There’s no mistaking Naomi Wu amid Shenzhen’s deliverymen and investors. Her long, auburn-dyed hair falls over tight, low-cut tops; her miniskirts reveal more. Wu often wears these outfits in do-it-yourself videos that show her devising an LED-lit skirt or creating heels that hide hacking tools. Wu calls herself a “sexy cyborg.” She also calls herself a “maker,” the term for tech hobbyists who build creative DIY projects. Her endeavors have earned Wu 157,000 subscribers on YouTube and more than 43,000 Twitter followers in a country that blocks both platforms. She has more than 700 supporters on Patreon, a crowd-funding site. But in recent weeks she’s received even more attention — first from skeptical online commentators and then from Dale Dougherty, a California executive who helped launch the maker movement.
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He’s often referred to as the father of the movement, which promotes everyday creators from basement tinkerers to inventors of talking robots. Dougherty also runs Maker Media, a San Francisco media company that publishes Make: magazine and organizes events for the industry known as Maker Faires.
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Other makers began demanding Dougherty’s resignation. Andrew “bunnie” Huang, an American researcher and hacker, wrote a 2,345-word defense of Wu on his blog.
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“Dale was wrong, and he knows that,” said Sherry Huss, vice president of Maker Media. “It was really just an unfortunate situation.”
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Much like her wearable designs, Wu considers her visibility a tool to defy norms of appearance and profession. That commitment, she said, has only intensified.
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“Every day now, I’m doing everything I can to promote women in tech,” she said, before resuming her shopping — for a new microcontroller.
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