[Noisebridge-discuss] Fwd: Geek's Dream Lab Could Create Jobs In Michigan
Glen Jarvis
glen at glenjarvis.com
Tue Feb 2 02:13:04 UTC 2010
This was forwarded to me... It's so noisebridge :)
> From: "- Me, "
> Date: February 1, 2010 5:59:26 PM PST
> To: - ala' Glen Jarvis <glen at glenjarvis.com>
> Subject: Geek's Dream Lab Could Create Jobs In Michigan
>
> I found the following story on the NPR iPhone App:
> http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123107726&sc=17&f=1001
>
> Geek's Dream Lab Could Create Jobs In Michigan
> by Dustin Dwyer
> Mich - February 1, 2010
>
> Chris Boden likes to say that he hacked college: He went to classes,
> he lived on campus — but he never enrolled.
>
> "I couldn't afford to," Boden says. "But I wanted to learn, and I
> found very quickly that if you actually have a sincere, passionate
> desire to learn and you don't care about the degree, that the whole
> world is a school."
>
> Boden never got a degree. But he kept the passion, which led to
> creating The Geek Group, a consortium of people devoted to good old-
> fashioned scientific and technical experimentation.
>
> The Geek Group has members all over the world, but its headquarters
> is in an old machine shop just north of Kalamazoo, Mich. The Geek
> Group has gained some attention for its series of videos on YouTube
> showing their experiments, but it could be more than viral
> entertainment: Boden thinks his vision could help transform the
> sputtering economy in the upper Midwest.
>
> Inside A Lab
>
> Boden says anyone can come to his lab and just play.
>
> "It's like if you could go to Mythbusters and hang out," Boden says,
> referring to a popular television show on the Discovery Channel.
> "It's a real place."
>
> Boden's lab resembles the set of Mythbusters, with crazy experiments
> all over the place — like a nuclear fusion reaction inside a small g
> lass container, which Boden calls "a star in a jar."
>
> Next to that, there's a magnetics demonstration that shoots an
> aluminum disc straight up to the ceiling. There also is a high-
> voltage lab, where Boden demonstrates the "Thumper."
>
> "It's like the finger of God," Boden says.
>
> He sets a Mountain Dew can on a piece of metal attached to an
> obscene amount of electrical power. We stand back 30 feet, and Boden
> tells me to mash a big red button. The can is vaporized. I can still
> feel the thump in my chest.
>
> This place is a geek's dream house.
>
> Making A Company
>
> Lis Bokt first heard about The Geek Group while surfing the Internet
> six years ago. She was living in Toronto at the time.
>
> "I came here, and I saw all of the really awesome machines and toys
> that I knew that I had wanted to use for something, but there was no
> way I would ever be able to get one for myself," Bokt says.
>
> After one visit, Bokt decided to move to Kalamazoo. She's now
> executive director of The Geek Group, which is a nonprofit and stays
> afloat largely through donations and grants.
>
> But it also serves as a kind of research-and-development facility
> for small companies that can't afford their own lab. And this is
> what gets Boden really excited. He takes me into a room with a
> milling machine that anyone can use to develop prototypes.
>
> "This machine creates jobs," Boden says. "It doesn't just make
> parts. It doesn't just make metal shavings and plastic shavings.
> This makes jobs."
>
> That's what brought in Pat Hanna, who runs a company called
> One2Products. His eyes light up at all the science experiments. But
> he came here for a much more practical reason:
>
> "Well, we had developed our product that we're hoping these guys can
> help us with, and we were looking for somebody to do some simple
> machining and also to keep it quiet for a little while," Hanna says.
>
> Future Plans
>
> The Geek Group charges for some of this work. It's one of the many
> ways to keep the lights on, and they do use a lot of electricity
> here. The insurance bills are also through the roof. But Boden has a
> vision to expand The Geek Group: build a 40-acre campus, but without
> degrees or tuition. He says it would be a place where people could
> do "open source" research and development.
>
> "But I can't get economic development to care because ... we're the
> weird guys," Boden says. "We're the guys out on the edge of town
> that blow stuff up."
>
> Boden believes The Geek Group would get more attention if it were in
> Silicon Valley. But Silicon Valley doesn't have the kind of
> unemployment that's ravaged Michigan or the manufacturing heritage.
>
> He believes that this is a place that could use some weird people on
> the edge of town. This is a place that could use some real geeks.
> Copyright 2010 Michigan Radio
>
> To learn more about the NPR iPhone app, go to http://iphone.npr.org/recommendnprnews
>
>
>
> Sent from my iPhone
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