Time for a weekly Makerspace update
Next Meeting:
Topic: TBD: Probably work on Earth Day projects
When: Thursday, April 15, 7pm
Where: Company|Dallas 1701 N Collins Blvd, Richardson, TX 75080
Map: http://www.companydallas.com/?page_id=30
No official presentation planned for this week’s meeting. We’ll likely
end up working on projects again like last week. We still need more
old hard drives, so bring any you’ve got and some tools to help
disassemble them.
And, of course, we’ll also cover the usual makerspace topics such as
introductions of visitors and progress reports on finding space and
raising money.
News
More members and more donations since last week! And we’ve started
looking at buildings. Four of us went out to Oak Cliff last week to
have a look at a really cool 2500 sq ft space in the basement of a
historic Mason’s Lodge building. It had some downsides such as no
street level roll-up door, so no way to get really big stuff in or
create an automotive bay. And, being a basement, we might have
humidity issues so a dehumidifier would be a must. But it has lots of
little rooms and offices, one that was ideal for setting up as a
darkroom. And it had a huge open area. Its best feature was lowest
cost per square foot we’ve seen. We may be checking out another
potential location this week.
If you were at the April 8 meeting you might have noticed the ratio of
girls to boys is beginning to shift. Our Earth Day project, which
evolved into an entry in the Recycled Fashion Show, has brought in
some local designers and models to collaborate with us. We’re making
good progress on the fashion show and our other Earth Day projects
including hard drive wind chimes, solar power demos, kites, recycling
plastic bags, worm compost bins, and other cool stuff. Read more about
it here:
http://www.dallasmakerspace.com/wiki/Earth_Day_2010
There’s plenty of other new content in the wiki, so check it out. You
can keep up with all the latest on the Wiki, twitter, or irc.
Makerspace wiki
http://www.dallasmakerspace.com/
Makerspace twitter
https://twitter.com/dallasmakers
DPRG/Makerspace IRC
irc://irc.freenode.net/#dprg
Membership Update
Current members: 17
Member Goal: 30
Member list: http://www.dallasmakerspace.com/wiki/Members
Come on folks, if you haven’t joined yet, please do so today. We’re
asking for a one-time up front donation of $100 or whatever you can
afford to help us reach our start up fund goal. After that, there will
be a monthly membership fee in the $30-40 range, depending on how many
members we have by the time we find a building. If there’s something
you’d like to see happen before you plunk down your hard earned money
to join up, let us know what is and we’ll try to address it. We’d like
to reach 30 members ASAP to keep our plans for getting office/
warehouse space on track.
Start up Fund Update
DPRG contribution: $1000
Member donations: $2650
Supporter donations: $350
Total: $4000
Goal : $6000
We’re two thirds of the way there! We know these aren’t the best times
financially for non-profits to ask for donations but if you can
squeeze out a few dollars, you’re helping to create a group that could
potentially have a big impact on Dallas and make our city a more
interesting place to live. Any donation will help, however small. To
make a donation, visit the DPRG’s Dallas Makerspace project page:
