Open House Rundown

Freshly Cast, Painted 'n' Polished Diode

What happened at the awesome open house last night? (Hack)(Make)(Craft)-ing happened. Also, lots of folks stopped by to see what this Hackerspace thing is all about. Those solid citizens brave enough to face the weather found a crock pot full of chili and a space full of fun for their efforts.

A bit of the crowd in the space

We had a couple early visitors to the space who mentioned the write-up in DDN's Life section (thanks Stephanie). Local blogger and activist David Esrati stopped in for a bit to lend some support (thanks for the kind mentions on the blog). Lots of traffic steadily throughout the day, a lull around dinner time, and then wammo! The place got hopping, we started melting metal and the crowd was buzzing and hacking (sorry to the early visitors who suffered through my failed initial tinkering, we finally managed to melt down the mini-keg you emptied, thanks!).

Jason and his backup dancers

A large portion of the visitors were interested in micro-controllers and circuit bending, so Jason's robotic musical masterpiece, and Joe's Arduino project were definitely crowd-pleasers. "Oh, cool you've got an Arduino," I think those folks will be back.

J. knocking down the edges

Scott and Kelley pre-workbench

J. put together two very solid, and very useful workbenches that are a huge boost to our hackerspace infrastructure (round of applause for J.: ahhhhhh, crowd goes wild!). Our two newest members Scott and Kelley actually got some significant work done on their two projects during the open house using the new work benches.

Greg tagging the Diode

Our resident spray artist prettied up our lost-foam casting (good idea Joe) of a Dayton Diode.

Aluminum Lost-foam casting

Pouring Molten Aluminum at Diode from Joe McKibben on Vimeo.

A startled hacker in its natural habitat

We also played a bit with the arc torch.