新车间 [XinCheJian]

Tonights topics Tonight we should have three interesting topics, Farming in an Urban window presented by Jeff followed up with the 8x8x8 cube you might have previously seen on the mailing list.. if anyone knows the 8x8x8 cube takes some serious multiplexing.. find out how many pins this guy uses! Also Raven will start the show with his awesome processing introduction for those who might be interested in signing up to the processing workshop. Notice XinCheJian is run by volunteers, by donating time, toys or money can the space continue to be what it is. If you’re interested in being part of the group we have several positions open for volunteers or those looking for a community driven internship at the end of this newsletter. If you cannot help out by taking a membership then consider buying a drink from the fridge or even kits, every little helps. What else is happening this week in XinCheJian *Thursday* 7pm – embedded engineers event in Chinese by Shen Jie, with pizza! *Friday* 7pm Habib from MakeSense Social Enterprises & companies meetup *Saturday* 3pm Shyul lee giving an introduction to FPGA and ARM http://xinchejian.com/event/?ee=82 *Sunday* 2:30pm – insectbot workshop by David and Lutz This is a key workshop to getting started with Arduino and getting a feel for the hackerspace, Highly entertaining, safe for kids and adults. “The Insect bot workshop got me started at XinCheJian back in may, confused and disorientated about a hackerspace this put me on the right path to making great things — Paul” Sign up here.. http://xinchejian.com/event/?ee=75 Memberships Having a Membership in XinCheJian means you’re supporting the community and giving back, you’ll get to pick your membership level either 300rmb or for the generous 500rmb a month that goes to keeping the space alive and replacing consumables. Open Volunteer positions at XinCheJian As a Volunteer you’ll earn your membership, you’ll also be expected to join Tuesday Staff meetings from 7-9pm. Only apply if you’re serious. Without the generosity of the current volunteers sharing tasks in their free time it would be near impossible to keep xinchejian alive. *Treasurer* As the Treasurer you’ll be responsible for.. treasure. you need to have your own calculator and some experience with keeping records. the following are what you’ll need to handle on a monthly basis.

• Income/Outgoing spread sheets
• Look after the donation box
• Organizes the rent and bills
• Talks to founders for more money
• Kind reminders to members to pay their membership dues

*Event Manager* The Event manager will play a key roll in helping keep the space running and getting the correct information out there, this is a dedicated position and will take several hours per week online. This person needs to be compassionate but firm, well organized, able to follow up and personable making it easy for people to run workshops.

• Schedules events within the space
• Confirms events with people based on signups
• Encourages and guides people to get content together to promote event
• Handles external media for events (posting to media sites)
• Posts events to the XinCheJian site

*Journalists* A Journalist will be expected to write at least 1 article a week on a topic of whats going on inside XinCheJian, you pick a project and review it, can be a few hours an evening writing and a few hours in the day interviewing.

• you’ll be given an account on xinchejian.com
• You will need a camera
• English or Chinese – or both is encouraged
• confident and outgoing
• get as much information possible from people in the shortest amount of time, without annoying them

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Usable Devices (“Devices that work, those that don’t and those that need to be created!“) has already some interesting writing on its blog with both technical articles such as an attempt to build a robot for the next roborace, a flattering article towards XinCheJian with a profile of two out of the three founders (the other being of course Min Lin Hsieh) and a report on the presentation from MakeSense at the last Wednesday Open House. Always interesting for us to get an outsider perspective to our space and insights in more of the local projects!]]>

Social entrepreneurs and Hackers” (register if interested) on Wednesday at XinCheJian. He shares the following Q&A about MakeSense and what they want to accomplish with XinCheJian’s hackers.

What is MakeSense? http://we.makesense.org We connect Social entrepreneurs with supercool individuals online through social networks and a webapp that will go live soon (http://www.makesense.org) and offline through specifically designed workshops that we call hold-ups. What are social entrepreneurs? Wikipedia says : “A social entrepreneur recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create and manage a venture to achieve social change (a social venture). While a business entrepreneur typically measures performance in profit and return, a social entrepreneur focuses on creating social capital.” More info at http://www.ashoka.org/social_entrepreneur How can hackers help with? That’s what MakeSense wants to determine by preparing a 1-day event facilitating the interactions between hackers and social entrepreneurs. The objective is to kickstart a sustainable loop of interactions bringing practical entrepreneurial realizations. What questions are we trying to answer at the brainstorm? After presenting you quickly the format of the event that we thought of at MakeSense, we hope to have your feedback (you hackers!) and refine the content of the event, for you hackers! Who will be interested by this? According to our statistics, anyone who likes XinCheJian..;-) What will be the follow up to this? Following this little presentation and the output of your brainstorming: we, at MakeSense commit ourselves to organize a 1-day event for you within 50 days. What benefits do people get doing this? Hacking business, New interactions for new Impact: Hackers + Social Entrepreneurs, Do it with joy

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Alex update on the progress of the new Botmill 3d printer:

I was working on the 3d printer with Mike last Saturday and the parts for the frame, Z and Y axes are almost ready and calibrated. We are missing some parts to assemble the motors and the head. And the X axis is still work in progress.

It’s a bit strange that Botmill would sell kits with missing parts (M4 threaded 70mm rod, M4 insert, etc). Some of the reprap parts are low quality (misprinted gears) and you have to be extra careful tightening nuts as I’ve accidentally cracked the extruder carriage. Work on this will continue on Wednesday evening at the space; feel free to help out!]]>

Photos of the open house today. Alex looking at the Makerbot, cutting a protoboard, repairing the Dirt Dog vacuum robot, Angie and some of the guys looking at getting a stepper motor to work.

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