With the new brand, we broaden our appeal and sharpen our focus at the same time,” he added. Most of the "maker community," including leading companies such as MakerBot and MakerGear, speaks of 3D printing as opposed to additive manufacturing. "They are not so much engaged when we’re this five-letter acronym, government-sponsored … thing that is looked at as a big program,” he said.
“We broaden our appeal by having a smaller, easy-to-explain name -- easier to pronounce certainly – and it also embraces that broader, do-it-yourself home 3D printing community we need to embrace,” Deutsch continued. “The innovations that we are seeking and hoping to provide are going to come from the next person doing something in their garage that’s never been done before.” The initials for America makes, A-M, also evoke additive manufacturing.
Though America Makes was intended just for NAMII, Deutsch acknowledged the branding potentially could be adopted for the proposed network of innovation institutes. As the pilot center, “We’re being looked at for best practices,” he said.
Yesterday, when NAMII announced the new branding, was the second of three days of project management review meetings for the seven projects announced this spring. A second project call is coming due at the end of the month, so questions are being fielded at the meetings regarding those upcoming submissions, Deutsch said. “These are last-minute questions that are getting answered,” he said. “At the moment, most proposal teams are pretty well underway in getting their proposals done.”
Applicants are invited to make their submissions for the second project through the new America Makes website, Deutsch said. The new site also will provide tools, such as a social networking component, to build proposals and project teams online.
“Each one of our projects has certain focus areas that need to be addressed,” he said. “They have to have a small-medium enterprise component to them, a technology transfer component, workforce development. All of those things need to be addressed. Not every organization can do that so it’s kind of nice,” he remarked.
Copyright 2013 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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