[Lab] Intro

[Emily Daniels]

Hi Lab List,

I thought I'd stop lurking about unawares on the list and say hello. I'm
moving up to Ottawa in August from Boston and I'd love to hang out and help
out with what's been started so far in terms of a space and community for
art & tech hybrid projects.

A bit about me:

For 7 years I was a part of an educational company and directed the building
of a new school within the company for English language teaching in
Cambridge, MA. We were pretty successful but I felt a big void in the lack
of creativity in the job (my degree is in art-making).

Shortly thereafter I joined a hackerspace in Somerville called Willoughby &
Baltic and volunteered to curate the Dorkbot community, in which I became
intensely involved. Dorkbot grew in size from 30 members to over 600 and it
was through the group that I met my former business partners. My friends
convinced me to quit my day job and start a company based on interactive
design and art/tech projects.

We founded DINO Interactive Studios and specialized in developing games and
applications for the iPhone and iPad as well as interactive web experiences.
We combined our efforts with a non-profit science and educational startup
called Sprout and rented a space for our offices and tools that we also made
available for free to the public. We had a bit of success in making games
for the kids edutainment market and organized weekend-long project hacking
and making events in conjunction with the Dorkbot community. Ultimately I
decided to part ways with DINO as it was increasingly difficult for me to
work remotely while I spent time in Ottawa (my bf is here and I wanted to be
up here).

Another fun project I'm involved in is the Awesome Foundation, which is a
group of individuals giving micro-grants to fund innovative and atypical
projects that usually get lost in the red tape of bureaucracy. Since it's
inception over a year ago it's gone viral and others have established
branches in NYC, Providence, San Francisco, London and now Ottawa with crazy
smart amazing people.

My whole point to to this rambling story is that I'd like to pick up where
I'm leaving off in Boston and help grow and support the hacker/maker
community in Ottawa. I'm convinced that random interesting people will come
out of the woodwork and want to take part in DIY open source projects and
use Arduinos and Processing as I've seen it with my own eyes here! Also, I'm
looking for part time or full time work so if you know of any good
opportunities please send my way.

I'm findable on twitter @emdaniels and have a personal maker site at
emilydaniels.com. Hopefully this can start a larger conversation and I can
put my experience to good use when I'm up! I look forward to meeting you at
the July 14th meeting or if you'd like to meet up before then I'll be in
Ottawa from July 1st until the 21st!

Emily

-- 
Emily Daniels | emilydaniels.com | @emdaniels | awesomefoundation.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://artengine.ca/pipermail/lab/attachments/20100628/10d50919/attachment.htm>