We know that we have been somewhat neglecting the site lately. Just to let you know that we have been working on a more up-to-date version which will be going live soon (tonight or tomorrow), and you can check out all the events we have planned this month then. Thanks to Paul Killoran from Starlight Solutions for offering us hosting.
Our events page is now showing what’s planned for the month: http://091labs.com/eventsworkshops .
We’ll be kicking off a weekly 091 Labs Movie Night with a screening of Graffiti Research Lab: The Complete First Season, a documentary about the GRL, an art group dedicated to integrating and enhancing graffiti and street art with experimental open-source technologies:
“From their origins in the trash room of a non-profit in Manhattan to their emergence as the instigators of an international art movement, Graffiti Research Lab: The Complete First Season documents the adventures of an architect and an engineer who quit their day jobs to develop high-tech tools for the art underground. The film follows the GRL and their network of graffiti artist collaborators (and commercial imitators) across four continents as they write on skyscrapers with lasers, mock advertisers with homemade tools, get in trouble with The Department of Homeland Security and make activism fun again. Primarily using video footage from point-and-shoot digital cameras (“The Pocket School”?) and found-content on the web, the movie’s visual style draws as much from the art of the power point presentation and viral media as conventional documentary cinema. Narrated by GRL co-founders, Roth and Powderly, The Complete First Season makes a humorous and insightful argument for free speech in public, open source in pop culture, the hacker spirit in graffiti and not asking for permission in general. The film was premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2008.”
When:
Sunday July 11th, 7pm
Where:
091 Labs, Ground Floor Unit, Exchange House, Fairgreen Road, Galway
This week belongs to Maxwell, Daniel, Raphael, Ilya and their Diaspora project. In 12 days they reached their target of $10,000 for a summer project to build an open source personal web server that will put individuals in control of their data. As of today donations are up to $142k with 18 days still remaining. There are a number of projects already in existence to build upon – FOAF and SIOC are two worth checking out. If you guys want to learn more about them have a chat with John Breslin when he is next in NYC on June 3rd. We will follow your Diaspora project with interest over the summer!
Thanks to everyone who made this weeks meetup. With some members getting exams out of the way this month its time to focus on getting a place to call our own in June. This will be discussed at our next community meetup 7pm Tuesday, May 18th at the Galway Bakery Company. Come upstairs to the back section when you arrive and we will order from there. Upcoming events this weekend worth mentioning are Drupal Camp Ballyvaughan which runs May 15th-16th. Our friends at TOG are running a synchronicity hackathon May 15th – 16th. We will sign off this week by wishing Cathal and Niamh who are getting married this weekend good health, happiness and hacking all the days of your lives!
Thanks to everyone who made our Community Meetup last night. We discussed a number of potential streams to get up and running within our sandbox. After looking at each proposal we have decided on two new streams to sit alongside our Android stream.
The first is an Arduino stream which our newest member Dara will lead over the coming weeks. It was an easy choice after being inspired by our recently attended Mitch Altman and Jimmie P. Rodgers Electronic Workshop at the Science Gallery hosted by TOG and Robots.ie. The second is a Game Development stream which like the Android stream will be a collective voyage of discovery given interested members are new to the space but keen to learn more.
A third potential stream will need further discussion with Sebastian and members of the Galway LUG before proceeding further. Hopefully they will be able to make our next community meetup 7pm Tuesday, April 13th at the Galway Bakery Company. We now have 4 entries for our new logo design competition. All entries received on or before April 30th will be shared here. If your feeling creative get in contact with your 2 color entry.
Our next meetup is 7pm Tuesday, March 30th at the Galway Bakery Company. Come upstairs to the back section when you arrive and we will order from there. This is our third Android Workshop with a couple of projects already up and running in our sandbox. The next X-Cake Galway Meetup takes place at GTC on April 7th. Anyone interested in speaking or demoing their apps on the night should contact Vinny Coyne. A list of this years winners from last nights 2010 Irish Blog Awards is available here.
Open Science and Open Space are two areas that hackerspaces are making previously specialist fields more accessible, collaborative and interconnected. Rob Carlson’s May 2005 Wired article titled Splice it Yourself got the conversation underway on Garage Biology. Since then a global movement has emerged around DIYbio. His Tea with The Economist interview and recently released Biology is Technology are recommended checking out. Spacehack is a directory of ways to participate in space exploration. Ariel Waldman has a great post titled Hacking Space with Hackerspaces and helium. We look forward to adding Arts to the mix and seeing what we might do with the creative communities based in Galway.
UPDATE : tdr from TOG shared a link in the comments below to a recent Internet Audio Network interview with Sacha De’Angeli (twitter). He talks about how hackerspaces are forwarding real science and encourages people to get out of their garages and into a hackerspace.
