April 25th: Anniversary Barbecue

Fire! Meat! Potato salad! It must be barbecue season, and we’re throwing one to celebrate our first anniversary. Everyone’s welcome — members, family, friends, total strangers! Mark your calendar now…

i3Detroit’s first meeting was held April 28th, 2009. We’ll be celebrating on April 25th, which is a Sunday. Shindig gets under way around noon, and runs until whenever. We’ll have grills, pop, and Nerf guns. Bring grillables, side dishes, and friends!

Kickstarter: Over the tipping point!

With three days yet to go, our Kickstarter fundraiser has crossed the $5000 mark, which means we WILL get the support you’ve all pledged so far, and those who’ve selected incentives with their contributions will get those, too! If you haven’t chipped in yet, now’s your chance to ante up and choose from stickers, buttons, T-shirts, and more…

This isn’t The Price Is Right, of course, and going over is the point! $5000 was an ambitious goal, and meeting it with plenty of time remaining just proves how strong our support is. Do you suppose we can double it in the next three days?

Moving Day PT II. Welcome to i3 version II.0

As most of you are aware, i3Detroit relocated to the new 8,000sq’ facility this past weekend.  Some were there to help, and others well..  For those who missed out, I composed this short documentary of what happened this past saturday.

If you like what you see in this clip, please pledge to our kickstarter project to help.

i3Detroit V1.0 to V2.0 from Nathan Warnick on Vimeo.

The audio in this clip is licensed under creative commons sample alike, and is Maya (Ground and Sky Mix) by Sharp.

Moving Day Pt I.

Ever move a Piano?  Well today we did, and at the joy of 9am.
Dedicated hackers got a truck and moved 1,500sq’ of hackerspace from Royal Oak, down aprox 2 miles to the new 8,000 sq’ facility in Ferndale.  First item of the day, the wondrous player piano.  Weighing in somewhere around 600lbs, the beast was rolled out on its heavy duty casters, dragged onto the truck lift and rolled on in.

Help i3 expand their dream with a quick donation via their kickstarter link

Moving Day Pt I. from Nathan Warnick on Vimeo.

The new space is official! Here’s how you can help:

After months of searching and negotiating, i3Detroit has a new home! It is 1481 Wordsworth, Ferndale.

Back in December, it was brought to our attention that we needed, and did not have, a Certificate of Occupancy for our space in Royal Oak.  This set off a chain of events (to be detailed in a later post), culminating in the selection and negotiation of a new space in Ferndale.  Not wishing to make the same mistake twice, we made our leasing contingent on the ability to get a C of O for the new space, which I’m happy to report happened this morning.

Briefly: The new space is huge.  It’s 8,000 square feet (up from the 1500 we’ve been calling home) and mostly warehouse.  It has commercial power, a large overhead door, and did I mention it’s huge?  There’s some pretty significant renovation and remediation work yet to be done on the front “office” area, but the back “warehouse” portion is good to go.

As a group, we poured countless hours and thousands of personal dollars into overhauling the Royal Oak space, and we can’t recoup most of that investment.  The drywall, the floors, the wiring fixes, the cleaning… None of that comes with us.  It’s going to take a lot more work and materials to make Ferndale our new home.

We could use your help!  We’ve set a goal of $5000 on our Kickstarter fundraiser, which will go a long way towards helping us meet build out costs! With your help, we can make the new space bigger and better than ever.  Remember the first time you set foot inside i3Detroit?  Please tell a friend!