Happenings at FUBARlabs

As I've mentioned before, I have been helping start up a new hackerspace in central New Jersey - FUBAR Labs. We're still filing for a non-profit corporation status, but we're beginning to move ahead with a number of plans, some of which I came up with or have been put in charge of. Here's some of the cool events I'll be working on for them.


Lightning Lectures

Lightning Lectures will be a series of talks by members and, hopefully soon, non-members. A series of five minute time slots will be open for signing up ahead of time. People can teach about any topic they want for those five minutes as long as it is technically oriented. As soon as those five minutes are up, regardless if they are halfway through a sentence or only have one more slide, they must stop talking. There is an additional two minutes of questions and answer time at the end.

The idea of Lightning Lectures is to allow members to whet the appetite of curiosity for other members in a huge range of potential technical topics. The end result of an attendee is to either learn about a topic they would not have spent the time to learn about on their own - which is priceless unto itself - and to potentially become interested in future projects that could be born out of these lectures.

The coolest thing is that some of the key minds behind BSODtv are interested in joining up with FUBAR and want to record and share Lightning Lectures with the world. We could end up with quite an interesting collection of content to share with everyone.


Central New Jersey Swapmeet

A swapmeet is much like a computer show - there is a cheap to free entrance fee, "vendors" pay a small rental fee for space, and technology is sold. Where a swapmeet differs heavily from a computer show is that the focus is on random technology - quite often abstract or older technology. The vendors are normal people who have amassed a large collection of electronics. And the best part is - you can get much of this technology by trading your own old, unwanted technology as well as buying it. It is the perfect place to find old hardware for DIY projects that you can't get elsewhere.

We are going to plan to host a swapmeet on Saturday, the 20th of Feburary (a tentative working date) next year to act as a large fundraiser for FUBAR Labs. I'll be trying to map out and plan as much of it as possible now so we can start advertising it. We want to bring out as many people as possible in order to ensure a large and very productive swapmeet.

RoboCode Tournament

RoboCode is a program, complete with API, in which you can easily program robot tanks in Java to fight eachother in an RTS setting. If that sentence doesn't strike you as "uber-cool" then you are dead inside. The API is incredibly easy to approach - so easy that one of my friends uses it to teach high schoolers Java programming. It lends itself to programming tournaments, where programmers can actually see who's the better programmer.

FUBAR Labs is planning on having a Valentine's Weekend (13th of Feburary, 2010, and again, tentative date) RoboCode tournament. The hope is to have coders submit a small fee for each robot tank they enter - the fee will be broken down into a direct donation to FUBAR Labs and a prize pool for the winner. We plan on challening every hackerspace in the world to enter and try to win the prize, so hopefully this will take off and be a large tournament.

And more...

Of course I'm working on more than that - I'm also helping find an actual hackerspace for the organization, organize membership advertising, and far more. These will be my main focus in the organization, on top of teaching at Python Study Group nights and offering micro controller expertise to anyone that needs it.

And all of that on top of my normal project load. Damn - I'm good at keeping busy.