There was an excellent article on us by Michael Alan Goldberg at the Philadelphia Weekly, and Andrew Hill from Geekadelphia stopped by to do a piece on 3D printing. Thanks guys!
Open House, Wednesday, January 12th
We have big plans for this week’s open house meeting. Brave the cold and come hang out with us tomorrow night for an evening of tomfoolery, shenanigans, and if you’re lucky, maybe even charcuterie.
- 7pm starts our membership meeting, where we will discuss open projects and start brain-storming on a cocktail and gastro/mixology workshop. Tom Cruise will not be attending.
- 8pm starts the open house, where will be working on plans for a semi-secret, semi-sweet-chocolate project (well actually, no chocolate) involving remote control systems, stereoscopic vision systems, and high-voltage effects.
- 9pm starts ???
- 10pm is pure profit
Don’t dilly-dally, look lively, step to it, and make something!
Officers and Elections, and Board Member departure
Last night was elections at Hive76. It’s my pleasure as the previous Instigator to announce our new slate of Management, who were elected with 100% of all the members that voted. If you need to reach them with questions or feedback, they are available at Management@Hive76.org
Quartermaster – Brendan
Brendan has been around for quite a while, and us the longest standing member of Management. He’s been Quartermaster as long as we’ve had the position. He keeps the space clean and usable, and makes great amps and audio tools.
Book Keeper – Jack
Jack is one of Hive76’s Co-founders, and is the brain (and hands) behind USBTypewriter. He was previously our Events Coordinator, and is now going to be keeping our books.
Chief Technological Officer (CTO) – Adam K.
Adam is one of the powerhouses behind making Hive76 awesome. He’s done a great job as CTO setting up tools to make the organization run smoothly. Above and beyond his officership, he invests a lot of time keeping Hive active, and getting things done. He’s also our #1 print-ninja for our Makerbot.
Secretary – Chris T.
Chris is a designer, artist, and maker at large. He continues his post as Secretary (aka secretarat). He’s also an expert in cutting things into meat with lazzzors.
Instigator – Mike Hogan
Mike is an gentleman and a Maker of first degree. If you’ve taken a micro-controller class or electronics class at Hive, you’ve probably met Mike. He’s also our inside source for MSP430’s.
Events Coordinator – Sean M.
Sean is a developer, zombie-dummy maker, and now our Events Coordinator too. He has some great ideas for 2011, and some cool classes are already in the planning.
Congrats! *ding* to all our new officers, and thanks to all our old officers. If you want to reach them all at once, you can always drop them a line at they are available Management@Hive76.org.
On a sadder note, Adam Elkins has retired from the board of Hive76. He’s done some great projects (like the Free Spirit Stickers), and has constantly brings the coolest water-rockets to the Make:Philly picnic. We wish him the best of luck with whatever cool project he’s onto next.
We are now accepting nom-nom-nominations for a new board member for the open seat on the board. We are open to hearing nominee ideas from anyone. If you have a good idea for a nominee (even if you are not a member) feel free to drop a note on our discussion list with the name of the person, and why they would be a good board member. The members will consider the nominees, and vote to choose the best board member they can decide on.
History of Hackerspaces
Hackerspaces, Makelabs, whatever you call them, they are our beloved tinkering garages and workshops away from home. But just what is it that makes them so great?
In this short class/discussion group, we’ll be covering a bit of the flora and fauna of the hackerspace movement—for new and old members alike—and its growth in popularity throughout the world. We’ll look at some notable spaces and what they are known for, how different spaces organize themselves, the pros and cons of such arrangements, and how new members can get involved, have fun, and make new friends quickly and productively. Afterwards, established members are encouraged to introduce themselves, share their stories of Hive76, and talk a little bit about their projects.
Join us on Wednesday, September 22nd and/or Wednesday, October 6th, at 7pm. Come for the class and stay for the open house afterwards to experience the full buzz of a vibrant community of creators in action.
Next HOPE is Next Weekend
The Next HOPE (Hackers On Planet Earth) conference is next weekend in NYC. Along with Hive76 helping with the Hackerspace Village and the OpenAMD project, there are a bunch of Hive related folks at the conference giving talks or on panels. Below is the quick list of some people you might have run into around Hive or in Philly who are presenting at HOPE and how they are related to our space.
Stephanie Alarcon (board member), Mitch Altman (workshop), Maggie Avener (workshop), Scott Beibin (local vj), Matt Blaze (UPenn professor), cpfr (project), Travis Goodspeed (philly local), Joey Mariano (local musician), Far McKon (officer), Don Miller(local musican), Christina “fabulous” Pei (visitor) , Tiffany Rad(visitor) , Pete Tridish (frequent visitor). And more!
Come to HOPE! Help with the Hackerspace Village! Meet interesting people, and hear about their project! See the RFID awesomesauce. There are still some tickets left, and it’s a train ride + two block from 30th Street Philly to Hotel Penn in NYC.
Top S33kert RFID Project
Hey,
A top s33kret RFID project is going on at Hive76, starting next week.
What I can tell (in a google search-able place) is that It’s a RFID system based on Open Beacon for an event this summer. We could use some hardware hackers, UI/Web/Software folks, and a server wrangler or two. We are meeting next week (Tuesday Night) at an undisclosed location to do some planning for this, and get started. If you think you can spend some time working on this project, email FarMcKon@gmail.com to get the details and get involved.
Class Costs and Planning
Part of running a hackerspace is doing classes, events and workshops. Classes generally involved a teacher (and TA) and slides or a presentation. Workshops and Events are different from classes, and aren’t covered here. It’s sometimes hard to set rates and costs for classes, and it’s a tricky thing to make classes easy and affordable, but to make enough to support the space, and give people giving the class satisfaction of doing something worth the scratch.
I’ve heard some advice from different spaces on how to plan classes and costs, and (for me) one of the toughest parts was coming up with a decent cost for classes. My personal guidelines for the ‘don’t-expect-to-make-money’ classes (take it or leave it) is below. I use this for my own classes and events, and find it useful. If you also do classes or events, feel free to give us feedback on how you price yours, either by leaving a comment on the weblog, or updating the page on our wiki with your guidelines.
Continue reading “Class Costs and Planning”
Hackerspaces Video: Hive76
We were featured on Vimby.com… Andrew Watson did a great job shooting it. Here’s the video.
Edit: fixed embed code that Vimby borked. -eagleapex
Hackerspaces in Space
Workshop88 from Chicago sent us this awesome contest information…
Rules
- One team per hackerspace. Any size build team, but only 10 people for the launch and retrieval team.
- Payload must be under 4 pounds.
- Parts cost limit of $250.00. Must show receipts or have other proof of purchase.
- Payload must return with pictures taken from the flight.
- Only one official launch per team allowed. Notice of official launches must be given by 8 a.m., and a judge must be
- present for the launch to count.
- All local laws and ordinances must be followed throughout the entire competition.
- Balloon camera must take pictures of the curvature of the earth.
- The Event Board may judge any other conduct considered outside “the spirit” of the event and disqualify a team
- that does not adhere to it by majority vote.
- Scoring
- Retrieval Time Base: 50 points. 1 point off for every minute past 45 minutes.
- Weight of Payload 5 points added for every 1/2 pound under 4 lb.
- Cost of Setup Base: 50 points. 0.5 points off for every dollar over $150.
- Total Points Retrieval Time Score + Weight Score + Cost Score
Event Board & Judges
- Judges are members of each hackerspace, and will be submitted to the Event Board. They will ensure all rules are followed.
- One person from each hackerspace will be on the Event Board. The Event Board will oversee the event, judge each applicant, and declare winners.
Dates
- Competition starts immediately upon challenges going out.
- Teams will indicate acceptance of challenge by March 1, 2010 (either at workshop88.com/space, or the attached PDF form).
- Launches will be held between June 1, 2010 and August 31, 2010.
- Results of the official launch must be sent in by September 7, 2010.
- Winner will be announced on or before September 30, 2010.
MakerBot Hotness Lives at Hive76
We love MakerBot, but we needed a better way to print larger objects (like parts for a Mendel). So I started experimenting in the lab at UPenn for how to get a heated platform up and working on 3D-PO.
The first design involved multiple layers of silicone fused together around a nichrome core. We told MakerBot about it, and they wanted more! Then Eberhard Rensch in Germany heard about it (go Internets!), and he went to town on a simplified software design. Awesome!
Of course the design is very simple, totally open (and transparent!). Hooray for Universities. So Mike and I bought a bunch of materials, refined the design a bit, and made a bunch more platforms. It was pretty risky but we trusted our gut and listened to all the awesome members right here at our favorite hackerspace. And we also made use of plenty of Hive resources to get the job done.
But we had gotten ahead of ourselves a bit… we don’t have the infrastructure to sell/invoice/ship/advertise this type of product. We could build that infrastructure, but we really love the core MakerBot community and don’t want to see market fragmentation. So we shipped them off to MakerBot to sell through their store. Check out this blog post and also the wiki page explaining how it works and how to use it.
It’s been an awesome experience: idea -> it works! -> invest in yourself -> Success!!
And about that Mendel… Fynflood’s assembling like gangbusters, check it out!!