I was a bit disappointed that I missed the first Art Jamboree that we were invited to, so I really wanted to make it to the next one, and hey, it just happened to be at Milwaukee’s City Hall!

It was without a doubt, a total blast. We had the Friday Night Drawbot and the MakerBot CupCake running, and both drew a lot of attention. People were really fascinated by 3D printing, and the samples we had on hand.

From the Makerspace, Royce was there, and besides showing the spin cast jewelry he had made, I heard him explain the Drawbot to plenty of people, explaining Arduinos, and servos, and programming. MattN has his latest CNC Router work there, which is still in progress, but looks pretty amazing so far. Shane had one of his laser etchings, and Adam had the MakerBot doing its thing. (We even printed a few whistles that actually worked.) And Brant? He just did an awesome job talking about everything. Jason H was also there, and Kevin even showed up. We probably had the largest group of people, which was great to see.

The best part of the evening was all the great people we met. Lots of folks stopped by to check us out, but we also had a lot of great conversations with people too. I talked to two different high school teachers, one from Bay View who thought it might be a good idea to show her students that robots could do more than fight with each other. The other high school teacher told me he built furniture in his apartment, but could only do so when he knew his neighbors were not home. (Sounds like a potential member!) There were also people from UWM’s Art Department, a guy who used to sell vacuum forming machines, a girl who said “my boyfriend always talks about CNC machines, but I never know what he’s talking about!” (she took a photo of the MakerBot to send to him.)

As long as we didn’t need my laptop for the MakerBot, I figured I’d run a Processing sketch I had been playing with. It’s based on the ASCII Video sketch with my own tweaks added, and made to capture an image every 15 seconds. (Yes, a time lapse video will follow… Update: Here it is.)

I think we did a great job of letting people know what kind of stuff we do at the Makerspace, and beyond all that, it was just genuinely fun to share it all with people, especially people who got really excited about it.

And hey, if you saw us at the Art Jamboree (or heard about us from Art Milwaukee) and want to find out more about us, feel to stop by any Tuesday night at 7pm for our weekly meeting. We’d love to show you what we’re all about. :)