Pumping Station: One

Photo by Anne Petersen

Last month we had our inaugural 300 Seconds of Fame, featuring a wild and wooly tour through Peoplehacking (Four Formulae For The Reduction Of Operational Mass or The Engineers’ Guide to Weight Loss), Maker Faire, photographers rights, a RepRap update, and the NEW and IMPROVED solution for HACKERSPACE maintenance: BRAWNDO! (which evidently makes you good at yelling).

Tomorrow we have more great (but short!) performances to enjoy, including some EXTREMELY AWESOME facts about neuroanatomy, fiddling around, an anonymous committee, some digeridooing, arduino radio, and how to renounce your legal rights to your creations.

Read the full monty about 300 Seconds of Fame and what else the night is about via our wiki.

But to really experience the night you have to be there! Or, if you can’t, you get demoted to watching the ustream. SO BE THERE!

I should really lay off the BRAWNDO.

The official Pumping Station: One twitter account, @pumpingstation1, now aggregates and re-tweets information that our members tweet with the #psone hashtag. This way, instead of having to rely on a tiny group of people to make “official” tweets to the account, the account will automatically disseminate information about projects, events, and impromptu PS:One-related excitement from members. It does so via a twitter bot script that i wrote in Python.

So, follow us on Twitter, and stay up-to-the-minute with all of the news, events, and information from our space!

This is a formal call for Pumping Station: One T-Shirt Designs! As some of you may be aware, we have a 4-color screen printing machine at the space and we’re looking to use it to make some sweet schwag for our members and soon to be members!  Deadline is Midnight March, 18th 2010 which is one month from now. The selected winner(s) will be chosen by the current Board of Directors and will be produced into a run of t-shirts that will be sold by Pumping Station:One. Prize is a free t-shirt of your design! Details after the break: Read the rest of this entry →

Photo by Rubin Starset

We’ve updated our weekly meeting schedule and the third Tuesday of the month is going to be our monthly Open House.  While there’s no official business being conducted anyone should feel free to stop by.  New members and old members alike are encouraged to get certified on all our wonderful tools, talk about projects and build.  If you’ve never visited and you’re interested in seeing the space Tuesdays are the perfect day!  Meet your fellow hackers, discuss projects and join our growing community.  We hope to see you there!

The doors will be open from 7pm until the last member has left.  As usual the space is located at 3354 N Elston, just come through the big red door!

Announcing our brand new Tuesday Night Schedule:

• 1st Tuesday of the month: Monthly Membership Meeting and Board Meeting
• 2nd Tuesday of the month: 300 Seconds of Fame
• 3rd Tuesday of the month: Open House
• 4th Tuesday of the month: Workshop Day (a longer-format talk)
• 5th Tuesday of the month (when it exists): PS: One Pot Luck

All events are open to the public, occur at 3354 N. Elston Ave in Chicago (look for the red door) and start around 8pm, and doors always open at 6pm for schmoozing (use the doorbell if you can’t get in). Read the rest of this entry →

Closing Thoughts from the 2009 President

As I step down from my position as president, pass the reins to the 2010 board of directors, and become a normal member again, I want to look back at everything that led to the founding of PS1 and all the work we have done since then. I have had the distinct pleasure and honor of working with a literal army of like-minded and brilliant collaborators to create and work with some amazing organizations over the past few years.

Read the rest of this entry →

Photo courtesy Anne Petersen

A new new presentation format at Pumping Station: One.

We’ve had lightning talks, and we’ve had a Pecha Kucha night. To push the boundaries of fun and learning cool new things, we’re proud to present 300 Seconds of Fame.

We’re combining our presentation media and borrowing heavily from Noisebridge’s Five Minutes of Fame to create our own version. So now, 2nd Tuesdays of each month at PS:One, you! yes YOU! get to hear your fellow members, geeks, and other associated community-minded people present to whoever wants to show up, but only for 300 seconds apiece.

Basically: you’ve got five minutes. Use it wisely.

Within the time parameters, your 300 seconds can be a presentation, a musical number, a demonstration, a debate, a run-through of a proof of concept, performance art, live circuit bending, etc, etc, ad nauseum. Will it fit into five minutes, be feasible for the space, and be appreciated by an audience? Then go for it.

Questions? Check the 300SoF wiki page.

You can sign up with me (Anne) or Laurie. We’ll start talks at 8, though doors will be open to the public at 7.

2nd Tuesday of each month. Spread the word.

The Unusual Musical Instrument Jam on January 8th was a rousing good time! A loud group of members and guests alike came to the space. People brought instruments both electronic and analog, both traditional and non-traditional…and we made a lot of noise. A big thank you to everyone who came out for the event! A big thanks as well to i3Detroit, who originated the idea and also streamed their cacophony online.

It was so much fun that the Unusual Musical Instrument Jam will now be a monthly event, on the second Friday of every month! So, mark your calendars for February 12 at 7:00pm, bring anything you’d like to play or share, and get ready to jam!

My flex resistor jacket is finally finished. After a month and a half of failures and a whole bunch of setbacks, the PS:One logo is finally embedded with twenty big LEDs which are attach to a circuit board and a flex resistor. The LEDs only light up when the right elbow is bent to a certain extent. It runs off of two AA batteries held along with the circuit board in a pocket on the left shoulder.

The jacket was premiered (sort of) at Digital Breakdown on Dec. 18th to help promote PS:One. Bunches of recently printed stickers didn’t hurt either. Luckily, the jacket is perfect for dancing.

Thanks to Jeff Kantarek and Jordan Bunker for their huge amounts of help on this project. Without their expertise this jacket would not be glowy.

PS:One Server Racked and Loaded

You may have noticed that our humble, digital home is looking a bit different. Last night Ryan and myself burned the 4am oil to rebuild and transfer our website to a new server due to the load issues we have been experiencing. Not only have we made our design so fresh and so clean, but we’ve also switched over to WordPress to ease the blog authoring blues our membership has been experiencing and racked her in a shiny new datacenter with plenty of bandwidth.

If you notice something missing, have no fear! It will return, but possibly in a different location as we are also making some efforts to organize all of our information and additional content to reduce clutter and help our membership contribute more effectively. If you notice any glaring (or minor) issues, please comment and let us know so we can clean up our mess.