Posted on February 11th, 2008 by Brian
Do you need a Providence Geeks fix when you’re at your computer, out with your iPod/DaisyMP3/Zune/etc, or peoplewatching through your augmented reality heads-up display? Look no further than the archive of Providence Geeks video interviews, with your host, me! You can watch the episodes in your browser at http://providencegeeks.blip.tv/, or subscribe to the podcast: iTunes or RSS.
Posted on January 10th, 2008 by Jack
Photo Credit: Bret Ancowitz, M.D.
Wednesday, January 16, 2007, 5:30 – 9pm
AS220
115 Empire Street, Providence, RI
This coming Wednesday we’ll be kicking off the new year, by checking in with an “old” friend of Providence Geeks – Investment Instruments Corporation (IIC).
Owen Johnson, co-founder of the local-global web company that creates happy tenants and happy landlords, will be sharing the low-down on the company’s impressive progress in 2007. He’ll also give a quick demo of IIC’s latest offering, Rentomatic, an update on the popular Rentometer, and an overview of the significant technical improvements made to both systems over the past year. Owen will be joined by Nick Kishfy, IIC’s manager of operations.
Please RSVP in the comments section of this post so that we can give the good folks at AS220 an estimated headcount. And while you’re at it, subscribe to Providence Geeks’ RSS feed (see sidebar) and/or join our very-low-volume email announcement list (for the announcement list, send an email to Jack Templin, jtemplin over at Gmail with your name and affiliation).
As always, for first-timers here are the details on the Geek Dinners:
Posted on January 8th, 2008 by Brian
John Duksta posted the details about next Monday’s DC401 meetup, and it’s going to be a blast. Mitch Altman, inventor of TV-B-Gone and many other cool things, will be showing people how to make a trippy RGB light from some easily obtainable parts. This will be a lot of fun!
Date/Time: 14 Jan 2008 – 1700-1900
Location: AS220, 115 Empire St, Providence. DirectionsWe totally lucked out! Mitch Altman, inventor of the TV-B-Gone, will be passing through RI and has agreed to come by and do a workshop and a talk. Big thanks go out to Brian Jepson for swinging Mitch in our direction.
The Trippy RGB Light is made from hacking a MiniPOV kit. It’s quick to build, which is good given our short window at AS220. It’s also versatile. When you take it home, you can re-hack it into a Brain Machine, a Solar Bug Bot or an open source TV-B-Gone.
Mitch gave us a variety of topics on which he could speak. We’re getting our geek on with the workshop, so I figured something non-technical might be a nice foil. Mitch will be talking on Community Building, something we’ll need to do a fair amount of if we want the hacker space to get off the ground and prosper.
Since we’ll be doing a workshop, we’ll need get started a little earlier, so be at AS220 at 1700 if you want to take part in the workshop. We’ll get the talk going sometime around 1800, as usual. If you want to do the workshop, post a comment on the site and include your email so I can send you a confirmation. I’ll do a bulk buy of the MiniPOV kits and extra LEDs and you all can pay me back at the meeting.
DC401 January 2008 meetup – Link
Posted on December 14th, 2007 by Jack
Photo Credit: Brian Jepson
Wednesday, December 19, 2007, 5:30 – 9pm
AS220
115 Empire Street, Providence, RI
Please join us at the last get together of Providence Geeks in 2007 and celebrate Rhode Island’s future Geeks!
In the spirit of the holiday season and giving back to the community, Providence Geeks is a proud sponsor of Rhode Island’s 2008 FIRST FTC Robotics Challenge. The program provides high school students the opportunity to build working robots and test their creations in head-to-head competition.
In 2006, Rhode Island’s education, innovation, and science and technology leadership announced a plan to bring ǘber-geek Dean Kamen’s FIRST Robotics Challenge to each of Rhode Island’s 67 public high schools, charter schools, and career and technical centers. The program provides each high school a robotics kit with the necessary equipment and instructions. Rhode Island was the first state in the nation to offer a FIRST program to all public high schools. Approximately 30 high schools in Rhode Island participated in the first year alone.The program, launched by the Business Innovation Factory, is supported by Governor Donald L. Carcieri and a coalition of education and science and technology advocates, including Tech Collective, New England Institute of Technology, the Rhode Island Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, the Governor’s PK-16 Council, the Rhode Island Science and Technology Advisory Council, and the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation.
At Wednesday’s Geek Dinner, Tech Collective President Tim Hebert and other RI FIRST FTC team members will give an overview of the program, the kids, & the robots, and explain how Providence Geeks members can serve as volunteer mentors and referees.
As always, for first-timers here are the details on the Geek Dinners:
Posted on December 14th, 2007 by Brian
This past Geek Dinner got super-hands on. Paul Badger of Modern Device not only gave a talk on the work he’s done in physical computing and with his bare-bones Arduino clone, but he also led an hands-on workshop where geeks came and built their own Bare Bones Boards. Check out the interview for the whole story.
Links from Paul’s presentation:
To join our very-low-volume announcement list, please send an email to jtemplin [at] gmail [dot] com.