APM: Tonights Meeting...

jameschoate at austin.rr.com jameschoate at austin.rr.com
Wed Jun 10 09:00:18 PDT 2009


>From my research on ACTLab it is related to UT students and interests. It's related to providing students a mechanis of collaboration. Their outreach to the general community (eg The Robot Group, Dorkbot, Geek Austin, APM, LOPSA, etc.) has been minimal if non-existant. The couple of satellite ACTLabs that have sprung up are also tightly linked to instructors at colleges and not the general community.

Les is the one in South Austin who is doing the Tech Shop effort. Have you spoken with him? I was down there just a couple of months ago and spent a Saturday afternoon going over his business plan and goals. His goals and business model are more commercial/production oriented and not so much community oriented. He interacts with The Robot Group trying to get them involved but the costs and gottcha's seem prohibitive. If  you haven't spent a bit of time talking to him then I strongly suggest you do so. Les's basic goal is to increase his business cash flow.

With regard to traditional shop services, that's the whole point of growing the hack space into a hands-on museum. You might want to check out the Exploratorium (it was the model Discovery Hall was built on).

http://www.exploratorium.edu/

The hack space would grow into a full blown shop with resources to build exhibits and other projects (eg Lord British's 12 ft tall Tesla Coil we did at DH for the haunted houses). The way the Exploratorium and DH did it was to have the shop a visible component of the exhibit floor so that it becomes an exhibit itself. I intend to make the hack space the first exhibit and the core the other efforts build on.

The problem I see with all these parallel efforts is that they are not brought together to build some inertia of interest and consensus. They also don't address the aspect of marketing the efforts to the public through other, similar, groups. This is a win-win from many aspects. It's what drove me to look at having multiple sites.

The CCC put out a "Building a Hacker Space" paper,

http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2133.en.html

http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/documents/Hacker-Space-Design-Patterns.pdf

The shop facilities and related community were what led to The Robot Group forming back in 1989 through DH and it still exists.

If any of you are staff or students at UT you might want to get in touch with Dr. Jack Turner in Physics. He was one of the two original guiding lights to DH. I worked with him for about 10 years or so.

http://order.ph.utexas.edu/

I've got the resources to open an initial meeting place of about 400-500 sq. ft. and a basic internet feed (ie business class RR). That comes to about $700/mo and I can cover that myself. By charging member dues of approx. $75/mo. it should be self-sustaining in about six months. I can then use that same cash flow to open the second sight in Cheyenne, WY at the end of 2010.

---- Keith Howanitz <howanitz at gmail.com> wrote: 
> On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 12:49 AM, <jameschoate at austin.rr.com> wrote:
> [SNIP
> > I'd also like to ask the group what they think of "Hack
> > Spaces" and why you would or wouldn't find them usefull.
> [SNIP]
> 
> Will it be related at all to this?
> 
> http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/ACTLab
> 
> I would be more interested in joining what I think is called
> "TechShop", or some combination of a Hack Space and Tech Shop. I don't
> have the space for a lathe, welder, and other tools I would sometimes
> like access to, but think I would be willing to pay to have membership
> someplace where I would have access.
> 
> http://www.techshop.ws/
> 
> http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/remake_tool_sharing.html
> 
> Anyway, best of luck to your efforts, I think I am too busy to get
> involved right now, but I would like to hear how it goes - I am
> definitely interested.
> _______________________________________________
> Austin mailing list
> Austin at pm.org
> http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/austin

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James Choate
jameschoate at austin.rr.com
james.choate at twcable.com
512-657-1279
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