Just as Al Gore invented the Internet- or Tony Capizzi brought baseball to Dayton- I’m going to take totally undue credit for this idea: a hackerspace instead of the tax-supported sinkhole called Tech Town. I wrote a post April 12 of 2010 “Tech Town or Tech Shop” [1] and said we should have “a Front Street for Geeks- a ‘hacker space’ ” and- now we do:
Dayton Diode To Host Open House
The Dayton-based community lab, or hackerspace, Dayton Diode is hosting an open house February 5, 2011, from 1 p.m. to midnight. The public is invited to tour their new space in Bldg. 100, Suite 2080 at the Front Street Complex at the corner of Dutoit and 2nd Street, located in East Dayton. You can also meet current members and find out more about the many exciting projects the group is working on.
“Dayton is finally joining the revolution of people making cool, high-tech stuff together. Members can access shared tools, pool their expertise and meet people with similar and diverse interests!” said founder Joe Mckibben.
Dayton Diode is “like a YMCA for nerds,” a place where people with common interests in science, technology, or digital or electronic art can meet, socialize and collaborate. Recent member projects include welding, circuit bending, metal casting, and Arduino robotics. Such hackerspaces, part of the DIY or “maker” culture, are community-operated physical places, where people can meet and work on their projects.
The group plans to promote hacking in a fun social environment. The hackerspace encourages collaboration, and allows sharing of knowledge and skills from members with diverse educational, technical and creative backgrounds. “This can help jump-start Dayton’s future. Hackerspaces are already happening in places like Brooklyn and the Silicon Valley, creating spinoff companies and giving people new, marketable skills and contacts,” says Mckibben.
Dayton Diode is a special interest group SIG of the Dayton Microcomputer Association DMA, which is a 501c3 non-profit organization that has a long and distinguished history of nerding it up all over the Miami Valley. Dayton Diode is pleased to find a home adjacent to Ohio’s Aerospace Hub of Innovation and Opportunity, and hopes to contribute to the innovative, opportunistic goodness currently blossoming in Dayton.
The open house will be held on Saturday, February 5, 2011 between 1 p.m. and 12 a.m. The space is located at 1001 East 2nd St, Building 100 Unit 2080. Parking is available to guests on the east side of the building. Hope to see you there!
Contact us at: [email protected] [2]
All this without tax dollars- or government support. This is what real “economic development” looks like.
I’ll be there- will you?
Sounds brainy and amazing. Bravo!
Check out “Make” magazine and their website http://www.makezine.com to get an idea of the “maker” culture mentioned above. My sons and I built a device the size of a keychain that can turn off televisions from 150-200 feet away. Trips to the big box stores have been a blast ever since.
With the Dayton Microcomputer Association involved (remember the Computerfests at Hara Arena?), I know there will be a lot of fascinating projects and people involved.
Thanks for the heads-up, David, and best wishes to Dayton Diode.
I lived on Valencia Street in the late ’90s. Dot-coms predominated in the Mission District. They were glorified “hackerspaces” for emotional criples out of Stanford and Cal Tech. The aftermath was ugly; the Mission Distric has never been the same; San Francisco has yet to recover.
The “idea” that a hackerspace in Dayton is cutting-edge is comparable to remanufacturing 1911 Model Wright Flyers.
Snookie won’t be caught dead in Dayton Diode!
I lived on Valencia Street in the late ’90s. Dot-coms predominated in the Mission District. They were glorified “hackerspaces” for emotional criples out of Stanford and Cal Tech. The aftermath was ugly; the Mission Distric has never been the same; San Francisco has yet to recover
Thanks for sharing.
Back to the article:
Front Street, huh? That place is as much a business incubator and small business space as it is an arts place. I’ve notice that on my occasional visits…seems to be little start-ups scattered about in there, small machine shops, etc.
We sometimes focus too much on the high-viz stuff, but looking at the economic history of Dayton it was this matrix of enterpeneurial spirit and start-ups and small shops that was the economic engine that made the city, from which the big, well-known mass-employment companies arose.
Hmmmm… funny you say that – and yet the group makes a point to mention one of Dayton’s (and former Gov. Strickland’s) signature development efforts from last year.
This could lead one to conclude that the City’s development initiative helped keep this group downtown. No?
CSAPT, I put that little tidbit that you quote into the press release as a sort of dig at the more establishment-type “innovation and development” efforts (clue: opportunistic usually doesn’t have a positive connotation), and it managed to survive our group editing process on the wiki (sorry for the little easter egg fellas ; – ). I’m still learning about this cluster concept and what it means for Dayton, but I think that too often these sorts of efforts are self-licking ice cream cones: why are we a center of excellence / hub of innovation? Because we say we are; never-mind there’s little reality on the ground to match the slogan slinging. Fake it ’till you make it, I guess? A politician’s speech or initiative doesn’t make or unmake Dayton as a successful industrial cluster. I don’t think I’ve ever heard mention of the Aerospace Hub at meetings. Things that did come up a lot were “Front St is cheap and flexible,” and “lets get a makerbot, so we can print cool 3D parts.” Why did we choose to be downtown? I think there are as many different motivations to answer that question as there are members. Here’s an easy one though: we are Dayton Diode, so it would be a little silly for us to be in Beavercreek. Another is that a community workspace makes more sense in an urban area than in a suburban one since folks in the suburbs are likely to already have all the workspace they want. I certainly think it would be great if Dayton Diode provides the opportunity for nerdy folks from the suburbs to interact with/in our urban core in a positive way. Maybe not because they need space to work, but because being able to collaborate with other smart folks has higher value than working alone in their basements or garages. If a successful start-up that employs lots of people comes out of Dayton Diode that would be great too, but we are certainly not taking public dollars from anyone based on those sorts of (empty) promises. Dayton Diode… Read more »
Actually, csapt, this group was looking downtown three years ago.