Friday, October 1st from 6PM to 1AM – Reception at Kwartzlab Hackerspace, on-the-fly lightning talks, badge hacking

Saturday, October 2nd from 9AM to 5PM – Main event at Kitchener Schwaben Club, special guest keynote (TBA), talks, presentations & workshops

Tickets are $40cdn, which covers the main event, the reception on Friday and one very cool and very hackable ARM-based event badge!

Tickets can be purchased using this link for EventBrite: http://sooncon.eventbrite.com

Since SoOnCon 2010 is happening the same weekend as the most excellent Nuit Blanche art festival in Toronto, we also have a Seat Reservation option for transportation to Toronto on Saturday Night. The ride will not be free (especially if a bus is rented) but it’s cost will be announced shortly.

If you’d like to do a talk or workshop at the main event on Saturday, a Call for Papers link will be announced shortly. We also plan to have some impromptu lightning talks during the reception at Kwartzlab on Friday for anyone who’s interested to present.

Please check the sooncon.ca website for the latest news & event schedule (once it’s announced). Directions & accommodations to the two venues (Kwartzlab and the Schwaben Club) are available through the EventBrite link above. Tickets are limited so if you wish to attend, please reserve them now! Hope to see you there!

Cheers!

Ben Brown
Treasurer, Kwartzlab Society Inc.

http://www.kwartzlab.ca

Course fee: $120 + HST (includes all materials)

Class sizes range from one-on-one to groups of up to four.

Scheduling: To schedule, please contact Dana directly by emailing dsarafinchan@ this domain.

If you have ever had any curiosity about making something with electronics, then please join us. Anyone and everyone can learn to make cool things. And it’s fun. And easy! You can learn to make something cool with electronics in one workshop, and take your cool project home with you!

There will be plenty of cool kits available to build, including:

* TV-B-Gone (turn off TVs in public places!)
* Brain Machine (Meditate, Hallucinate, and Trip Out!)
* LEDcube (cool cube of blinky lights!)
* Mignonette Game (play fun games!)
* Trippy RGB Waves (interactive colored blinky lights!)
* MiniPOV (more cool blinky lights!)
* MintyBoost (charge your USB enabled gadgets!)

and for the more advanced:

* microcontroller programmers (program all your AVR family chips!), Arduino clones (make just about anything!), and more.

More info on most of most of these projects is available on Mitch’s website: http://www.CornfieldElectronics.com (click on the “maker faire” tab).

Mitch is the brains behind Cornfield Electronics, and one of the co-founders of Noisebridge hackerspace in San Francisco. Mitch is best known as the inventor of TV-B-Gone, but his list of great hacks and cool electronics includes a lot of other great projects. When he is not at Noisebridge building awesome and amazing things, he is on the road from hackerspace to Hacker-Con and back again, sharing his love of electronics.

In summary:

Learn to solder electronics kits with the famous Mitch Altman at Site 3 coLaboratory. Stop by our open house anytime after 7:00 on Thursday, August 5th, choose a kit for $10-30, and we’ll help you build it! Everyone is welcome!

RSVP’s are not necessary, but are appreciated. You can do so for free (or with an optional donation) here. Please note: this registration is just for our information, and does not guarantee a spot; it looks like we’re going to be busy, and it’ll be first-come, first-served. That said, the workshops will be happening for several hours, so hopefully if we share soldering irons we’ll be able to accommodate everyone. Worst-case scenario, you can buy a kit from Mitch and we’ll help you put it together some other time!

Intro to KiCad: Designing Your Own Printed Circuit Boards

KiCad is an open source software suite for electronic design automation (EDA) – designing schematics of electronic circuits and printed circuit boards (PCB). It is similar to the popular EAGLE design software, but is completely free and has no restrictions on size and commercial use.

This workshop is an introduction to KiCad, where we will cover all steps of creating a PCB for a simple electronic circuit:

* Using eeschema to create a circuit schematic
* Creating new parts and part libraries
* Using cvpcb to assign footprints to components
* Creating new footprint modules
* Using pcbnew to lay out the PCB and components
* Using gerbview to verify the Gerber files used for fabrication
* Resources for board fabrication

If you’re interested in moving from breadboards to custom PCBs for your project, this workshop is for you.

More details and registration at:

http://site3kicad.eventbrite.com/

Chiptunes is a music scene that uses retro gaming hardware to generate music. This includes original work (some of my favourites include YMCK, Anamanaguchi, and, of course, my co-instructor, jefftheworld) as well as some mind-blowing covers (such as Weezer – The 8-bit album and Kind of Bloop).

Want to try it yourself? Then come to our introductory workshop on Sunday, August 15th, from 1:00-5:00. We have a stack of Game Boys for you to borrow or buy to get you started making your own bleeps and bloops! We have three different options: workshop only, where you borrow or bring your own gear; workshop plus a USB rewritable Game Boy cartridge to hold software and song data; and workshop, cartridge, and system. Note that if you want to take home a cartridge, you must preorder.

Register here! If you have any questions, please e-mail me at jonathan at this domain.

Saturday, July 24, 2010
Noon until 2am (details below)
At our new workshop at 718R Ossington Ave.

This will be the first event in our new space. Not just a party, we’ll be running informal workshops and showing off the projects we’ve been working on. We want to give people an idea of who we are and what we’re doing, and hopefully inspire people to get involved and create awesome things.

12pm – 5pm : WORKSHOPS

Learn to solder with fun electronics kits! Turn a pencil into a musical instrument, or build a universal TV remote that only has an off button. Find out what the Arduino is, and how it’s revolutionizing interactive art. Make music with Game Boys. Learn how to draw a four-dimensional cube (and what that means). Play with our 60W laser cutter (if it arrives in time!).

5pm – 8pm : GALLERY

See demonstrations of some of the projects we’ve been working on. Circuit boards. LED light installations. Fire that you can control with the power of your mind. Details of the Heart Machine, a very large interactive fire art sculpture, and Flux and Fire, our project for this year’s Nuit Blanche.

8pm – 9pm : BREAK

You’re welcome to stay, but maybe you want to get dinner at one of the amazing restaurants nearby? We suggest Lalibela for great Ethiopian food. Why just a break? Because…

9pm – 2am : PARTY

Stay ’til late for music and some drinks. Meet other local artists, share ideas, talk shop. More party details coming soon!

WANT TO STAY UPDATED ON WHAT WE’RE DOING?

More about Site 3 : http://site3.ca/
Facebook group : http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=407649745533
Announcement list : http://site3.ca/mailman/listinfo/announce_site3.ca
Community discussion list : http://site3.ca/mailman/listinfo/discuss_site3.ca

The event description, also from the TASK website:

While TASK usually focuses almost exclusively on information security issues, this month we’re proud to present something a little different for June: The TASK MAKER’S MONTH.

Several TASK “regulars” are involved in what’s informally known as the “Maker Community”; small, grass-roots groups that meet to push the limits of home-grown technology projects and artistic expression with a fierce DIY ethos. We invited a few groups to present their current projects and interests and we’ll be receiving presentations from Seth Hardy (Site 3 coLaboratory) and James Arlen (Think|Haus) – both leaders in the Canadian Maker’s space.
Both speakers have presented at previous DEFCONs; we expect that the TASK Maker’s Month will have material both interesting and offbeat! We hope you’ll join us.

- 1 Free Burning Man 2010 Ticket ($300):   Stephan Tangey*+
- 1 Free Ticket to Harvest Festival 2010 ($70):   Linda Christina*+
- 1 IPod Nano ($169+):   Michael Taranko*
- 1 1Pod Touch ($219+):   Jen Polyzotis*
- 1 Asus Eee PC 1005HAB Netbook ($379+):   Paul Akerman
- 5 Prolynkz Media Players for Playing Music and Watching Video ($79):  Lara & Aubrey* / Carson Foster(twice!) / John Yoxall* / Drake
- 1 Polaroid DVF-130GC Pocket Video Camera:   Adina Douglas*
- 1 Custom Made Vest from Embody Clothing & Accessories ($200+):   Adam Smith
- 2 One Hour Massages (Toronto):   Megan McDonald*+ / Chris Williams*+
- 1 Hair Cut from TRG Hair Studio (Toronto):   Alex Ho*+
- $75 Gift Certificate for Custom Knitting from Claire Dalmyn:   Tim Harris*+
- 1 Hour Private Fire Spinning Lesson from New Model Circus Army:  Mark Gorcey*+
- Saturday Afternoon Private Sail Cruise for 4 around Toronto Island:   Jen Polyzotis*+
- 4 Gift Certificates for Intuitive Tarot Reading & Energy Healing Session ($50+):   Maria Pelufo / Robert Shields* / Nora Kerr / Chris Williams*

* indicates winners not present to pick up their prizes; prizes will be mailed or delivery arranged.
+ indicates prizes which are delivered via email notification to the winner and donor.

Schedules and formal registration will be announced shortly after we’ve moved in to the space. In the meantime, some topics we’re planning on covering soon include:

• Beginner soldering
• Introductory electronics and programming with Arduino
• Networking with Arduino
• Working with EL wire
• Circuit board design
• Introductory welding/metal shop
• Laser-cutter basics
• Wearable electronics
• Geotagging photographs
• Oil-based printmaking
• Stained-glass workshop
• Mold-making
• Making music with Game Boy: intro to chiptunes

And that’s just our initial list!

If you’re interested in hearing more about courses as information becomes available, sign up for our announcement e-mail list or subscribe to our RSS feed. If you’d like more information, or to “pre-register” for a specific course, please email me directly at jonathan (at-sign) site3.ca.

Yes, these are actual pictures of our laser. It’s on the way! Look for it soon at a workshop near you.