Wednesday Night Roundup 7/13/11


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Pictures from 7/13/11 Open Hack at the Hack Factory.

Two post from TCMakers went up on Make:Blog which is always fun to see.


Our very own Sunsh1ne was interviewed along with a few others on Women in Hackerspaces! The full article is up on Make:Blog.

Paul Sobczak’s video showing a prototype of a sound based led switch that he was working on last during last weeks open hack video below.

Arduino PD LED Adudio Thing from paul sobczak on Vimeo.

Open Hack Night 7/6/11

 

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Pictures and videos from the 7/6/11 Open Hack at the Hack Factory.

Twin Cities Maker operates an open house every Wednesday from 7:00pm till late, and it’s open to the public! If you are interested in getting to know what TCMaker is about, or just want something to do on a Wednesday night stop by and say hello. Bring a project if you’re working one, or a problem if you need something fixed, we might be able to help.

We now have over 2,000 images in the Twin Cities Maker Flickr pool too!

Open Hack June 29th

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If you’re on the blog you can see that we exceeded our member goal for June by 13 members! That is really great news for Twin Cities Maker! Thanks to all the members that have decided Twin Cities Maker is worth their time an effort.

We are currently at 83 members including the three that joined up on the 29th. Because some members get the $25 dollar rate for being a student or unemployed and the associated fees from paypal, the funds from membership are not as simple as 83×50, but we are getting really close to being in the black. We need about 85 to 90 members each month to be there, and it seems we are well on our way.

So again, welcome new members, we are glad you’re here.

Wednesday Open Hack 6/8/11


No slide show this week from the open hack at The Hack Factory, but that doesn’t mean nothing happened, quite the opposite. It was our annual meeting and we had quite a few of the members all in the the building at the same time, always a great thing.

There where two main orders of business the vote on the 501c(3)/bylaw stuff which all passed so we are moving forward with that process, lots of great discussion on what it means, clarification on that, new committees, lessons learned.

The other main piece of business was an overview of the financial situation. The whole details are going to be posted soon. The basics, we need to keep on the member drive a total membership around 80 – 90 will allow us to start building up money again. That said we have reserves to hold us while we get more people.

The space planning committee has been hard at work figuring out how to organize all of the new space we moved into on the 1st of the month. So changes are being implemented, lots of neat and exciting things are happening be sure to keep an eye on how things progress. More to come as more of it gets fleshed out.

We were featured in Make:Live Episode 10 along side our friends at NYC Resistor, Milwaukee Makerspace, i3Detroit, and Noisebridge (San Francisco). We will let you know when the video gets posted.

A few more bits. If you get a chance take a look at the upcoming classes and events (part of the sidebar on if you’re at the website), there might be something your interested in, and, as always, there are some in the works so be sure to check for updates. If you have an idea for a class as well let our events at tcmaker dot org know. There are a few group projects in the works over on the fourm, check them out and get involved, or post your own project.

Finally, If you are thinking about coming down and checking out the Hack Factory, Wednesday nights, as the tradition has been, are the best time to do so lots of activity and great tour guides. Bring a project to show off if you want, we are a curious bunch. If you can’t make it on Wednesday you can stop by other times, there is usually someone in the shop all the time these days, don’t hesitate to ask them for a tour and a bit of information about the place, if you have other questions we have all quite a few ways to get a hold of the group, see the communication section of our wiki and take your pick.

5/11/11 Open Hack Roundup

 

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Lots of great things going on at the Hack Factory this week. The big news, our sub lease is up at then end of the month and we need to raise some money and members got assume the whole lease. Great news on both fronts actually as we gained 2 new members, and have raised $700 of the $1000 dollars in the matching fund. Even more great, last night our President announced on twitter that he would contribute another $500 to the challenge fund if we met the $1000 goal by Friday.  The full download on the situation with our space The Hack Factory can be found in this post.

Some exciting stuff coming up for TC Maker. We will be at Make:Day at the Science Museum this will be our third showing there, lots of hard work going into making that successful.

A learn to solder class is going to be held on Sunday evening, there are 5 spots left so if you have any interest sign-up now. The proceeds are going directly to the space fund.

A new Handmade Music Minneapolis will be announced later today, some pretty exciting details to come on that so watch the blog for info.

One of our original members who was with us when we were meeting in coffee shops for a year also learned that he is going to be moving back.

The Great Global Hackerspace Challenge has voted and while we didn’t make it down to the semifinalists some of our members are still going to Maker Faire in San Mateo, CA. Adam from Wayne and Layne plans on showing off some of his gadgets at a booth.

As some of you saw on the forum we are loosing our dust collector as a member who loaned them is taking them back, thanks to bradito for letting us keep it for so long. As luck would have it last night another TCMaker stepped up and is going to loan his for 3 months, thanks Cam.

A final note to our followers at large, if you are thinking about becoming a member in any capacity, please do. We need the support. We have several members that contribute the $50 dollars a month solely because they like what we are doing, and don’t actually make it down to the space very often, if at all on any given month. This type of membership is very valuable to us as a group, if you think you are in a similar situation to this, please don’t hesitate.

The other day a potential member asked videoman, our president, what we do at the Hack Factory and he said “Yes”. If you want to be a part of that, join up or donate a few dollars from $1 to $20 to $20,000, it all helps. If you want to be part of a dynamic group of people working on lots of interesting things, that’s us.