APM: Hackerspace - Cheyenne

jameschoate at austin.rr.com jameschoate at austin.rr.com
Wed Jun 17 08:36:42 PDT 2009


Glad to meet you Bryce,

To cut right to the chase...

My long term goal is to build a hands-on science museum here in Austin again. I was involved in Discovery Hall back in the 80's but we ended up closing it after about seven years. About the only thing left is The Robot Group,

http://wiki.therobotgroup.org/wiki/Main_Page

I'm currently involved in several other local groups as well:

Austin Perl Mongers
League of Professional System Administrators, Austin
Hacking Society
Austin Python User Group

They all have one major issue, a location to get together.

Over the last few years there has been a rise in the 'hacker space' theme. I see it as a scaled down hands-on science center sort of effort. The first one was the Exploratorium,

http://www.exploratorium.edu/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploratorium

I was fortunate in that when we were setting up Discovery Hall to open in 1984 I got to talk to Frank just before he died. He was a real inspiration and one of the guiding principles he left us with was the importance of volunteers and having a shop space that was accessible. The general theme is to build the museum around it so visitors and such can see what is going on and how things get built. The museum infrastructure itself becomes an exhibit.

One of the primary problems I see with the current approach is that the groups work seperately and they don't shop their efforts around to other groups. What I'm hoping to do with Confusion Research Center is create the first distributed hacker space and grow it into a hands-on science museum. Right now I"m using Twine as the medium to build the initial web page and blog space, as well as a good means to advertise and build up a catalog of efforts...

http://www.twine.com/twine/1178v3j0v-76w/confusion-research-center

http://www.twine.com/twine/12cddcs5t-28b/hackerspaces

http://www.twine.com/twine/1128gqhxn-dwr/solar-soyuz-zaibatsu

I'd strongly suggest setting up a specific Twine for your efforts there. I've been one of their beta testers for a while now and think they've got some good ideas. Still needs a lot of work though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twine_(website)

I also run my own domain via DynDNS and some servers at home over a cable modem. It started as a BBS in 1983 and moved to the Internet in 1993,

http://ssz.com/

I chose Cheyenne, WY because I wanted someplace to live other than just Austin and after a couple of years of research I settled on there. I intend to open up an account with one of the local ISPs to get the initial webpage going in January. I don't expect to actually be buying land there until late 2010 or early 2011. I was trying to find some contact in the community that was already working along these lines.

That's a lot of stuff to throw at you so I'll stop here and let you digest it.

TTYL.

---- Bryce Tugwell <btugwell at fusestudios.com> wrote: 
> Would love to talk to you about it. Its late here lets connect tomorrow at
> some point.
> We are very early in establishing a space here in Laramie, but have
> interested people - which is much of what it takes. Email me some time
> tomorrow about what you are thinking - I would love to get involved.
> 
> -- 
> Bryce Tugwell
> Creative Professional: Web Designer & Online Strategist
> 
> Contact Details:
> http://www.brycetugwell.tel
> 
> Office: 703.531.8862
> Mobile: 703.622.5989
> Skype: btugwell

--
 -- -- -- --
Venimus, Vidimus, Dolavimus

James Choate
jameschoate at austin.rr.com
james.choate at twcable.com
512-657-1279
www.ssz.com
http://www.twine.com/twine/1128gqhxn-dwr/solar-soyuz-zaibatsu
http://www.twine.com/twine/1178v3j0v-76w/confusion-research-center

Adapt, Adopt, Improvise
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