Conference wrap up, and here comes another one!

TechNinja — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 19:34:18 +0000

Sylvia and I had an awesome time at our very first local conference, Dare 2B Digital 2012! And now coming March first, our second, the Digital Media & Learning conference in downtown San Francisco. Oh, so much to do....

After a chance meeting with the awesome Mozilla staffer Lukas Blakk, Sylvia and I were invited to the Dare 2B Digitial conference to help teach girls about tech, so of course we said yes! On February 11th Sylvia and I got up at 5am with CraftNinja mom and headed out to the eBay campus in San Jose to get ready for troves of young women (7th to 10th grade), eager to learn all about technology. With her trusty Makerbot, and laptop primed and ready with the incredibly awesome HTML5 powered TinkerCad, Sylvia walked them all through the history and basic workings of DIY era 3D printers, followed by helping excited volunteers through creating their first 3D model, then printing it before their eyes. With most being able to design, print, then take home their very own piece. Though it was planned we'd be able to borrow some Mozilla laptops for the girls to each use Tinkercad in groups, this fell through and we improvised with paper and taking turns (which almost worked). With the exception of a sudden Makerbot power supply failure 10 minutes into the 2nd session (and subsequent fevered run to Frys electronics to replace it), everything went smoothly, at least for our first conference.

After 8 hours of teaching, learning and making things, we ended up with a great sense that what we're doing (no matter how imperfect), is really helping kids get connected, not to mention we made a lot of new friends (including our new awesome buddy from Microsquish, Kenny Spade!). Sylvia even took up the first half of the San Jose Mercury New's take on Dare 2 be Digital. One adventure down, a few million more to go.

Next up on the agenda, DML 2012: We'll be in town for all three days thanks to the incredible people at Mozilla for sponsoring us!! Sylvia and I will be up on stage for the featured panel on Democratizing Learning, and then later on for the "Science Fair" where we'll be showing off my "Sylvia inspired" Squishy Circuits powered rocket ship game using HTML5 and CSS3!

Also some exciting news, during DML we'll be taking a quick side Adventure over to Make Magazine headquarters in Sebastapol for a 3D photo-shoot on a zipline. The fun never stops :)

Sylvia's Super-Awesome Maker Show! - teaching

Conference wrap up, and here comes another one!

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