The White House Hosts First Makerspace Organizers Meeting
Last week, the White House invited makerspace owners/organizers from around the United States to take part in the first Makerspace Organizers Meeting. I was lucky enough to get to go to the White House to represent my makerspace, Nordeast Makers. The day started with inspirational and educational presentations from select makerspace owners and members including Emily Pilloton from Project H, and Kari Love from NYC Resistor. The second half of the day was filled with breakout sessions from different government organizations such as the Economic Development Administration or the NASA SBIR/STTR’s Program. The day concluded with a bit of organized chaos with owners discussing problems they face in a smaller group setting.
Since the meeting, there has been a lot of work done to create useful tools and build better communication channels for makerspace organizers. Hopefully this will help not only to build a stronger community between makers across the country, but also to make it easier for future makerspaces to flourish all over the world.
Adafruit has had paid day off for voting for our team for years, if you need help getting that going for your organization, let us know – we can share how and why we did this as well as the good results. Here are some resources for voting by mail, voting in person, and some NY resources for our NY based teams as well. If there are additional resources to add, please let us know – adafruit.com/vote
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
