An Interview with Scotty Allen (Strangeparts)

(image thanks to the Hackaday.io)

Welcome Scotty Allen of Strangeparts.com!

• Chris and Scotty were just hanging out at Supercon. Scotty gave a talk from there last year.
• Scotty's latest video is about making an RFID chip
• Kitchen Confidential
• Scotty did software consulting in college and then joined the Google search team.
• He decided to quit and travel more and was became a "Minimalist by default" when he accidentally set apartment on fire.
• Blog posts in 2014 had him curious about Shenzhen, including posts from Ian from Dangerous Prototypes.
• He first visited with Mitch Altman during his yearly tour to China.
• Greg from RevRobotics makes parts for FRC
• The process to stay in China
• WePay (really "WeChat Pay")
• QR codes
• Scotty knows some conversational Chinese, but also relies on Google translate and Microsoft translate (OCR).
• Videos
  • iPhone
    • Making the phone
    • Bringing back the jack
  • RFID
    • Checking out the stickers
    • 2nd video at Impinge
  • Factory tours
    • JLCPCB
    • Industrial SLA
    • Accidentally went to a hockey stick factory
  • Videoes with Collin Abroadcast in the Yiwu commodities market outside of Shanghai
    • Inside the massive market
    • Cashierless convenience store
• Places Scotty wants to tour (please contact if you know of any contacts)
  • Silicon fab
  • Batteries - LiPo
  • Injection molding - greg nedall
  • White label modification
• 100 units
  • Chinese entrepreneurs use local manufacturing
  • iPhone testing board (also pictured above) is a good example
  • Intermeshed network of specialized manufacturing
  • People shop around for quality/relationships
• Finding factories
  • Moving outside of Shenzhen
  • Mismatched expectations
• Chinese entrepreneurs
  • Moving upmarket
  • Shanzai phones
  • Made in China 2025
  • 100 year plan with 5 year plan segments
• Scotty doesn't plan to start a QVC channel
• DSLR video shooter
• Video
  • Background in video/theater
  • Story telling
  • Quest
• The Engineers journey
  • Any complex project goes through the heroes journey
  • The only way through is to change who they are as a person
• There are two ways the story can finish
  • Succeed
  • Explaining why it can't be done
• Battery stories with past guest Steve Kreuzer
• Boards brought from the market
• Scotty is growing the Strangeparts team, namely looking for a COO.
• Contact Scotty on
  • Twitter @strangepartscom
• [email protected]