Option 1) Lasercut, Laser engrave, and LED-light-up your very own Snowflake

Join us on TUESDAY, December 20th, 7 pm – Midnight

Meet-and-Make, Hive76 and NextFab Studio Members
@ http://NextFabStudio.com/ @ 3711 Market Street

This “Maker Collider” event will be a great opportunity to make awesome stuff.

We had proposed these projects:
All details are here on the Wiki

After reviewing the projects here and those proposed by NextFab members it sounds like we will be doing some form of the Chess boards, the snowflakes, some robotics, and a bunch of laser-engraving. But what if you don’t like those? Come by anyway and you can rally troops for helping you on your own project(s).

NextFab Studio will have these staff members on hand throughout the event:
Chrinstine : Textile and Industrial Design ( fabric knowledge, product design,cad, sewing )
Ian : Electronics (pcb design/fabrication, coding, wiring, soldering, etc.)
Seth : Mechanical Engineer (handtools, cad, product design)
Brandon : Multi-Media Designer ( 3d printing, graphic design, product design, cinematography, cad)

Anything you want to do, you can do. AWESOME.

Check out all their equipment.

Oh, and there will be food too. Be there at 7 pm!!

To Join in on the Discussion, please join our mailing list

Suggestion Box

Below is a poll where you can vote on new things to do, or add your own suggestion. (If you do, keep it brief) Feel free to have a discussion about new col things in the comments below.

We reviewed officer reports, financial outlook, strategic planning, events coordination, and planning the first Hive76 annual report. Lots more planned for the coming year!

Quartermaster – Brendan
Brendan has been around for quite a while, and us the longest standing member of Management. He’s been Quartermaster as long as we’ve had the position. He keeps the space clean and usable, and makes great amps and audio tools.

Book Keeper – Jack
Jack is one of Hive76′s Co-founders, and is the brain (and hands) behind USBTypewriter. He was previously our Events Coordinator, and is now going to be keeping our books.

Chief Technological Officer (CTO) – Adam K.
Adam is one of the powerhouses behind making Hive76 awesome. He’s done a great job as CTO setting up tools to make the organization run smoothly. Above and beyond his officership, he invests a lot of time keeping Hive active, and getting things done. He’s also our #1 print-ninja for our Makerbot.

Secretary – Chris T.
Chris is a designer, artist, and maker at large. He continues his post as Secretary (aka secretarat). He’s also an expert in cutting things into meat with lazzzors.

Instigator – Mike Hogan
Mike is an gentleman and a Maker of first degree. If you’ve taken a micro-controller class or electronics class at Hive, you’ve probably met Mike. He’s also our inside source for MSP430′s.

Events Coordinator – Sean M.
Sean is a developer, zombie-dummy maker, and now our Events Coordinator too. He has some great ideas for 2011, and some cool classes are already in the planning.

Congrats! *ding* to all our new officers, and thanks to all our old officers. If you want to reach them all at once, you can always drop them a line at they are available Management@Hive76.org.

On a sadder note, Adam Elkins has retired from the board of Hive76. He’s done some great projects (like the Free Spirit Stickers), and has constantly brings the coolest water-rockets to the Make:Philly picnic. We wish him the best of luck with whatever cool project he’s onto next.

We are now accepting nom-nom-nominations for a new board member for the open seat on the board. We are open to hearing nominee ideas from anyone. If you have a good idea for a nominee (even if you are not a member) feel free to drop a note on our discussion list with the name of the person, and why they would be a good board member. The members will consider the nominees, and vote to choose the best board member they can decide on.

• At 7:00PM, we’ll be updating our Scrum board with the latest status of our projects.
• After the Scrum meeting, we’ll be holding elections for our management team.  If any members wish to cast a vote but are unable to attend the meeting, please check the Member’s group discussion for instructions.
• At 8:00PM, we open the doors for our regularly scheduled Open House meeting. There will be free pizza and soda, and maybe even a few college drinks for sale in the ‘fridge as well.
• Continuing our new tradition of Mini-Projects For Open Houses, we’ll have parts available for any visitors to make Bristle Bots. If you didn’t come out to make glow sticks last week, then you missed a ton of fun.
• Adam will be showing off the MakerBot and training any interested parties in its basic operation,
• and Sean will be bringing the skull of the Flaming Zombie Dummy to the Hive 76 “Trophy Case”.

As always, it will be pure, crystallized awesome. What else are you going to do on a Wednesday night, watch reruns of MythBusters?

With the recent formation of Hive76′s Flickr pool, I thought I would take the opportunity to post some of the great pictures we’ve been capturing during our Teh Art of Electronics (sic,TM) sessions!

Originally designed to be a book study group, our introductory offering on the subject has morphed into quite the full-fledged intro course! Thanks to our resident gurus, the curious world of electronics has begun to unfold for some of Philadelphia’s creative minds. As a starting point, our students have learned about the relationships between charge, voltage, current, and power. We’ve since moved on to more complex topics and hope to finish out with learning about creating sensors!

So, if you’ve got some pictures of the space, or the the folks here at Hive76, and would like to share them with us, take a minute to hop on Flickr and join the group!

Hope to see you at our next [ open_house || class || event ] !

Disclaimer: These particular photos were taken with my phone, so please excuse the graininess for now. I’ll be sure to improve their quality with a better camera in the coming sessions.

Good news, kids! We have a store! It’s on the internet!!! That means you can now pay for things like donations, classes, membership dues, and the somewhat delayed but still awesome 2010 Men of Hive76 Calender, all online! We’ve got some really awesome plans in the works for Hive76-designed products, so keep an eye out in the next few months. We also have this rad custom ticketing system, so if you pay for your event before it happens, you’ll get a genuine Hive76 event ticket. They have QR code, people! Worth it!

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Right now we’re accepting PayPal and oldschool cash/checks, but we might add Google Checkout if enough people want it. Feel free to poke around, buy some stuff, send us money, go wild! Most importantly, let us know if there’s something you would like to see or a way we could make the whole experience better. You can leave a comment here or send an email to [orders at hive76 dot org]. kbye!
</boring>

I’ve heard some advice from different spaces on how to plan classes and costs, and (for me) one of the toughest parts was coming up with a decent cost for classes. My personal guidelines for the ‘don’t-expect-to-make-money’ classes (take it or leave it) is below. I use this for my own classes and events, and find it useful. If you also do classes or events, feel free to give us feedback on how you price yours, either by leaving a comment on the weblog, or updating the page on our wiki with your guidelines.

I expect to have 8 – 12 people per class, for almost any class at Hive76. For popular topics I expect to have 12 – 15, which requires at least 2 teachers to run right.

• + $5 – Each hour of planning, ordering part, or making docs (beyond 1 hour)
• + $COST_OF_PARTS – For all classes with parts more than about $1
• + $10 per student – Each hour of class (beyond 1 hour)
• + ? – if it’s a ‘marketable’ skill, or current hot item, I add $5 an hour on it.

Examples:

• 2 hour python class with 1 hour planning = (1hr * 10) = about $10
• 4 hour iPhone class that took 6 hours of planning = (3 * 10) * (5 * 5) +’marketable’4*5 = about $75
• 4 hour electroncis class with $50 in parts that took 3 hours planning, 2 hours parts-ordering, and a pear tree = (3*10) + 50 + ((2+3)*5) = $105

At Hive76 we try to always offer the option to take a class for free. It’s up to the teacher to decide how to manage free classes or events. Sometimes we do that via letting people choose $0 tickets (for non-parts classes). For things that require parts to be ordered, a ‘free’ class actually costs the space money. In most of those cases we have an ‘email the teacher if you can’t pay’ comment on the class announcement.

(Note:this post is cross posted to FarMcKon.net)

Classes we’ll probably do:

• Makerbot
• Python (easy and complex)
• Guitar Effects Pedals
• Basic Microcontrollers
• how to teach a class

Classes we’ll try to do (but could use some help):

• Blender 3D
• Basic server wrangling
• Fabrication with several fab machines

Do you have other class ideas for us? Do you want to teach a class here (for free, or for some extra scratch?) Leave us a comment, join the mailing list, or just email us your ideas.