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HacDC’s (Washington DC’s premier hackerspace) next Lightning Talks evening will feature an eclectic lineup of a dozen five-minute talks on anything and everything that’s pressing on the minds of today’s thinkers and tinkerers, from rapid boat construction to innovative DIY manufacturing. The talks run about 90 minutes total.

There are currently several speaker slots still available, and they need your brilliant ideas, whatever they may be. For more information, contact obscurite@hacdc.org ASAP to secure a spot. Here for more.

HacDC Lightning Talks
7:30 – 9:30PM, Tuesday Feb 23, 2010
HacDC @ St. Stephen’s Church
1525 Newton St NW
Washington, DC 20010

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Over the years, here on Make: Online, we’ve had a rather open, anybody can play commenting policy. As long as you didn’t use profanity, post patently offensive remarks, or spam, your comments were likely to stand. We also allowed for anonymous commenting.

While this approach allows for the greatest number of voices, we’ve come to feel that it doesn’t necessarily foster the best sense of community. People, especially those new to DIY, to electronics, to the maker’s movement in general; people who are exploring a project idea but unsure of the design or its mechanics, frequently don’t feel “safe” in speaking up here. We’ve heard this from makers personally and in surveys we’ve done. We want to try fostering an online environment where our readers feel that they can more freely share their ideas, ask questions, and basically, think and learn out loud.

We also believe that allowing anonymous commenting, while providing a convenience, and the ability to post without one’s name being associated, can also encourage rude behavior and personal attacks. And while we don’t think the atmosphere on MAKE is at all caustic (compared to other popular tech sites), we’ve decided to change our policy a bit in an effort to hopefully create a greater sense of community among makers, a place where people of varying ages, interests, and skill levels, feel comfortable and free to ask questions, seek advice, socialize, and learn.

So, for starters, we’re turning off anonymous commenting and implementing a “be nice” commenting policy. Before you post, right above the Submit button, it will now read:

Make: Online has a “be nice” commenting policy. Don’t say anything here you wouldn’t say to a person’s face. We will use our discretion in removing comments we find offensive, spammy, self-promotional, or mean-spirited. See more on our Maker Community Guidelines page.

The Maker Community Guidelines spell out in more detail what we’re hoping our readers will take to heart in helping us build a more amiable environment here.

This is not the only thing we’re going to be doing to expand our community-building efforts. We’re also going to be “datamining” comment threads more, to find new ideas for topic-areas to explore, to elevate comments into stand-alone posts for deeper exploration, and we’re even going to be deputizing commenters and turning them into guest authors from time to time. Encouraging more maker participation is also a big priority in our upcoming site redesign, so this is only the first step in that direction. There are also plans in the works for the site that we’re super excited about and think will inspire you to become even more involved in what we’re doing here. If you’ve been to a Maker Faire, or felt the energy of a Faire through our site and video coverage — that’s what we’d like to instill here — a similar feeling of excitement, engagement, skills-sharing, and friendliness. We’d love to hear your ideas of how you think we can best accomplish this.

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If you’re in DC this Thursday, Feb 4th, please stop by HacDC and catch this month’s Dorkbot DC gathering. We have two amazing presenters this month, Andy Holtin and Atau Tanka. Those involved with Maker Faire Austin may remember Andy’s involvement there (and my recent piece about his work here on the site). Atau is a well-known, pioneering artist in the fields of high-tech interactive art and music. Hope to see you there!

About this month’s presenters:

Glance from Andy Holtin on Vimeo.

ANDY HOLTIN : “How to Fit as Many Steps as Possible Into Ideas that Started Out Really Simple”

Working on his new project “Glance” allowed Andy to explore and employ a surprisingly wide variety of processes, both artistical and technical. He’ll be sharing his obstacles and the solutions they generated.

Andy Holtin is a master builder, professor of art, and a sculptor working with computer and microcontroller-based sculpture. His work was recently featured on Make: Online. He received his MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University’s Sculpture and Extended Media program. His work uses technology to create perfomative objects and interactive installations, incorporating a range of materials and processes. Holtin currently works as half of the collaborative duo CausalityLabs.

ATAU TANAKA: “Current research”

Atau will talk about his current research in Mobile and Locative Media Art, Interactive Performance, and Creative practice on Public Displays.

Atau Tanaka bridges the fields of media art, experimental music, and research. He worked at IRCAM, was Artistic Ambassador for Apple France, and was researcher at Sony Computer Science Laboratory Paris, and was an Artistic Co-Director of STEIM in Amsterdam. Atau creates sensor-based musical instruments for performance, and is known for his work with biosignal interfaces. He seeks to harness collective musical creativity in mobile environments, seeking out the continued place of the artist in democratized digital forms. His work has been presented at Ars Electronica, SFMOMA, Eyebeam, V2, ICC, and ZKM and has been mentor at NESTA.

Note: Atau’s colleague from Sensorband, Zbigniew Karkovski, will be performing on February 27th for DC’s premier new music presenter, Sonic Circuits.

As usual, we’ll also have Interdork, an opportunity for announcements and ad hoc show and tell, and Afterdork, where the coversation continues over food and drink at a nearby eatery.

February 2010 Dorkbot DC meeting
Thursday, February 4th, 7:00PM (ET)
HacDC (St. Stephen’s Church, in the church’s sanctuary)
1525 Newton St NW
Washington DC 20010
Google map
ALWAYS FREE!
A co-presentation with HacDC

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