[Noisebridge-discuss] Fwd: Geek's Dream Lab Could Create Jobs In Michigan

[Ever Falling]

... now i wanna know what that 'thumper' is and make it...

On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 6:13 PM, Glen Jarvis <glen at glenjarvis.com> wrote:

> 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><http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123107726&sc=17&f=1001>
> 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 glass
> 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><http://iphone.npr.org/recommendnprnews>
> http://iphone.npr.org/recommendnprnews
>
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>
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>
>


-- 
Trying to fix or change something, only guarantees and perpetuates its
existence.
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