What are your top 2 short-term goals for DHMN funds?

[Erin Quick-Laughlin]

Besides space, which is a medium/long term goal, what do you want desperately for DHMN?

A month of DHMN-owned server space in the cloud?

Soldering kits for Soldering 101 class?

Pizza dinner at Makes?

<your answer here>?

What would be the coolest thing IYHO? Perhaps totaling less than $50...  I'm going to run a little fundraiser-game-experiment.....

Erin

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[Tim Bertram]

A month of DHMN-owned server space in the cloud?

Soldering kits for Soldering 101 class?

Pizza dinner at Makes?

Business Cards

[Paul Klemstine]

hosted web space for dhmn.net

business cards/promotional flyers

Medium Term Goal:

3D printer, and I graciously donate my basement to store it between meetings.:)

[Bob Waldron]

Good question for discussion at the next organizational meeting, Erin! (see also comments below)

On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 4:05 PM, Erin Quick-Laughlin <er...@quick-laughlin.com> wrote:

Besides space, which is a medium/long term goal, what do you want desperately for DHMN?

A month of DHMN-owned server space in the cloud? -- Until DHMN has a facility, I don't see a need for DHMN-owned server space

Soldering kits for Soldering 101 class? -- of the ideas listed, this is definitely the most appropriate use of DHMN money

Pizza dinner at Makes?  -- nah, people can buy or bring their own pizza / food. Only DHMN pizza should be if we have sponsor for activity

 

Arduino kits

Raspberry Pi

Adafruit wearable electronics (http://www.zdnet.com/blog/emergingtech/exploring-use-cases-for-electronic-clothes/3117)

3D printer

CNC mill (Shapeoko?)

Quadcopter

SentryGun

[Erin Quick-Laughlin]

To be clear, just the things you DO want for now, please.

The game will take care of figuring out what interested people don't want.

I'm just looking for people's personal top requests for short-term expenditures at this point - no need to meet on this - just submit what you'd like - send it to me personally if you want to be anonymous.

The suggestions that have more than 1 request will rise to the top of the list, but the game will help us decide between the top 2 on the list.

[Alex Hunt]

A professional grade video camera/microphone for publishing promotional videos & stills (and for usable meeting videoconferencing).

Door prizes for the people who can make it through the Portal Sentry Gauntlet.  :)

I'm mostly kidding - the group money should go to the benefit of the group.  (supplies for group projects, advertising, and meeting space expenditures)

[j]

I would be happy to donate hosting. My site is getting underused anyway.

[Karl P. Niemuth II]

I got a camera and microphone I can bring to meetings... I am just normally to broke to afford fuel to get around. 

[Paul Klemstine]

What kind of  space are we talking about here?

The vision I have is having a professional business type hosting plan that allows us to create unlimited subdomains and user accounts, and has PHP, Perl, Python,JSP, FTP, ASP,  etc...  Currently we have fine plain old "static" web space.

I figure once we have a physical space, we can host our own servers on location.

[Bob Watson]

For now, we want to be able to host a Wordpress site and a Wiki.

--
Bob Watson

Author of Gladiator Girl

Trade paperback or Kindle ebook. Amazon.com

Also available on the Nook. Barnes & Noble

[Michael Moran]

That's still pretty cheap.  I think that there may be two need though. 
1. A server for the actual site/content that is going to have to be fairly stable and
2. A server that can be used for running all types of software, with a bunch of users.

The reason you want that separation is because you don't want everyone with access to your production site.  Someone of that can be controlled with certain types of sandboxing, but then becomes a larger management issue.

-Mike

On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 12:17 PM, Paul Klemstine <paulkl...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Mike Putnam]

My greatest short-term desire for DHMN is to *COLLABORATE* on a project
that both demonstrates what DHMN is all about and sort of markets DHMN.
The Milwaukee Makerspace giant Arduino + Powerwheels parade float is an
example of the spirt of project. Many contributors, project gets in
front of public, even local media picked up the story.

So what sort of project can we dream up (and actually achieve) for $50
DHMN-bucks?

[Bob Waldron]

I agree 103% about the value of a DHMN collaborative project.

It's possible, although somewhat unlikely, that we'll build a newsworthy maker project for $50. Seems likely MMS spent more than $50 on their Powerwheels.

I like Erin's SentryGun project, although that might get DHMN labelled as badboys, which may not be the public image Mike is thinking of. Although it is in the spirit of Daemon/FreedomTM...  :)

One thing to consider for publicity's sake is something that can be displayed or operated in public, like that collaborative robot project where random passersby read the sign on a little robot and helped it out to achieve it's goal. Something involving the general public in a non-threatening way would be a way to get publicity without begging the media to do a story about DHMN.

-- Some type of robot designed to encourage and enable public participation in the project (lots of possible directions for this)

-- Highly 'visible' project, such as something at night with LEDs, maybe LED throwie graffiti if there's an appropriate place for that

-- Something collaborative project with Lawrence students (I'd be happy to connect with the new Lawrence community liaison person, or maybe Megan or Lynne would have interesting student connections or suggestions on how to connect with students that might be interested in doing a 'public' project with DHMN

-- Do a 3D printer build project in public (maybe at the library or on College Ave)

-- I can come up with 673 other projects, but I'm sure others have much better ideas, so I'll stop with the above ones...

L-Dron

[Bob Watson]

Some sort of regular media footprint. Some ideas:

Regular audio podcast (once or twice a month)

A Youtube channel with regular updates (once or twice a month)

Contact local TV, Newspapers, Wisconsin Public Radio, etc. to offer our members for expert commentary on tech stories.

[Lynne Whitehorn]

On 4/12/2012 4:14 PM, Bob Waldron wrote:

I agree 103% about the value of a DHMN collaborative project.

It's possible, although somewhat unlikely, that we'll build a newsworthy maker project for $50. Seems likely MMS spent more than $50 on their Powerwheels.

I like Erin's SentryGun project, although that might get DHMN labelled as badboys, which may not be the public image Mike is thinking of. Although it is in the spirit of Daemon/FreedomTM...  :)

One thing to consider for publicity's sake is something that can be displayed or operated in public, like that collaborative robot project where random passersby read the sign on a little robot and helped it out to achieve it's goal. Something involving the general public in a non-threatening way would be a way to get publicity without begging the media to do a story about DHMN.

-- Some type of robot designed to encourage and enable public participation in the project (lots of possible directions for this)

-- Highly 'visible' project, such as something at night with LEDs, maybe LED throwie graffiti if there's an appropriate place for that

-- Something collaborative project with Lawrence students (I'd be happy to connect with the new Lawrence community liaison person, or maybe Megan or Lynne would have interesting student connections or suggestions on how to connect with students that might be interested in doing a 'public' project with DHMN

-- Do a 3D printer build project in public (maybe at the library or on College Ave)

-- I can come up with 673 other projects, but I'm sure others have much better ideas, so I'll stop with the above ones...

L-Dron

Might be interesting to talk to http://www.lawrence.edu/news/pubs/lt/presrep04-05/neilson.shtml, who was the guy behind the manhole cover project.  Maybe some folks at the Conservatory have idea about music and hacking.  Unless someone tells me not to, I'll chat up some of these folks as I run into them.

I've BCCed one of the local Appleton city councilors in hopes they might be motivated to provide some suggestions.  Yo, Alderperson, you know who you are.  You should subscribe to this mail list, please.

(I have no ideas about how to spend money, which is why I didn't post anything, not because I don't care. :)  )

My personal feelings about robots are that they should come in swarms, have lots of legs, and exhibit learning behavior (including walking modes) from the ground up.  My *personal* project for this sort of thing would be a snowbot, for doing swarm-based snow removal.  For that, though, you need bots powered by combustion engines, ideally external combustion steam engines using leashed Capuchin monkeys as oilers, each bot capable of sounding two steam whistles, and capable of playing tunes when in a close swarm.  (I admit to a more-than-fleeting fondness for steam engines of any stripe.)

That's just *me*, though.

Another would be to augment the truly crappy aerial photography coverage provided by Bing/Google by building a semi-autonomous aerostat (eventually a fleet of them) based on a lifting-body gas envelope.  (Basically a tiny airship that can't crash like a 'copter because it's mostly held up by helium cells.)  Take lots of low-level (<500') stereo photographs of the city and have the 'bots upload everything to a website donated by the city's GIS group.  These images could be used to build Google Earth models of the city and its buildings.

At the same time, these airwhales would monitor pollution, light levels, sound, and anything else that can be crammed into their guts.

Lots of software, hardware, art, and public relations involved, plus you get to say, "But we're not building SkyNet, we promise."  Also you get to argue with people who are amusingly attached to the 19th century concept of "privacy", something that's hard for modern persons to understand.  And you can't get bored, because there's always something to photograph.  I can see making some of these with suckers (vacuum) that let them latch onto the side of a building and take pictures of things happening on the street.  Imagine a half dozen eyebots floating around OctoberFest, broadcasting in real-time. 

Or, similar bots for making high-res, all-season maps and images of all the bike trails.

-Lynne

[Erin Quick-Laughlin]

Love it.  Steampunk, publicity and snow removal.  Their is no limit to your powers of ignition!

[Bob Waldron]

Another good idea, Erin With No EQL -- a Fox Valley Ignite event,  http://igniteshow.com/ .

[Alex Hunt]

I wholeheartedly agree with Mike.  I would love to collaborate on a project that gets us media attention - but I would prefer a longer term goal than "what can we do with $50?"

Lynne - we need to talk about snow removal robots.  I was thinking overhead cables and an old-time dragline shovel (kind of like old steam shovels).  With lots of blinky lights when it's active!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragline_excavator

I like the sound of a real-time broadcast of Octoberfest too.  But we may have to turn over some footage to law enforcement...

Also, I just bought my boy a bicycle, so I can volunteer to trawl the bike paths making high-res maps.  I might have to borrow Mark's 360 degree camera... Who needs a robot?

Alex

[Erin Quick-Laughlin]

Seems like I've started something more than intended.  I love the medium and long term goals too. 

[Ross Larson]

We could probably put together a multitouch table for about 50 bucks......

http://hacknmod.com/hack/how-to-diy-multi-touch-surface/ 

[Pete Prodoehl]

I'm not sure how affiliated you guys are with The School Factory, but I believe they could offer hosting as well.

They've got a really good deal (as a NPO) with one of the major hosting companies.


Pete

[Erin Quick-Laughlin]

I've got a projector...

[DeanG]

A Wisconsin invented Little Free Library painted up on the inside and
out like a populated maker space would be cool. Then garnish with just
enough entronics and mechanical niftiness not to raise paranoia. :)
http://www.littlefreelibrary.org/

On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 4:01 PM, Mike Putnam <mi...@theputnams.net> wrote:
>

[Mike Putnam]

Cool idea!

[Erin Quick-Laughlin]

Fits well with the name 'Distributed' :)

[Alex Hunt]

Great idea.  Where would we place it?  Harmony Cafe?  On campus?  Someone's neighborhood?

[Bob Watson]

I really like this idea. For a DHMN version, could we include a wifi connection to Project Gutenberg to allow people access to public domain ebooks and audiobooks?