This week, Dr. Nicholas Polys, Web3D Consortium President and Professor at Virginia Tech was invited to the first-ever White House Maker Faire. This honor comes as a direct result of his work for open web standards and 3D data durability. Specifically, as an Advisory Board Member for the NIH 3D Print Exchange where X3D, X3DOM and VRML are key technologies.

President Obama declared National Makers Day as an occasion for all Americans to imagine, tinker and 'make stuff'. The variety of projects featured at the Faire underscore the revolutions going on in micro electronics and 3D printing. Invitees toured the White House and had some time to visit dozens of tables exhibiting these Makers' innovations, from the Makey-Makey banana piano to PankcakeBot. David Perry played a 3D-printed electric violin and the 3D team from the Smithsonian Digitization office were there with a stunning, laser-sintered nylon bust of Obama. The NIH Team showed off several models from their exchange site from proteins and virii to anatomy.

Dr. Polys met many talented innovators who shared his concern about the long-term outlook for the content they create. "X3D meets many of the key requirements - open, accessible, portable, interoperable, but important issues remain to be solved; for example best practices for metadata and provenance capture as well as efficient 3D shape search. With the forthcoming foundation of the Web3D Consortium Cultural Heritage Working Group, we have a chance to get the best and brightest to focus on these challenges and build the platforms and applications of the future."