Praxis Makes Parfait

Looking at Making through the lens of Portland Maker Culture

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Interactive ScreenAugust 14th 2009

Banff New Media Institute

Why are makers making?

● Has consumer culture lost a certain cachet?● Has the internet let like minds find each other?● Is the DIY aesthetic more popular in any way?● Is this a way of socializing?● Is this a way of showing off?● Are we doing it for money? For beer?● Is there a need to interpret the world through

the critical lens of tactile experience? Or what?● Is this uniquely a PDX experience?

Approach

● This presentation will be example based – showing examples of Maker activity in and about Portland Oregon.

● Will share projects I contributed to - and projects of friends - all of us participating in the Maker community of Portland Oregon.

● I don't have answers as to 'why' we do this - so maybe you can provide them?

Donald Delmar Davis – Dorkbot Lab

● Hosted at Pacific Northwest College of Art● Lectures, lessons and hacking on Electronics

Urban Edibles

Marc Powell's Food Genome Project

Amber Case – Cyborg Camp

● Unconference about the future of the relationship between humans and technology

● Cyborg Anthropology, post sapiens philosophy

Ward Cunningham - Cybords

David Frech - muForth

● muforth.nimblemachines.com

Calagator.org● So many geek events in PDX that we got

together to write a calendar to track 'em... hmm.

Matthew Stadler - Suddenly.org

WhereCamp PDX

Commonalities

● Portland seems to be a hugely social geek town● The social geek seems to be a new phenomena● Cross disciplinary interests● A lot of food related interests● A lot of technology to 'support' other interests● Tend to be smaller faster fun projects● Tends to be a way people socialize● People are learning hard core skills - fast

Shape of physical space● Lots of co-working spaces● Everybody around one big table● Often each working on their own projects● Simply sharing proximity and conversation● Often highly wired via twitter● Often peeps are not spending a lot of $$$● Often peeps have a lot of free time● Often just not happy with consuming media● Often trying to rope peeps into activities

Paige Saez - Makerlab Sundays● Skill share, food, conversation, music, art● Powerpoint Karaoke, Software Hacking

Makerlab – Isoluminant Images

Makerlab – Whereis Project

Makerlab – ImageWiki / ImaWik Project

A bewildering blurring of boundaries

● Recreating patterns that we use at work, scheduling, planning, coordinating, technology

● Groups I've seen are more balanced, men women, sexual orientations, age and race

● Musicians, programmers, artists, electronics hobbyists, experts and amateurs

● For profit and open source interests● Artistic and Pragmatic technical interests● Tending to be largely secular for some reason?● Are people more comfortable now on stage?

Is it the tools that make us make?● http://barcamp.org Social engineering practices● http://wk.com - Portland Incubator Experiment● http://sparkfun.com● http://processing.org● http://etsy.com● http://arduino.cc● http://openframeworks.cc● http://github.com● http://portlandtechshop.com ● http://makezine.com … and the list goes on ...

Why are Makers making?