This week I had the opportunity to visit the Noisebridge Hacker Space in San Francisco with an Autodesk colleague Gregory Miller and Alex Peake. Alex is on Kickstarter with a game project named Code Hero where you not only learn about pioneers and computer science heros such as Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, and Alan Turing but learn how to code in the process of the game. It is nice to see not another mind numbing zombie killing game, but one where you learn some programming languages such as JavaScript and Unity3D, and exercise your problem solving skills.
Don’t let the name “Hacker Space” scare you. A Hacker Space is not a group of people sitting around hacking into your online accounts, but a group of people young and old who work on projects from a wide array of things such as computers and electronics to building robots, lasers, rocketry, and wood working.
I love seeing Maker spaces where creativity and making things is the main purpose of people gathering in a common space. In this visit to Noisebridge I saw some young children about 10-12 printing some 3D plastic designs on some of the available MakerBot printers, a teenager writing a program that takes the electrical signals from a special head band to drive a terrain game engine, some high school students working on a robot for the FIRST Robotics competitions, some people sewing a project, another group working on some wood working, and several others all on a Sunday afternoon. What a cool and creative space to learn, build, and share with others.
Some members of Noisebridge also had a great sense of humor with their signs on everything everywhere!
There are Hacker Spaces all over the world and other Maker spaces like TechShop spreading to fill the needs of those that are not satisfied with just running down to the store to buy a alarm clock and instead get an open-source Arduino microcontroller circuit board and a bunch of LEDs and then begin to build and program their own alarm clock. Not only do they end up with a one of a kind alarm clock but the special knowledge after having built it themselves. I would strongly urge you to look into a Hacker Space or other Maker related space as there are most likely groups in your town where you can participate and contribute building your own projects or mentoring others members.. Even if the maker movement is not for you, I bet you know someone that has an idea just dying to get out of their head and build it themselves.
Here are some online resources on spaces:
http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/Hackerspaces
http://www.techshop.com/
I would also encourage you to attend MakerFaire as that is one mind blowing experience with tens of thousands of Makers gathered in one location to show of their creations.
Cheers,
Shaan