innovation.RIT.edu

Our resident Hacktivist, RemyD trekked out into the frosty Tuesday evening in search of Rochester’s newest Hackerspace, InterlockROC. The space, located at 1105 E. Main St., sits behind the Door #1 entrance to the massive brick business complex.

(Door #4 it turns out, goes to another allied non-profit organization, RRCDC or Rochester Regional Community Design Center, and we thank you Joni Monroe whose board meeting was totally crashed, but still managed to help Remy find his way. We’ll be back for your story soon.)

Down the cement stairway, and through the double doors, a din of tech-talk and LCD backlights fills the room. Those without chairs sit on “re-purposed” computer cases. A projector at the front displays the previous meeting minutes (on a wiki ofcourse), and business is conducted in an orderly fashion. Introductions are made, old business is covered, new business is brought forth, announcements are opened to the floor, and then the lightning-talks begin.

This is most fortuitous for us as newcomers to the space being able to get a feel for many of the people and projects all at once, a veritable sampler of Rochester hacker-culture. The topics touched on everything from book binding, to bump keys, to wii-motes, to machine gun mechanics. Our favorite quote of the evening came from our friend Alan Dipert, President of InterlockROC before dropping into an informative adventure through the history of human, machine, and electric motor powered artillery.

“Machine guns did for Humanity, what internal combustion did for the environment”

After the lightning talks, Remy met with the core organizers, and captured this quick introduction to some of the folks behind interlockROC.

InterlockROC Quick Facts and Links:

• General Meetings: Tuesday Nights, 8pm
• Programming Nights: Wednesdays, 8pm
• Linux Workshop: This Saturday only, 12pm to 4pm
• 1115 E. Main St.
• Meetup Group
• Website URL
• Wiki
• IRC: irc.freenode.net #interlock
• IRC: irc.slashnet.net #interlock
• President: Alan(at)interlockROC(dot)org
• Vice-President: Mark(at)interlockROC(dot)org

Tags: hackerspace, hacktivism, interlockROC, OpenInnovation, Opensource

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 at 3:40 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.