If you live in a flyover state and never thought you’d see the Hackaday crew gallivanting through your neck of the woods, think again. We’re planning to descend on Detroit, Michigan later next week. The trip started when Red Bull invited [Mike Szczys] to come out and judge the 2014 Red Bull Creation contest. But we wanted to see what Detroit has to offer so [Brian Benchoff] and [Chris Gammell] are going to be in town too.
The Red Bull Creation has been a favorite here on Hackaday for years. Who doesn’t love a 72-hour hackathon that results in all kinds of crazy, spectacular, or horrifying builds? You can see the schedule for Creation here. If you can’t make it out when the teams are at work, the complete projects will be showcased on Saturday at Eastern Market followed by a party hosted at the Omnicorp Detroit hackerspace.
Detroit Meetup — Now with Actual Hacking!
Speaking of parties, Hackaday is having a Meetup as well, but it’s going to be much more than just a party! On Friday night i3 Detroit hackerspace is opening their doors to us starting at 8pm.
The i3 members have decided to make this a night for hacking and camaraderie. Bring your projects to show off and you can get some hacking done on them too.
The building does share a roof with the legendary Meader, B Nektar. We mention this because they’re awesome, and so that you’ll know this is going to be much more than you’d find if meeting at a plain old bar or a plain old workshop.
Do us a favor and let us know you’re coming. We’ll make sure to bring plenty of swag for anyone who makes a point to stop in!
We Need Your Help Finding Stuff in Detroit
There’s going to be plenty of amazing coverage of Creation, but with three people in town it’s nice to do some field-trips as well. So far we’re planning to visit Marvelous Marvin’s Mechanical Museum and The Henry Ford Museum.
But we need more suggestions. Stuff that’s off the beaten path and Hackaday worthy. To get you thinking, we loved visiting Apex Electronic when we were in Los Angeles. What’s in or close to Detroit that should be on the hacker approved list of attractions? Leave your suggestion in the comments.
I was very disappointed with RBC this year. There really didn’t seem to be the same buzz leading up to it this year. Last year seemed to have a lot more online chatter and interaction leading up to the deadline and the finals. It just seemed like there was less promotion and energy this time.
The reason you have not seen as much online or offline presence is primarily because the budget is not what it has been in the past This is partially due to moving the event to Detroit, which is a different region and thus a different budget…
I’ve been attributing it to the now-even-less-hardware theme of the qualifier. No offense to folks who do video production, but it’s hard to get hackers excited about video production! We’re animals with stereo vision and opposable thumbs, and we like using those things together. Working in 3 dimensions with physical things is just intrinsically more satisfying, and we proudly tell our friends what we’re up to.
My $0.02, anyway.
BTW 1.21 Jigawatts’ project was awesome! Hopefully an open source bee hive monitor will take off with bee keepers.
Agree! The Hive minder is such a great idea
What makes Michigan a flyover state?
You’re right. Detroit is a Delta hub, so you’ll sometimes land…
Even if it wasn’t a major hub for Delta, Michigan’s geographic location largely prevents it from being a flyover state.
Southeast Michigan has the highest density of engineers per capita in the continent. I mean real licensed engineers, not whatever passes for one over in the bay area. Chemistry, mechanical, electrical, civil, environmental, and so on all have a huge presence here. If you are an engineer of any importance in North America, you have spent time in Michigan.
Ah, I used the “flyover state” in jest. I myself live in Wisconsin.
But any-who, can you contact this critical mass of southeast-michigan engineers and get the to come out to i3 a week from Friday? :-D
Alongside the Henry Ford is Greenfield Village where you can find a Jacquard loom (punch-card controlled loom invented in 1801!) along with several other worthy attractions.
College for Creative Studies: imagine an art school run by and for Hackers. This is where the car designers come from, not to mention product design, awesome illustrators, etc. Not your father’s art school! It’s not art for artsake like most art schools.
Pewabic Pottery: making awesome tiles for a long time now. They did the front of Tiger’s Comerica Park. Looks like a hackerspace!
Ford River Rouge Factory Tour….you can get tickets at the Henry Ford Museum.
Shatilla Battery in Dearborn: you’ll think you’re in the MiddleEast, it offers both French and Mideastern treats! Service is fantastic!
Visiting Detroit now (until Thursday). The Ford Rouge Plant sounds great, but checking the website showed they cease production for the first 2 weeks of July… Major bummer in my book. No hacking advise besides what people have already said.
OT: If any of you are into RPGs, specifically Palladium Books, they are located in Westland, which is close. While they are not set up for tours you can give them a call and visit (just give a couple hours notice). Good folks.
So we went today to the Henry Ford, including the factory tour… Production at Dearborn was going. Got to see the bed/cab assembly of F-150s. So much for what the website said.
Along with the Henry Ford & Greenfield village is the Automotive Museum and Ford Assembly Line tour.
Long live the HaD marble maze! I enjoyed that style of competition, I guess they gave up on doing it like that though?
> Long live the HaD marble maze!
It lasted about 3 hours at the faire…
Come by Fortress Studios. We’re set up for traditional craft and fine art practice but we do have resident artists utilizing electronics, cnc and robotics.
http://www.fortressstudiosdetroit.com
I was hoping this post might bring some more locals out of the woodwork! We Michiganders aren’t stellar at knowing about each other. Your space sounds interesting and I’d love to find a time for some i3’ers to head over and say hi!
No kidding man. I’ve lived in Michigan for most of my life and the only other hackers I’ve ever met were my dad and my best friend. Shame I have work on Friday, would love to come out there, then again I doubt I could afford gas to get there since my job don’t pay much.
Get on the i3detroit-public mailing list and you can arrange a visit basically any time.
So yeha I’m in the area and I plan on attending, but I don’t use facebook. You wanna just slap a +1 to your handouts and meetup list?
Thanks
Did you miss the “sign up with email” link in eventbrite? Because you can totally sign up with email instead of facesuck.
Apparently I did! Thanks dude, see you guys there!
For sure check out Steve’s space (Look for the cows).
Some other excellent makerspaces of note:
Mt. Elliot Makerspace: Detroit Youth Oriented
Omnicorp: fancy and fun
Field street collective: leather work and body work from the folks that brought us New Work New Culture
the Detroit public library also has a maker program for youth. And just north Youthville has an ultra sophisticated robotics program.
while not makerspaces, ponyride and Practise Space are both artisanal coworking. With blacksmithing and jeanstitching
if you want a full tour, I get back home on the 9th. Hit up my twitter @marslindo if you wanna talk to me about getting around or the contact info for the folks that run these spaces.
also, the farms in Detroit are worth seeing. Makerspaces in an older sense
The Greenfield Village also has Thomas Edison’s Menlo Park Lab (The original Makerspace)
Be sure to check out the Russel Industrial Center (http://www.russellindustrialcenter.com/). A formerly abandoned factory turned art project/bazaar.
Fir aircraft enthusiasts, National air force museum in Dayton OH is not really a Detroit attraction, but it’s very much worth the 3h drive if you’ve never seen it. See the history or flying from the early days, through the major wars (cinluding cold war!) and into modern era, includes space/apollo aircraft and kennedy air force 1. It’s free too, plan to spend a whole day, it is huge and awesome!
I will try to join at i3Detroit one day, may offer a drive if someone is interested ;)
http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/
How about the Yankee air museum http://www.yankeeairmuseum.org/