MakerSpace Meet-Up 10/16

On Friday, October 16, 2015 I attended the ‘Women in Tech’ Maker Meet-up on Staten Island, NY. Staten Island MakerSpace, a two-year-old MakerSpace warehouse with various art, metal works and technology workshops, sponsored this event. This was their first Women In Tech event and we discuss opportunities for women in the tech and startup industries. Their mission is empower women from all walks of life to come up with creative ideas, find solutions to bring those ideas to market, and avenues in which to turn those ideas into revenue. There were about 11 adults, made up of parents, teachers, students and artists, and 4 children in attendance.

The event opened up with Introductions from the organizers, continued to audience introductions, went on to a Mini hackathon/brainstorming session using littleBit electronics for all who were interested, mainly the children and ended with a 5 minute networking session. The whole event lasted about two hours and I had the pleasure of meeting the Associate Director of SI MakerSpace, DB Lampman.

Overall, It was nice to go out and meet some of the people in my neighborhood who share some of the same interests as I do. What I learned most was how innovative LittleBits are. Surprisingly I have never heard of it before, but although they are small it was fascinating to see how much of an impact they each have. I may have thought about it a bit too deeply, but the LittleBits, for me, represented much more than just modular electronics. There can be a major impact from little things that come together, in many aspects of life, and it was inspiring to see prototyping in that light. The process of linking different entities together with logic and design thinking to develop a product or service is what start-ups go through. So while, the children at the meet-up were having a ball with the LittleBits, my mind was clearly thinking on other things. This lesson, among others, is what this 3D printing/Entrepreneurship class is trying to teach us.