Takin’ you all the way back to the late ‘80’s for Throw Back Thursday. That’s my Pop, the original photographer. *My* original photographer. Sifting through hundreds of his photos today, we found lots of gems.
And yeah, that’s how we rolled in The Point: beer and chocolate cake with the Bluewater Bridge (singular) as our backdrop and the neighbours saying hello as they strolled by.
This one’s for you, Pop.
DW
Barry Katz’s short answer to the notion of how [Waterloo Region + Toronto] can rival California’s Silicon Valley is simple: “You can’t and you shouldn’t.” He elaborated by saying that Silicon Valley is the product of a 45+ year evolution of an ecosystem (and warned us away from that buzzword) that simply can’t be reproduced. He fields this question frequently from international visitors dropping by Stanford University where he is a Consulting Professor in the Mech Eng Design Group. Dr. Katz (say KATE-z) is also a Professor of Design at California College of the Arts and an accomplished author. He is in Kitchener to teach a 2-day Design Thinking bootcamp at Communitech. The local crowd of 200 at the breakfast talk this morning listened closely to this man who very modestly said of his extensive bio “I guess this is where I tell you about myself” before moving quickly on to the meat of his talk.
I’ve got more for you here, but first: self-promotion. There are no ads on makebright. There are no pop-ups that ask you to turn off an ad-blocker. My awesome Patreon supporters kick in small amounts of money per post with a monthly cap because they’re investing in Waterloo Region. If you dig my community-building work, please support it with your pocket change. Ok, now more story.
Barry is a Fellow at IDEO, the design firm that captured my makerly attention many years ago with their cross-discipline approach to kick-ass and human-friendly design. This was the hook that pulled me into this talk, but the takeaway was much broader and echoed my own thoughts on the best ways forward for Waterloo Region. “Leverage your own strengths”, Barry said, noting that rather than just planting a bunch of tech firms here, we need to build out a whole ecosystem that supports all constituents in that system.
An aside: it’s a big deal that Barry Katz is here… in Waterloo Region. When it comes to the deep thinkers and heavy hitters who visit our small corner of the world, I’m keeping score. This is a radically different place than it was 23 years ago when I moved into the Doon area of south Kitchener. How we think of ourselves, our collective self-image, lags the reality of the transformation. I think if we relax our Canadian modesty for a moment, we can be damned proud to play on an international stage.
Click through for a few more thoughts and pics…
On this St Patrick’s Day, when community leaders are beseeching local university students to be respectful and “stay golden” as they party in the streets, I’ve got a good news story for you of the thoughtfulness and generosity of some 4th year UW Software Engineering students. Actually, it’s a *great* story for me as a parent, citizen and earthling.
My 8th grade son Calder (left) has very keenly set his sights on The University of Waterloo Software Engineering program. At 13 years old, he’s already writing code daily, pair programming with his buddies, and checking his work into GitHub. I tried to get him interested in coding with Scratch when he was younger, but it was more recently that his self-taught dev fire got lit by Codecademy, looking at JavaScript, Ruby, Python and beyond. That led to lots of interesting discussions between us around machine instruction sets, the pros and cons of interpreted languages, platform independence, strong data typing and network protocols. Now I ask *him* questions about solving the asynchronous callback issues in my Node.js project.
I’ve got more for you here, but first: self-promotion. There are no ads on makebright. There are no pop-ups that ask you to turn off an ad-blocker. My awesome Patreon supporters kick in small amounts of money per post with a monthly cap because they’re investing in Waterloo Region. Shout to Chris Craig, my latest supporter. Thanks! If you dig my community-building work, please support it with your pocket change. Ok, now more story.
Bragging about my kid aside and to paraphrase Milton, long is the way and hard that up from high school leads to UW SE. With both of my teenagers looking at UW Eng programs, we are keen followers of Professor Bill Anderson who writes very helpfully on admissions, teaching and research in UW Engineering. Living only 2km from campus and regularly visiting for a variety of reasons, I didn’t need, though do appreciate, Professor Bill’s strong suggestion: “I highly recommend that high school applicants and future prospects take a look at all these program listings”. He’s talking about the 4th year Capstone Design Project Symposia that happen every year in the Davis Centre. Students present their group design projects, drawing on skills developed through their extensive co-op experience and their learning from school. Above, SE student Jason Hau-Ken Chan (right) talks to Calder about team unLit’s Machine Learning Game Artificial Intelligence. Jason spent 20 minutes with us explaining the project, talking frankly about challenges and fielding our questions about the project, the SE program and his co-op experience. Massive thanks to him and the other students with whom we spoke.
I’m not sure 22 year old graduating students can fully appreciate what a great service they’ve done us in talking with our young future engineer. They’re much closer to Calder’s age and better informed on SE than I am, so they make it real for him. It’s much easier to take advice from your near-peers than from your Mom and Dad. I always ask them what advice or insights they would give to their high school selves if they could go back in time. And sometimes they surprise me:
* Learn to cook! And live in UWP so you’re forced to cook. That way you’re equipped for co-op terms.
* Manage your time! There’s a big workload, especially in first year. There’s a 30% dropout rate in first year, so come prepared to work hard.
* First year Physics and Linear Algebra courses are hard.
* Use your co-op terms to explore as many different jobs, employers and cities as you can.
* You’ll need a high school average in the mid-90’s to even be considered for UW SE so study hard and develop good work habits before you get to university.
* Take on extra projects outside of school work so you can demonstrate your commitment on your UW Engineering application.
When Calder and I got back to the car as we left campus, we made a whole list from the advice these students gave. They’re paying it forward two undergrad “generations” and represent the school so well.
Click through for a few more pics+story…
Last night was another great meetup of HackerNest KW, this time at BuildDirect in the graduator. I think this is the third one I’ve attended and I gotta say that this crowd is out to meet people. Super-friendly introductions all around. What might surprise you is that the gathering is composed primarily of software devs and other tech folks who generally get a bad rap on social skills.
I’ve got more for you here, but first: self-promotion. There are no ads on makebright. There are no pop-ups that ask you to turn off an ad-blocker. My awesome Patreon supporters have helped me surpass “gas-money threshold” of $30/post. At the $320/post level, I’ll be able to devote a whole day a week to searching out these stories and delivering them to you. If you dig my community-building work, please support it with your pocket change. Ok, now more story.
The HackerNest format is simple: show up; voluntary $10 at the door; drink beer and talk to other tech people; Amaris thanks the sponsors and host, tells us about the next meetup and other tech-related jams going on. Every month the host changes, which gives a great window into a lot of different company spaces in WR. I was on a tight schedule yesterday and didn’t immediately put together that BuildDirect exists here through the acquisition of local company DraftingSPACE last June. Beth Nenniger and Laura Austin, the founders of the latter were of course chatting up the crowd last night and BuildDirect VP of Eng Klaus Salchner was in town from their Vancouver HQ.
305 King Street West in DTK. The graduator where many companies go to grow (rhyme!)
Click through for a marginally unreasonable number of photos…
Well… not permanently. But if any joint had a shot at distracting me from my carnivorous pursuits it would be The Jane Bond. Brohemus and I hit the café last week for Bro Night. We had great food and service. There’s a pretty good selection of beer, too. Mostly I just like the chill vibe there and can’t wait for the doors to open to the back patio once the weather warms up.
As we were wrapping up, my new friend Jordan Mandel arrived to DJ…
Regular readers know about the nascent (and I rarely use that word) Waterloo Tape Music Club. They know because they read my earlier post on WTMC meetup #1 back in January. An engineer, a composer and a DJ wanted make electronic noise/music and they invited the community to join them.
Here’s where I usually ask you to throw me a couple of bucks if you like this story, but let’s just get on with it. You know the drill. As Maria Popova of the very awesome Brain Pickings says: donating = loving.
This is going to be mostly photos because there are many and I want to just ease you into the weekend. WTMC is nomadic (and looking for free-no-pay venues for meetups). We were up in St Jacobs last Thursday night in the Felt Lab.
Last week I hit Salon #2 at the Critical Media Lab at Gaukel and Charles. “DW, why are you talkin’ about this again so soon?” you may be asking. Well, dear reader, I love this series: format, talent lineup, crowd. The whole deal. Yeah, I know 5:30pm is a tough time to make, but honestly there’s no perfect time for everyone, so let’s just show up. It’s fair to say that popularizing the salon sessions serves my self-interest of wanting the series to continue beyond #3.
Here’s Associate Professor Andy Houston, first speaker up, waiting with me for class to finish in the main room. Andy is acting chair of UW’s Drama Department.
I’ve got more for you here, but first: self-promotion. There are no ads on makebright. There are no pop-ups that ask you to turn off an ad-blocker. My awesome Patreon supporters have helped me surpass “gas-money threshold” of $30/post. At the $320/post level, I’ll be able to devote a whole day a week to searching out these stories and delivering them to you. If you dig my community-building work, please support it with your pocket change. Ok, now more story.
The first time I ever visited CriMeLab, I found a giant cow sculpture. The hits just keep on playing here. I could only stay for the first speaker as I had to haul up to the St Jacobs-based Felt Lab for a 7pm meeting #2 of the Waterloo Tape Music Club (post on that coming shortly).
Andy’s talk on site-specific dramatic performance was one where I had no idea what to expect. I didn’t know this was even a thing. So this is exactly the kind of talk I want to attend because it stretches me a bit.
Click through for more…
It is often the case that when you find art you dig, you find people you really click with, too. That’s how it is for me with my friends David Hoover and Darryl Wiebe at Compressed Company down on Borden Ave in Kitchener. I check in with these guys to see how their work is progressing and catch up.
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Brohemus and I hit The Sign Depot late Saturday afternoon wherein you will find the studio of Compressed Company. One great thing about this crew is that everything, including the imminent show, is a work in progress. That’s my kind of show.
Darryl was busy doing something but grabbed a rag when he saw me shooting this piece. “Wait! Let me dust it off!” I asked David if this piece had been cut on the CNC router, but he assured me it was all hand-carved from foam and coated.
I’m calling this The Year of Makerspaces because, happily, everywhere I turn I find a new one. Back in 2009 when we were founding kwartzlab, the first makerspace in Waterloo Region, we had to go to some lengths just to explain what is a “makerspace”. There are as many definitions of the word as there are reasons for building such a facility. If you’re new here, I’ll oversimplify by saying: noun | \ˈmā-kər-spās\ | a group of hands-on people equipped with a tool-filled room and a great desire to make all kinds of stuff.
Checking out an event at the Critical Media Lab a few weeks back, I got into a great discussion on accessibility to makerspaces and that led to meeting Dr. Andy Trivett (above) who was also in the house. Andy is the Director of Clinic-Centered Learning in the Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering group at the University of Waterloo. He runs the WATiMake space on UW main campus in the Douglas Wright Engineering building and he invited me in for a tour. He’s a helluva nice guy and when I tell you he’s a maker, an avid cyclist, and a native of PEI, well that all snaps together.
I’ve got more for you here, but first, gotta give a shout out to my latest Patreon supporters: Ursala Zeis, goddess of small engine repair at Meetz, and Duncan Finnigan co-creator of the ever-lovin’ Kitchener Sync homegrown TV series. If you dig my community-building work in telling these stories, please support it with your pocket change. Ok, now more story.
What follows here is an utterly unreasonable number of photos. I must have been a good guest for the WATiMake tour because Andy invited me back the following week to see 120 first year (1B) Mech students do some low-fi prototyping in his ME101 class. Got photos of both here. It all makes me happy to see people learning with their hands and the evolution of different approaches to learning.
Here’s half the WATiMake space. More accurately I should say it’s one quarter of the space since the rooms directly overhead on the third floor are being renovated to expand this awesome makerspace. WATiMake supports 1500 (yow!) students, which can mean a very packed shop and a very busy laser cutter from time to time.
All this greatness has been about five years in the making. Why it exists fascinates me. Somewhere in the past 30 years students started arriving in engineering programs with little or no hands-on experience and understanding of how things worked. Things like coffee makers and cars and all the made things of the world. Eng courses taught the theory and the idea was that co-op would provide the practice. That didn’t exactly pan out, so the approach evolved to incorporate this break-out-the-tools clinic-centered learning. Andy described a simple exercise as “Disassemble this coffee maker and describe how it works.” (Surprise: no pump!) Students need to learn to solder and 3D print and laser cut and fabricate and test and fail and redesign.
I was about 23 years old before I (we) had the internet so I had to entertain myself by disassembling hair dryers and bicycles and old radios and lawnmowers. And then making new things out of that junk. I can’t lay all the blame on the siren song of the net. Certainly the world’s increasing slant toward eliminating every single experience and object that could conceivably hurt young people has also stripped away a lot of learning opportunities. And in the post 9/11 era of fear-everything, there’s a lot more scrutiny of model rocketry and catapults and clock-building as possibly subversive. I guess we also closed all the elementary school tech shops through the ‘90’s because of perceived liability or lack of staffing budget. But however we got to now, things are turning around: we are all makers.
About a week ago, I heard UW’s Critical Media Lab was hosting a salon discussion at 44 Gaukel, which is their Kitchener lair. My very good friend/maker/artist/man-from-the-future, Mr. Bernie Rohde (above) was to talk about his work. As I told Bernie afterward, I learn something every time he talks about what he makes.
The TL;DR is a triplet:
1. Bernie is an amazing maker of electronic art
2. This is the first in a set of three planned salon meetups, you should go.
3. There is a lot of value in going to an event on your own with no idea of who or what to expect: carpe everything.
I’ve got more for you here, but first, gotta give a shout out to my latest Patreon supporter, maker/professor/knowledge integrator Rob Gorbet. I’m up to 16 salt-of-the-earth folks kicking in per-story amounts of $1 to $5. This post is pledged for $29.01 and 80% of that goes to help me keep bringing you stories. If you dig my community-building work, please support it with your pocket change. Ok, now more story.
I learned about this meetup via an email Marcel O’Gorman (CriMeLab founder) shot to the kwartzlab public discussion list. People *always* ask me how I find these interesting things to do. I consistently reply: “With an open mind and elbow grease.”
Bernie made this anthropomorphic piece above out of LED lights, wires and chips. It displays waveforms of ambient sound on the face. And it sparkles like gems when reacting to simple room noise. You may be more familiar with Bernie’s clocks which have been displayed all around town. Regardless of what he makes, there is a very sophisticated fusion of beauty and function and concept in his work. He is a fastidious craftsman.
