Group: The Great Global Hackerspace Challenge

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Hackerspaces are community operated places where people can work on just about any project you can dream up. In an effort to support everyone and anyone who is interested or involved in these spaces element14 is launching the Great Global Hackerspace Challenge.

We've selected thirty Hackerspaces from around the world to participate in a competition to design and build an electronics project. The top three finalist will bring their creations to to Maker Faire in Silicon Valley this May to be judged by a panel of community leaders including Mitch Altman and Ben Heckendorn.

Check back here regularly to see the progress of the competition and follow our thirty Hackerspaces through their journey to California!

Great Global Hackerspace Challenge Awards

8 months ago by msanders

The finalists of the Great Global Hackerspace Challenge present their projects at Maker Faire and the grand prize winner receives there trophy.

1 Comments, 111 Views

It was a wild and fun two days at Maker Faire. Many, many thanks to all the team members that we were able to meet. We really appreciate you coming by to say hi and give your support for our three finalists that took the stage last night.

The Great Global Hackerspace Challenge presentation was the big finish to the Maker Faire and drew a huge crowd. Our six judges of Ben Heck, Michele Dawson, Jeri Ellsworth, Gareth Branwyn, Jeff Keyzer and Mitch Altman were blown away by the passion, technical skill and imagination of the three teams that demoed their projects.

We are happy to announce that the judges settled on Quincy and the Feltronics project is our grand prize winner.

Video of the event is being edited as we speak and will be posted shortly.

Great Global Hackerspace Challenge Finalists Thirty Hackerspaces were invited to participate in the Great Global Hackerspace Challenge to help the goal of improving education around the world with technology. With less than two months and only $900 in funds the teams rose to the challenge and produced some amazing results. Now three projects have been selected by a group of industry leading Judges to be presented at the Maker Faire Bay Area with May 21st-22nd. Find out more about the teams and projects that were chosen.

	Hackerspace: BuildBrighton Project: Phonicubes Description: A simple, fun, way for teaching kids to read Find out more about this project at BuildBrighton's element14 community blog: http://www.element-14.com/community/groups/buildbrighton?view=blog

	Hackerspace: Hackerspace Charlotte Project: Feltronics Description: An elegant, simple, easy to reproduce method for teaching electronics Find out more about this project at Hackerspace Charlotte's element14 community blog: http://www.element-14.com/community/people/Hackerspace_Charlotte/blog

	Hackerspace: Pumping Station: One Project: GGHC Biosensor Array Description: An inexpensive way for teaching biology Find out more about this project at Pumping Station: One's element14 community blog: http://www.element-14.com/community/groups/pumping-station-one

Hackerspace Challenge Event Judges

Mitch Altman

A hacker, geek, inventor, author and co-founder of a number of Hackerspaces around the world.

Jeri Ellsworth

Jeri Ellsworth is an entrepreneur and self-taught computer chip designer / genius. A recent keynote speaker at the prestigious ESC conference, Jeri continues to inspire her ever-growing legion of fans with her infectious enthusiasm and no-nonsense know-how for all things electronic.

Ben Heckendorn

Ben is a graphic artist turned internet celebrity famed in the world of electronics "modding". From hits like his Bill Paxton pinball machine to the in-demand XBOX 360 Laptop, Ben fires-up his wildly successful modding show - sponsored exclusively by element14 - every second week over at www.Revision3.com

Michele Dawson

Over 20 years of experience in educational organizations as a teacher, administrator, grant writer, and technology director. Masters Degree in Educational Leadership in Research and Leading for Equity,Acheivement and Democracy. Currently Instructional Technology Program Manager for Napa and Solano Counties Office of Education.

Gareth Branwyn

Writer, editor, BS detector. Editor-in-Chief, Make: Online (blog.makezine.com). Gareth is the author of the Absolute Beginner's Guide to Building Robots and was the editor of the Best of MAKE and Make: Electronics. He was also a contributing editor to Wired for 12 years.

Jeff Keyzer

Jeff Keyzer is an electrical engineer who lives in Austin, Texas. He is currently writing a book with Mitch Altman about how to make cool things with microcontrollers (for complete beginners), to be published by No Starch Press in 2011.

Hello to all of the amazing hackers who’ve participated in this Great Global Hackerspace Challenge!

In the end, 27 hackerspaces participated from 5 (out of the 7) continents on the planet. And all of your projects have a lot of merit.

It was interesting to me that the projects tended to cluster around 5 different realms:

- teaching electronics

- teaching biology

- teaching reading / arithmetic

- teaching music

- a general tool for students and teachers to interact

There were several people slated to “judge” the completed entries, and choose the three finalists we collectively thought were the coolest. This was not easy!! For one thing, most of the projects were incredibly cool! And for another, 27 groups of people doing 27 different projects create a lot of documentation to check out! But, we all did it. And we somehow came up with three finalists who will be flown out to the Maker Faire (in less than two weeks from now!)!

Before I list the three finalists, let me say that this Challenge really is not about “winning”. We are all winners here. Each hackerspace has received $900 from complete strangers to get together and create a project you think are cool. And each space has created a project that will help other people through education.

There’s no way to know, but it seems likely to me that the work and play you have put in over the past 6 weeks will continue to help you, your hackerspace, and others around the world in untold ways.

To me, this is just a taste of the kinds of things we can expect to come out of the hackerspace movement when people get together and do cool things!

As promised, each hackerspace who submitted a final proposal will be receiving a care package of really nice goodies from element14, including soldering stations and accessories to help your space teach electronics, and copies of CadSoft’s EAGLE, to help your space bring your electronics ideas into reality.

Without further delay, here is the list of three finalists that our panel of “judges” came up with (in alphabetical order, by hackerspace name):

* BuildBrighton's Phonicubes

simple, fun, way for teaching kids to read

* Hackerspace Charlotte’s Feltronics

elegant, simple, easy to reproduce method for teaching electronics

* Pumping Station: One’s GGHC Biosensor Array

inexpensive way for teaching bio (which has too often been too expensive)

Congrats to everyone, and to these three hackerspaces. All three of these finalists’ spaces will be receiving some way cool equipment. And these three hackerspaces now have the challenge of choosing one person to be flown to San Francisco to present their project at the Bay Area Maker Faire!

I hope you can all come to the San Francisco Maker Faire that takes place 21-May and 22-May at the San Mateo Faire Grounds.

The final event on the main stage of the Maker Faire will be an event not to be missed. Starting at 5:30pm on Sunday, 22-May, me and the other “judges” will do our best to pick one out of the three projects that these three hackerspaces created to help with education. Who will it be?

(And if you do make it to the Faire, please come by the Hardware Hacking Area, where, with the help of 30 volunteers, I’ll be teaching about 3,000 people of all ages how to solder over the weekend.)

Thanks to everyone for participating! Thanks to all the judges who put hours into checking out all of the material — Mitch Altman (that’s me), Josh Meyer, Jeff Keyzer, and Michele Dawson. Thanks to the hard-working and diligent folks at Silver Fox for coordinating everything —Ryan Miller, Paco Allen, Michael Martinez, Sally Stillman, Claire Burke, Amanda Cooper and Mark Sanders. And thanks to element14 for providing the funds and the spark that made it all happen! Finally, thanks to APEX tools, OK International, TechSpray, Fluke, Tektronix, and Agilent for donating the cool prizes!

All the best, Mitch.

Subject		Author
	"Hack This: 24 Incredible Hackerspace Projects from the DIY Movement" Howdy, This excellent book just arrived for me today from Amazon: ... 2 days ago
	From EAGLE to finished PCB in 2 hours Howdy, Pumping Station: One member Steve Finkleman recently gave a lightning talk on how he is using the laser cutter at the... 1 week ago
	Pumping Station: One in Make magazine Howdy, I cracked open the lastest issue of Make magazine this morning and was pleased to see Pumping Station: One featured!... 1 month ago
	Hackerspace member creates universal Android dock Howdy, Joe Born is a Pumping Station: One member and his company has just released a universal Android dock: "The dock... 1 month ago
	Still at it So thought I forgot about this. Anyway it is was really hectic here for a while as we had to expand or move. Well we doubled... 7 months ago
	XinCheJian's GGHC "awards" video Also on YouKu, for those in China: http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMjY4Mzc4ODQ0.html 9 months ago
	Biosensor Q & A Howdy, Our biosensor array team was recently featured on the Make blog: ... 9 months ago
	Hackerspaces: Y'all rock! Howdy, Our biosensor team is honored to be selected a finalist and humbled to be in the company of fellow finalists,... 9 months ago
	Original Project Brief Subimssions are now closed Here is a copy of the original request for submissions that kicked off the competition. The... 9 months ago
	Not Goodby Although the Challenge is over the project goes on. I'll be updating this blog as time goes on at least until the next... 9 months ago