[Noisebridge-discuss] [hackerspaces] New Member Vetting

[Danny O'Brien]

On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 4:27 PM, Jake <jake at spaz.org> wrote:
> I think that "pet" hardware should be encouraged more, in the sense that
> people should share their unique skill sets with everyone by setting up
> infrastructure that, at first, only they fully understand.  They may need to
> maintain it themselves for a while, but hopefully others will catch on and
> they will also improve the design to be more "foolproof".

I'd agree with this!

>
> My favorite example of this is the Enlarge-O-Scope, which was built from a
> photographic enlarger, an old analog camera, and a monitor with
> composite-video input.  It has not been broken yet (thankfully) and I think
> a lot of people use it.  Carlos is in the process of making an even better
> one with much higher resolution and the ability to snap pictures or video
> through the network.  (Imagine being able to teach a surface-mount soldering
> class where dozens of people can watch the soldering on their own computer
> screen, in real time.)
>
> Another example would me MC Hawking the robot wheelchair, which is
> theoretically available for anyone to use/work with, but is pretty complex
> and requires a bit of dedication to do anything useful with.  Also it has a
> decent rate of entropy and can be very destructive.  But a few people,
> mostly Hao, have really accomplished a lot with it.
>

Yep, I was thinking about MC Hawking when I wrote this -- the
challenge isn't keeping MC in the space, it was making it accessible
enough for lots of people to work on it. Jake was really determined to
do this, and it shows.

d.

> (people interested in robotics can watch Hao and others speak about "The
> Future is Robotics" tonight in SF at 6:30):
> http://www.meetup.com/software/events/48562212/
>
> -jake
>
>
> Danny / O'brien wrote:
>
> One of the consequences of this is that people's "pet" hardware --
> things which they regularly use, but not many other people -- can
> struggle. That is why, I think, we have to emphasize to people that
> bringing in their own equipment to "share" with others isn't going to
> end well (they aren't around enough to maintain it, while no-one else
> is going to fix your shit to your satisfactoin, even if they broke
> it).
>
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