[Noisebridge-discuss] HELP NOISEBRIDGE: Grant writers and big thinkers: lend us your ideas!

[Scotty Allen]

You hinted at it, but I think one way we could put this money to good
use would be to invest in better fabrication equipment. Here are some
specific thoughts:

- Our wood tools are almost categorically outdated and thus dangerous.
At least half of our power saws are either missing guards or have been
recalled due to scary safety concerns.  We could use:
   - A table saw with proper guards and a sawstop (stops the blade
instantly if someone sticks their hand into it).  Our existing saw
seems to work ok (I've never actually used it), but it lacks a
sawstop, and probably doesn't have great kickback protection
   - A chop saw/radial arm saw.  Our chop saw is missing at least one
guard, and the radial arm saw was recalled due to a safety concern,
and we should get rid of it.

- Our laser cutter is much beloved, but is finicky, not currently
working, and let's be honest, pretty small and puny compared to what's
available today.  I suspect if we upgraded to something spiffier and a
bit more robust, it would get a TON of use.

- There's been some talk of getting an Othermill.  It was pretty sweet
when they came in and demoed it.  I hear we may have someone who will
soon work there in our midst:)

- There's been a small handful of us that have talked about turning
what used to be the dark room into a hot shop.  Welding, glassworking,
etc.  I'd definitely use it if we had something usable.  There are
clearly some safety concerns (like how to not catch the building on
fire and ventilation), but assuming we could work through those, it
would be awesome to have funds for the necessary retrofitting, and for
purchasing a welder, safety gear, etc.

- We suffer larger attrition of hand tools than most shops.  In the
past, I think a lot of this was active theft.  Giving it the benefit
of the doubt now, I suspect it's mostly just our generally high level
of entropy.  Traditionally, we've dealt with this through random acts
of kindness from various people in the space getting fed up and
ordering a bunch of something to replenish what's missing. Wouldn't it
be awesome if we had a monthly budget for "consumables" such as needle
nose pliers, phillips screw drivers, drill bits, etc?

This is just what I thought of off the top of my head.  There's
probably a bunch of other things that are even more awesome that I'm
not currently thinking of.

Overall, I'd love to see us level up our tools and fabrication
capabilities.  There's a definite hunger in SF for workshop space and
tools, and it's often what brings lots of cool people to the space.

-Scotty

On Wed, Jul 15, 2015 at 4:31 PM, Patrick O'Doherty <p at trickod.com> wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> tl;dr We have an opportunity to apply for $100k in grants from Google to
> fund our awesome hackerspace. We need to finish a grant application by
> July 23rd. We need all the help and grand ideas we can muster. PLEASE
> respond to this thread if you can help out in *any* way.
>
> We've been nominated for the Google.org Bay Area Impact Challenge this
> year. Every year Google.org provides grants of $100k, $250k, and $500k
> to bay-area non-profits with a local impact affecting areas such as
> education, homelessness, and employment. All the details here:
> https://impactchallenge.withgoogle.com/bayarea2015
>
> I think Noisebridge as an educational space could be a great fit, and I
> know that with $100k we could do a lot of amazing things.
>
> We've already been nominated by someone, and so we have until July 23rd
> to submit an application.
>
> $100k is a lot of money to put into Noisebridge, and it warrants new Big
> Ideas. What amazing, impactful things do you think Noisebridge could
> achieve with $100k over 3-4 years? An awesome, fully kitted out
> fabrication area in the space? More lasers? Interactive virtual reality
> stations? Spacebridge 2k16 ?? <- insert your amazing ideas here ->
>
> I've gathered all the questions that we need to answer on the form here
> in a riseup pad: https://pad.riseup.net/p/nb-goog
>
> This morning there was a recorded QA session with the reviewers. All of
> the questions are listed, just click on one to play the relevant video
> clip: You can find it here:
> https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/cfjebu4p08hbolslmqq8kssnk6o
>
> This is where you wonderful dreamers and writers of Noisebridge are
> needed. There's just over a week to do this, and we need every bit of
> help we can muster to put together a great proposal and write it up.
>
> Want to help out? Have ideas on great projects that this grant could
> fund? Want to make Noisebridge an even better resource for the great
> people of the Bay Area to help them achieve their creative dreams??!?
>
> Things you can do:
>  * Respond to this thread with your ideas, start discussing them here
>  * Take a question off the list in the Riseup pad and answer it!
>  * Poke all your grant writing friends to ask for help
>  * ???
>  * Profit
>
> Let's make Noisebridge even more awesome. We've done a lot in the last
> year, and we have a really amazing chance to kick it up a notch.
>
> Hack in excellence,
>
> P
>
>
>
>
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