Public Invention Con 2026 Recap

On Saturday, June 13, 2026, innovators, healthcare professionals, educators, students, makers, and community leaders gathered at the Central Library Special Events Center in Austin, Texas for Public Invention Con 2026: a day dedicated to exploring how open innovation and collaborative problem-solving can improve lives around the world.

Throughout the conference, attendees engaged in thought-provoking presentations, meaningful discussions, and opportunities to connect with others who share a passion for developing accessible, impactful solutions to real-world challenges.

Inspiring Keynote

We were honored to welcome Dave Tipping of Kids Operating Room (KidsOR) as our keynote speaker. His presentation highlighted the transformative impact of improving access to safe surgical care for children worldwide and demonstrated how innovation, collaboration, and purpose-driven design can create lasting global change.

Conference Highlights

Inspiring keynote presentation from Dave Tipping, Kids Operating Room
Conversations centered on public invention and open innovation
Networking with inventors, researchers, clinicians, educators, and community advocates
Opportunities to share ideas, build partnerships, and inspire future collaborations
A celebration of practical innovation that serves communities around the world

Thank You

Thank you to everyone who attended, volunteered, sponsored, and supported Public Invention Con 2026. Your enthusiasm, curiosity, and commitment to creating solutions for the public good made this event an incredible success.

The conversations started in Austin are only the beginning, and we look forward to continuing this growing community of innovators committed to making a difference.

Watch our conference retrospective to hear more on our efforts post Public Invention Con 2026!

Outputs from this Event

Robert Read presenting during Public Invention's 2025 convention.

About the event

On Saturday June 13th, Public Invention hosted a full day of speakers, live demos, and audience activities focused on the process of becoming Humanitarian Engineers and Public Inventors.

We believe technology should be used for good. Public Invention is a US 501c3 public charity dedicated to open-source engineering and the motto “Invent in the public, for the Public.”

This conference was devoted to the principle that technology can and should be used for good in the world, and how that relates to you, the technologist who wants to make a difference. Volunteering to work on one of our projects is a great way to boost your career, build your network, author a peer-reviewed paper, learn-by-doing, and be part of great teams working toward impactful goals.

Our keynote was Dave Tipping, lead engineer of KidsOR, which has made 140 pediatric operating rooms in the poorest countries in the world—enabling hundreds of thousands of life-changing surgeries for young children around the world. Dave will touch on KidsOR’s cooperation with Public Invention to bring new oxygen generation technology, partially developed by Public Invention working for NASA, out of the laboratory and into the operating room.

The rest of the day featured talks from Engineers Without Borders, a talk about NASA’s Artemis mission, and live demos of Public Invention’s many projects. Attendees experienced our microscope point-of-care project, our highly efficient cooking pot designed with computation fluid dynamics, our radical new ferrofluid pump that has no moving parts, and more. This ultimately was a fun day for STEM students from high school on up to post-PhD researchers!

Watch our retrospective

The venue

Central Library Special Events Center
710 West Cesar Chavez Street
Austin, TX 78701

Directions

Speakers

Meet a diverse lineup of inventors, engineers, and thought leaders sharing real-world open-source innovations, offering lightning talks, live demos, and firsthand insights into building technology for global impact.