Public Maker Faire Detroit Forum with Make Magazine Founder

Dale Dougherty Founder of Make Magazine

Everyone’s favorite magazine is coming to town to discuss the possibility of having a Maker Faire Detroit in Michigan.  One cannot fathom the awesomeness that would come from hosting this event. 

In between his super secret meetings around the state, none other than Dale Dougherty, founder of Make Magazine, will visit i3 Detroit on November 7th, 2009 at 11 am - 1 pm.  He is the Minister of Make…the Gentleman of Geekdom…the Duke of D.I.Y. and the exploits of i3 Detroit have made it cross country to his palace of periodicals. 

Everyone is welcome to join us in the i3 Detroit workspace to discuss the possibility of a Maker Faire Detroit.  What you would like to see at the event? What talents can you share?  These are some of the questions that will be asked.  We want feedback and insight from everyone.  This is Detroit’s event.   

For the regulars, you will have a chance to meet one of the major players (if not the major player) in the Make Movement.  For the newbies, you get the added bonus of touring the i3 Detroit workspace, checking out member projects and getting information on becoming a member yourself. 

For any questions, contact Nick – nbritsky@i3detroit.com – 248.709.3822

Support The Two Hands Project

Our Friend Bilal from The Two Hands Project is heading out for a month to film the hackerspaces of America to put together a documentary film. Bilal has been working hard to pull together a team and the funds for the project. The goal is to use Jet Blues $599.00 promotion to travel to all the different spaces. The promotion ends tonight at 10:00 P.M ET and he still needs to raise $300. Let’s Help Bilal by retweeting this to everyone that we know. If you can help by donating, twittering, emailing etc… to spread the word and to help get donations he would greatly appreciate it. Every Dollar donated counts and time is running out!

Here is more information about the project from the website:

We will be documenting the projects they make, and recording the change inducing social movement that’s spreading across the USA. Maker/Hackerspaces come in all sorts of packages and flavors, each with it’s own quirks. Let’s figure out how they tick, what goes on in them, why they are important for the philosophical and economical reasons. And perhaps through this movie inspire people to start their own space, or at least build something awesome.

You can follow Bilal and The Two Hands Project for further updates and information.

Here are a few things Bilal is offering for donations:

1. A 50 Dollar sponsor gets a Two Hands t-shirt and a mention in the credits
2. 100 Dollar sponsor gets a shirt and a link from the sponsors page
3. 150 Dollars gives you a logo on the sponsors page along with the above
4. 300 Dollar sponsor gets the above and your logo printed on the back of the sponsored shirt
5. 600+ will put you into the magical realm of being a producer logo at the start of the movie along with the above, and a special hug/backscratch from me.

To Donate go Here

i3 Detroit will be attending a “TechShop Movement” discussion at the UofM

i3 Detroit has been invited to what Associate Vice-Presidents Marvin Parnes
and Dan Atkins expect to be a very interesting opportunity to learn about
the “TechShop movement” and to consider a planning process for a Detroit TechShop
model that blends education, economic renewal,innovation, and entrepreneurship.
Phoenix Wang, advisor to the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation,
Diana Rhoten, Director, Digital Media and Learning at the Social
Science Research Council,and Mark Hatch, COO of TechShop in Menlo Park,California
will be here to present and discuss TechShop and how it may be of value to Detroit.

We will make sure to provide further updates of the outcome of the event.
We would like to Thank Dug Song for making sure we were able to be involved.

What’s Happening: The Detroit Java User Group

The Detroit Java User Group is proud to announce that James Ward, Adobe’s Flex evangelist will be speaking to their group on August 19th 2009 from 6:30 P.M – 8:30 P.M at the eprize headquarters. This event is free and open to all that would like to attend. If you are planning on coming to the event please RSVP

What is Java and Flex?

Java and Flex
Building highly interactive software that users love to use is usually a challenging endeavor. However, the open source Flex SDK and Java are a perfect combination of technologies for building very rich and highly interactive software for the Web and the desktop. The communication between the Java back-end and Flex front-end can utilize a number of different communication protocols, but the easiest and best performing is the open source BlazeDS library. This session covers the fundamentals of using Flex, Java, Spring, and BlazeDS to build rich and highly interactive software for the Web and the desktop.

James Ward is a Technical Evangelist for Flex at Adobe and Adobe’s JCP representative to JSR 286, 299, and 301. Much like his love for climbing mountains he enjoys programming because it provides endless new discoveries, elegant workarounds, summits and valleys. His adventures in climbing have taken him many places. Likewise, technology has brought him many adventures, including: Pascal and Assembly back in the early 90′s; Perl, HTML, and JavaScript in the mid 90′s; then Java and many of it’s frameworks beginning in the late 90′s. Today he primarily uses Flex to build beautiful front-ends for Java based back-ends. Prior to Adobe, James built a rich marketing and customer service portal for Pillar Data Systems.

Food and beverages for this event will be sponsored by The Epitec Group

For more information please visit The Detroit Java User Group website