fifteen years

monome turned fifteen in may. i started writing an overambitious “history of the grid” but here’s the shorter version: we’ve just redesigned the grid, again. and somehow we went on an adventure despite thinking we knew the path. fifteen years ago we were hand-soldering thousands of LEDs (mostly the right way), cooking circuits in a toaster (a few burnt ones were thrown out the window), and generally had no idea what people would do with these enigmatic objects. this years’ journey led through different mountains (global component shortages, uh-oh parts-on-backwards, contemplating the color of nothing/everything) but the primary difference was knowing we had a massive global community supporting us. i’ve said versions of this before: at the outset we imagined many futures, yet this one we find ourselves in remains astonishing. thank you for being a part of it.