Bay Area Consortium of Hackerspaces
Newsletter #1
August 2013
BACH is a loosely-organized association of hackerspaces in the San Francisco Bay Area. BACH strives to be very thin, with almost no over-head. We exist to help member spaces coordinate, communicate, and collaborate. Above all, we support the Bay Area hackerspace community's existent inter-dependence and resilience. Learn more and find notes on past roundtables at hackerspaces.org.
Our next BACH Roundtable will be in September (date TBD) at LOL [Liberating Ourselves Locally], a people-of-color-led, gender-balanced makerspace in East Oakland. Subscribe to the mailing list and stay tuned for an announcement with date, time, and address!
August
CakeFest (CakePHP), Aug 29-Sept 1, online and in San Francisco http://cakefest.org
Disability Awareness Night 2013, Aug 16, San Jose Giants Stadium
Bay Area Homebrew Festival, Aug 24, Fort Mason Ctr
September
SynBioBeta SF, November 15th at the Mission Conference Center, 7am-7pm.
October
Bay Area Drupal Camp 2013, October 24-27, Berkeley http://2013.badcamp.net
Responsive Design Studio, October 15-16, Mountain View http://rosenfeldmedia.com/events/responsive-design-studio/fall-2013/
Design Hacking, 14 Nov, and Finance Hacking, 8 Oct, Hacker Dojo, Mountain View
Hackermoms is closed for August. http://mothership.hackermoms.org/calendar/
San Leandro Coworking and HayHackers are exploring the idea of combining forces to represent the middle and south side east bay. At some later point we can divide and spread across the land, helping to reach our Fremont hackers closer to where they live.
Ace Monster Toys
http://meetup.acemonstertoys.org/
3D Printing, every other Wednesday @ 7:30pm (August 14, 28)
Arduino / Raspberry Pi / Microcontrollers, alternating Wednesdays @ 7pm (August 7, 21)
Assemble 3D Printers, alternating Wednesdays @ 7:30pm (August 14, 28)
Sewing & Textiles Open Lab, every other Tuesday @ 7pm (August 13, 27)
General Meeting / Open House, every Thursday @ 7:30pm
CNC Router Introduction, Tuesday, August 13th @ 7pm
Learn to Use a 3D Printer, Wednesday, August 14th @ 7pm
Hacker Scouts Open Lab, Sunday, September 1st @ 2pm
Counter Culture Labs
http://www.meetup.com/Counter-Culture-Labs/
Open Bioinformatics: Exploring the Genome, Sunday, August 11th @ 7pm @ Sudo Room
Weekly Working Meetings, every Wednesday @ 6pm @ Ahnon’s
Monthly General Meeting, Last Fridays @ 6pm @ Sudo Room
Hacker Dojo
The 12 Tasks of Hercules: Robot hacking every Saturday @ 1:30pm
Laptop Music Production Workshop, Tuesday, August 13th @ 7pm
SVSC - Quantum Computing Discussion Group, Friday, August 16th @ 5pm
Repair Cafe Mountain View, Sunday, August 18th, 10am-5pm
Linux Virtualization Workshop, Monday, August 19th @ 7pm
Internet of Things Silicon Valley Meetup, Tuesday, August 20th @ 6pm
Cooking For Hackers: Steak And Red Wine, Wednesday, August 21st @ 6:30pm
Spokenvote - Rails for Charity Hack Session, Sunday, August 25th @ 6pm
Execution Models & Architectures for Big Data Cloud Computing & Streaming, Monday, August 26th @ 7pm
HTML5 Game Development Study Group: Tuesday, August 13th, Tuesday, August 20th, and Monday, August 26th @ 6pm
LOLspace
LOL Open Hack Night: Decolonizing Technology every Monday starting @ 7pm
How We Move: Urban dance class on Sunday, August 18th starting at noon
Construction Class every Saturday starting @ 1pm
Resilient Communities Legal Cafe, a non-profit legal advice clinic hosted by the Sustainable Economies Law Center, every First Thursday starting @ 4:30pm
Marin Makers
http://www.meetup.com/MarinMakerspace/
Planning for the Mini Maker Faire, Tuesday, August 20th @ 6:30pm
Monthly General Meeting, every First Tuesday @ 6:30pm
Even more planning for the Mini Maker Faire, Tuesday, September 10th @ 6:30pm
Noisebridge
Special event: Saturday, August 10, 16:00:
Noisebridge "______ the Bridge" Party, a summer fundraising party for Noisebridge
Circuit Hacking Monday, every Monday @ 7:30pm
Frontend Web Development, every Monday @ 8pm
Gamebridge Unityversity, every Monday @ 7pm
Noisebridge Weekly Meeting, every Tuesday @ 7pm
Five Minutes of Fame, every Third Thursday @ 8pm
BAHA - Bay Area Hacker’s Association security meetup, Second Sundays @ 2pm
Tastebridge / Vegan Hacker monthly food hacking, Last Thursdays @ 7pm
Post-Waste Nexus every Thursday except for 3rd Thursdays @ 7pm
3D Thursdays (3D Printing & Fabrication) every Thursday except for 3rd Thursdays @ 7pm
Sudo Room
Today I Learned is a series of one-off classes and workshops, every Saturday from 2-5pm. Check https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Today_I_Learned for the full schedule!
Sudo Kids every Tuesday, starting at 5pm.
Microcontroller Hacking Night every other Tuesday @ 7pm [August 13, 27]
Python and Javascript meetups every Thursday @ 7pm
Oakland Wiki meeting every Thursday @ 7pm
Oakland Mesh Network hack nights every Thursday @ 8:30pm
Cryptoparty / Digital Security Workshop every Third Sunday starting @ 2pm
POSSE [Potluck Orientation Skill-share Swap-meet Event] Party every Third Friday from 6-9pm
General Meeting and Potluck every Wednesday @ 7pm
Most Awesome Guacamole Fest Fundraiser (TBD in August)
Ace Monster Toys
We crowdfunded a brand new CNC Metal Mill, for fabricating custom parts from solid blocks of metal. http://on.fb.me/11v5B32
Stefan is making his own bow for archery: http://on.fb.me/1coYygL
Humanoid robot made from 16 servos: http://on.fb.me/19xOOBe
Fabricating custom PCBs (circuit boards) using the desktop CNC router: http://on.fb.me/16EN6c2
3D scanning and then 3D printing ourselves: http://on.fb.me/167AM45
Lasercutting leather goods: http://on.fb.me/15c4VTc
Tesla Coils! http://on.fb.me/17iUWHn
Counter Culture Labs
Glowing algae bioart is currently in ideation stage!
The Desktop Biolab is a project to create a low-cost desktop biotech lab to help citizen scientists do genetic engineering at home.
A fork of the community education space, Berkeley Biolabs is to be a biotech incubator for therapeutics-based clinical research.
Noisebridge
Excellent LED hacking projects combining electronics and arduino! A skill-share event took place last Tuesday, August 6th. Among the projects worked on included a LED matrix display, a VU-type meter and a coat with 200+ LEDs.
The Noise Orchestra is an open ensemble of handmade, hand-wired, and hand-coded instruments.
Post-Waste Nexus endeavors to reuse and recycle electronic waste, place refurbished computers with free and open source software in our communities, provide education and job training, use environmentally responsible e-waste handling practices, and operate under consensus decision making.
A group of Noisebridgers, the DreamTeam, are conducting research and working on projects related to brain computer interfaces.
Some Noisebridgers just finished a super-successful Kickstarter campaign for Piksi, a low-cost RTK GPS receiver (centimeter level precision) with open source software and board design targeted at UAVs.
Sudo Room
The Oakland Mesh group successfully crowdfunded the first round of hardware for the community wireless network we’re building throughout East Oakland. Want to join the mesh? Add your node here: http://meshmap.sudoroom.org
GETit is collaborating with local clinics to develop novel therapies for the eradication of antibiotic resistant gonorrhea.
Some folks have been working on a brain-computer interface for controlling MC Hawking, the open source robot currently on loan from Noisebridge.
SudoMaté RISE is a carbonated yerba mate natural energy drink. An open source soda: https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Sudomate - available at Sudo Room.
Subiir is currently brewing their 7th batch: https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Subiir_7
Juul is building an arcade machine running all free and open source video games, and with a variety of controllers.
Eddie Che is building a small mobile greenhouse for growing food, and previously built a rocket stove at the space: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rocket_Stove_Finished.jpg
Sun Synchrony is building and designing a new device for producing solar electricity. The cells are more than twice the power of conventional silicon cells, and this system provides nearly double the electricity per given area, charges electronics much faster solar, and offers maximum OFF-GRID INDEPENDENCE.
Does your hackerspace have its own general liability insurance? Would you be interested in pooling to get a better price on a policy, if available?
Kudos to Ace Monster Toys who actually emailed their updates when asked. Others: you can learn!
Jenny Ryan (Sudo Room) collected most of these updates by hand. Yes, from each site, one by one. Deep bows of gratitude for representing everyone so well.
Judi Clark (SL Coworking) added a few updates, did the layout for the print & pdf versions, added these snarky comments and printed some hand-out versions.
1. Hackermoms: http://www.google.com/calendar/feeds/hsflo4jnaakg2vrp4addsimceg%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic
2. Noisebridge:
3. Sudo room:
4. Ace Monster Toys:
http://www.meetup.com/Ace-Monster-Toys/events/rss/Ace+Monster+Toys/
5. Hacker Dojo:
6. Marin Makers:
http://www.meetup.com/MarinMakerspace/