mghiemstra's blog

Good news!

After their grand opening last week, KWartzLab is buzzing with action. Gus and DW are inviting makers of all stripes to their TON (Tuesday Open Night) tomorrow night. Bring your own tools and a project to work on from 7:00 - 10:00PM.

More details here: http://kwartzlab.ca/events/2009-10-06/tuesday-open-night-ton-dw-gus

This is a great way to get to know what the space is like, meet other makers and have a good time building something in the presence of other makers.

Not sure when I'll get to it, but here's a planned project. One of my sons is really into stop motion animation and is getting pretty creative. To help him along, I'd like to make a small table-top stage that allows for backgrounds to be swapped out, has good lighting and two cameras mounted on arms. For bonus points, a control panel to help with the software side of things so you don't have to move between the "set" and the computer. Here's a rough design...

There are a couple recent additions to the makekw.org site that should be mentioned. First, there's a calendar available now. Once logged in, you can use the "Create content" link, then the "Event" link to setup an entry in the calendar. Also, there's a "discuss" mailing list now. Subscribe to the list for conversations, questions, shout outs and any other maker-related (or unrelated) messages from your maker peeps.

"Repurpose" is a mini-documentary on the Foulab hackerspace in Montreal. Running nearly 10 minutes, it's a good way to introduce people to the idea of a hackerspace.

Just a quick note about some goings on... until we get a calendar setup here on the site.

There's two call outs for vendors noted on THE imadeit SHOP blog...

2nd Annual Cherry Festival (by the Cherry Park Neighbourhood Association) for July 11th
The 2009 Cambridge Arts Festival for June 6th

I wondered if anyone might be interested in representing Make: KW at these festivals? Just an idea I'll toss out there .

Plus... there's an interesting talk by John McKnight titled Leveraging Community Assets for Addressing Social Issues. The quote on the poster struck a cord with me:

"We must commit ourselves to reallocation of power to the people we serve so that we no longer will need to serve. Only then will we have a chance to realize the...dream: the right to be a citizen and to create, invent, produce and care."

There's a meeting planned for May 7, 2009 @ 7:30 PM over at Zeke's Family Restaurant on King St. in Kitchener (Kyle has booked the back room). Hardcopies of the hackerspace survey will be handed out. Here's your chance to share your wishes and dreams about the hackerspace.

Hi Folks,

We're looking for suggestions on locations to have a maker group meetup here in KW. A restaurant with a back room that's quieter seems to work best. We've met at "The Cavern" in the basement at the Heuther Hotel in the past and that worked well, but it's not always available and we need alternatives.

Any ideas?

The next University of Waterloo surplus sale is April 28, 2009 from 12:30 PM until 2:00 PM. If you've never been to the sale, it's quite the experience. The line up starting at the door often runs down Phillip St. before the doors open. Then it's a mad dash to find the items you're interested in before someone else lays claim. There's usually a large assortment of deals to be found on PCs, Macs, monitors, hard drives and various peripheral cards, furniture and various scientific instruments. There's also bikes, cell phones and other lost and found items. This week they have a Tandberg Precision H.D. Camera that didn't sell from the last sale.

It's worth the trip, even if you don't buy something, just to see people happily cart away their purchases .

For more details, check out the sale's web page at: http://www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infostor/surplus_sale_info.html

To date, the maker meetings we've had have been centred around getting a hackerspace up and running, but there's no reason we should let the lack of a space keep us from getting together, sharing our projects, learning from each other and having fun.

I'm wondering what people would like to see in a maker group. One of the best examples of a successful group is Make: Philly, a 400-strong group of makers in Philladelphia. According to their about page, their meetups are:

...characterized by three main ingredients: an "Open Make" segment allowing attendees to share a project with the group, a subject matter presentation by a member or outside speaker, and a Maker Challenge -- a building activity.

 Is this the type of meetings you would like to have? I think at a minimum a meetup with a project demo would be good, speakers if we can arrange them and some food and drink would be good. Leave comments and let everyone know what you think...