As part of Social Media Week, I visited the Autodesk Gallery for a panel discussion entitled “The Next Challenge For The Crowd: Quickly Build Real, Hard, Complex Shit That Matters (Like Cars).” With a title like that, I was not about to miss it. The Rally Fighter parked out front (around the corner from a Tesla roadster, natch) foreshadowed the fascinating discussion inside. Many of the ideas which had been swirling around in my head for the past week coalesced in this 90-minute conversation with Jay Rogers, CEO and co-founder of Local Motors; Marten Mickos, former CEO of MySQL; and Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Wired, moderated by Matt Johnston.

