Matt O’ Rama

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Home Tech Heads

Hey look, it’s me! That’s right, it me in this week’s issue of the Alibi. It’s from a great article on the Idea Propulsion Lab, the hardware hacker club I helped found here in Albuquerque.

Idea Propulsion Lab update

We now have 23 people signed up at the website for the Idea Propulsion Lab. This is an awesome number. I was hoping to get 10 or so before starting to plan our first meeting so this is great. I’m planning the first meeting, which is really a “beta” meeting where we’ll be talking and planning the next meetings. I’m going to have it at my work since we have a great big conference room with a projector, chairs, tables, all that stuff. I’m probably going to present a few things so we don’t have to rely on people presenting at the first meeting.

The next thing I’ve been looking at is getting our own actual space to work. It’s a little premature I think right now but I’d love to get an office space with a few rooms to setup benches and let people come work. Like I say it’s a bit far off but something I’d really love to do.

My new electronics hobbyist / hacker club

I’m in the process of setting up a club for hardware/electronics hackers and hobbyists in Albuquerque. It’s called the Idea Propulsion Lab. I’ve setup a site for the club at http://www.ideapropulsionlab.org. Check it out.

I’ve always loved the idea of getting smart people together and seeing what new ideas can be created. Everybody always thinks it’s weird but I always use the image of rubbing a bunch of brains together and seeing what sparks fly off, what fires can be created. The thing I really loved about going to New Mexico Tech was having a bunch of smart nerds in one place, building off each other, sharing ideas, challenging everything. So I want that to be a big part of the Idea Propulsion Lab, sharing ideas and teaching/learning about hardware, robots, electronic art, whatever.

We’ll be having regular physical meetings so people can show their projects or teach classes. I’d love to have classes where somebody can teach a bunch of people to solder, or make LED art, stuff like that. I want meetings to be live action Instrucables, if you’re familiar with Instructables.com (and if you’re not, you should be). My primary inspirations are MAKE: magazine and Instructables.com.

The most important thing to me is that I want this club to be for people of all skill levels. I just learned to solder in the last month and have only just started my explorations of all this stuff. I have no interest in just having a bunch of experts sit around and talk expert stuff that’s over the head of everybody else. I want club members to teach, to show people just how easy fooling around with electronics has become.

This is going to be fun.