Last week I was unlucky enough to find myself with a two hour layover in the New York areas finest airport, Newark. However a few e-mail’s turned this minor annoyance into several days of hanging out with New York’s coolest people, in a great space.

I was able to watch a machine take form, (a machine capable of printing anything)(makerbot.com). Be party as dinosaur skeletons were shrunk to the size of a matchbook (tinysaur). Discuss the inner nuiances of procuring free items on Criagslists (conclucion items okay, services dodgy). Be told of the next great advance in diy medical records. (a phone app capable of logging your stool history then building an animated monster based on the input (poop-agotchi?)).

Not just that glowing shoes were made, exams were marked, pizza consumed, flaming uekalalies birthed, soda drunk, twitter based revolutions begun (and won), videos edited, blogs posted to, and it all occured in the same room.

Was any of this neccesary? Was it economically productive? Was it important? probably not. But it was good fun and when you combine fun and great people the future has no choice but to take shape.

The future is being formed and it’s happening at a Hacker Space near you.

To find your nearest.
(hackerspaces.org)

in Vancouver?
(come visit oomlout’s local Hacker Space vancouver.hackerspace.ca we’re having a meeting on Tuesday (7pm) come and meet our cities coolest people.)

(photo from brepetis via Flickr)

We’ve been working with another local design shoppe recently and are excited to say we’ll be bringing a few of their lovely items to show off at Maker Faire UK. Accumulus Designs has been operating off internet (they call it the real world we think they’re terribly mistaken on that front) and have recently decided to take their goal of conquering the world via open source crochet digital.

As such Otis’s best friend Christopher (pictured above, video’d below) will be joining the oomlout entourage on our trek to Newcastle. He’s very much in his infancy at the moment but I’ve been told his type develop sensors and great personalities as they evolve.

Come visit a juvenile Chistopher at out table at Maker Faire UK (we’ll be in the marquee)

As excited about what Accumulus Designs has in store as we are? Check them out on flickr

(christopher in action)