Posted in Artists, Craftspeople, DIY Fun, Entrepreneurs, Florida Inventors, Hobbysts, Inventions, Makers, Mini Maker Faire, Music, Performers, Radio, Robotics, Tampa Bay inventors, Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire, Toys, Young Makers
Tagged Learning is for Everyone, MAKE, Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire, Young Makers
Last month, Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire organizer, Learning is for Everyone, teamed up with the local interactive art installation group, Urban Conga, also a Maker at the Faire, in a collaborative 48 hour build project called The Deconstruction. The dates of The Deconstruction conveniently coincided with the University of South Florida Engineering Expo, so we thought we’d turn it into a crowdsourced effort, and literally made it into a “deconstructon” project. The inspiration for the idea came from another TBMMF Maker, Chuck Stephens, the Ring Master behind the Noise Circus and a Maker of incomparable proportions, who had seen a similar effort at a local school.
The project was successful beyond all our wildest dreams! Busloads of kids dug 
in with a deconstructive fervor comparable only to that of Ugors in the Paradise System. (See Star Wars Trivia) Many had rarely or never experienced the joy of taking something apart just for the fun of it. Chuck proved an encouraging deconstruction guide, showing students everything from how to properly handle tools to providing guided tours of the insides of everything from computers to cell phones.
Urban Conga proved adept at re-imagining the detritus of old equipment remains and from their ruins grew the Tree of Technology – and our team of Crowdsourced Creatives actually won The Deconstruction!
Since then, the Technology Tree has been on the road with Urban Conga – to the Tampa Downtown Market and the Gasparilla Arts Festival, and it’s coming to Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire on Saturday, too.
And we’ll be deconstructing some more, just for the pure fun of it! This time, we’ve got a lot more stuff , more tools and a more measured approach to making the most out of taking things apart. We’re providing for metal salvage and e-waste, and attendees will be invited to take any parts they want for hacking or reuse, later.
So if your kids – or the kid in you – have always wondered what’s inside that old CD player, computer tower, keyboard, phone, or any number of various and sundry electronic and mechanical things, be sure to stop by the Deconstruction Zone on Saturday, grab a pair of safety glasses and hang out for a while!
[The Tree of Technology] – Urban Conga & Li4E from Ryan Swanson on Vimeo.
At least some of them – More are coming on board in the next couple of days, bringing a rich variety of science, art, craft, engineering , music, food, and more, showcasing and celebrating the inventive spirit and the amazing work of all kinds of makers across Tampa Bay and beyond.
The great folks listed here are bringing art, music, robots, games, puzzles, inventions, ham radio, crafts, trades, jewelry, electronic gadgets and gizmos and much, much more for everyone to experience and enjoy!
Keep watching our Maker page throughout the rest of the week, to see the growing list of Makers!
See you at Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire 2013!
Posted in Artists, Craftspeople, DIY, DIY Fun, Entrepreneurs, Florida Inventors, Hobbysts, Inventions, Make, Makers, Mini Maker Faire, Music, New technology, Radio, Robotics, Tampa Bay inventors, Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire, Toys, Young Makers
Tagged Florida Inventors, inventors, Learning is for Everyone, LI4E Makerspace Project, MAKE, Makerspace, new technology, Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire, Young Makers
We are! Maker applications and ticket sales go live January 2, 2013! Click here to see what we’re looking for in Maker applications, for a head start on your application. We’re deeply grateful to our event partners, The Concourse, Pasco County Libraries and Learning is for Everyone, and to our fantastic event planning team who will be working behind the scenes to do everything possible to help Make Your Day, at Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire 2013
Posted in Artists, Craftspeople, DIY, DIY Fun, Entrepreneurs, Florida Inventors, Hobbysts, Inventions, Make, Makers, Mini Maker Faire, Model Makers, Music, New technology, Radio, RC, Robotics, ROV, Sponsors, Tampa Bay inventors, Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire, Toys, Young Makers
Tagged Florida Inventors, inventors, Learning is for Everyone, MAKE, Maker application, Pasco County Library System, Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire, Tampa inventors, The Concourse, tickets, Young Makers
Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire is pleased to announce a collaborative agreement with the remarkable folks at The Concourse, a fantastic and multifaceted facility that has served as home to the world class Rockus Maximus: Battle of the Bands 16 and other knock-your-socks-off events!
Learning is for Everyone is delighted to be partnering with the Concourse, the 
Rotary Club of New Port Richey, and the amazing Pasco County Library System to bring you the 2nd Annual Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire on March 23, 2013. We’ll have 10,000 awesome square feet of covered pavilion space, facilities for indoor workshops and classes, and acres of outdoor exhibit space.
In short, we have an entire massive facility that enables us to produce an event easily double the size of our inaugural event held earlier this year.
So save the date, and fire up your imagination – and your soldering irons and blow torches! – hop aboard our Facebook page and Tweet it from the treetops, and start getting ready now for Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire 2013!
It will be ELECTRIC! 
Planning out the Red Bull Creation entry
They did it! Learning is for Everyone’s LI4E Makerspace Project team will be representing Tampa Bay, Florida and Learning is for Everyone as a finalist in the 2012 Red Bull Creation Contest. Provided only with an arduino open source microcontroller – called a Bullduino, in Red Bull’s honor – teams from around the country put together a device of their choosing to try to impress judges with their creativity and engineering skills.
That was easy!
The LI4E Makerspace team created a Rube Goldberg-esque Red Bull Wake-Up Call alarm clock, and entered a video of their contraption into the competition on July 3. The clock, in their words, is “an over-engineered beauty .. ” Apparently Red Bull agreed!
The Red Bull launcher
Red Bull Creation judges selected the LI4E Makerspace team and 11 other teams from around the country as finalists, who will now compete in a 72 themed build that kicks off July 19. After a public voting period, top scoring teams get to take their creations the World Maker Faire 2012 in New York, in September. Besides getting to showcase their creations, Red Bull Creation finalists will be vying for a top prize of $10,000.
LI4E Makerspace and Team Duct Tape members, with mentor Paul Markun, of Tampa Technik.
The LI4E Makerspace Project is an effort by Learning is for Everyone (LI4E) to bring community makerspaces to Tampa Bay. The LI4E Makerspace team is an intergenerational, multi-talented crew of youth and adults, who are students, writers, artists, programmers, engineers, craftspeople and all-purpose tinkerers – a cross section of the community that would value and use a makerspace. Many of the team members are also members of LI4E’s award winning FIRST Tech Challenge team, Team Duct Tape, recently returned from competing in the FIRST World Championship in St. Louis, MO.
LI4E’s motto is “No Limits!” and the Red Bull Creation team exemplifies that no-holds-barred creativity in all they do. More information about the LI4E Makerspace team can be found here .
Congratulations, LI4E Makerspace Team! We’ll be following closely next week,and fully expect to see one or both of their creations at Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire 2012!
Posted in Artists, Contests, Craftspeople, DIY, DIY Fun, Makerspace, Mini Maker Faire, Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire, Young Makers
Tagged Learning is for Everyone, LI4E Makerspace Project, LI4E Makerspace team, Makerspace, Red Bull Creation Contest, Red Bull Wake Up Call, Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire, Team Duct Tape, Young Makers
In Libraries make Room for High Tech Hackerspaces, NPR reports this weekend on a promising trend in the redefinition of libraries, or perhaps more accurately, in the growing realization of the amazing and wonderful potential of public libraries not only as pivotal centers of learning and discovery, but also of creation!
Learning is for Everyone (LI4E) , the community learning organization organizing Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire, has long believed libraries and museums can and should be key learning centers in our communities. We wholeheartedly agree with Thomas Gokey, who teaches a course in Innovation in Public Libraries and narrates the film below, that libraries are “democracy engines… places where people go to inform themselves and inform their own lives…” , where we “learn to hack the social codes we live in.”
With Maker Bots bringing 3D printing capabilities within reach of more people, efforts are already underway at libraries across the country to create public hackerspaces. The Fayetteville Free Library in upstate New York calls their planned Fabulous Laboratory, an “evolution of a computer lab”. The “FabLab” will have about 8,000 square feet and employ computer driven power tools Allen County Public Library, in Fort Wayne, IN has created a hackerspace portable in a trailer in its parking lot.
We love the notion, proposed in the film, of “the world as one big public library,” especially if its got 3D printers and power tools!
