I love Fridays… They’re the only thing that’s different about being retired so far. I try very hard to keep Fridays from being either an IBM or BETA workday.… Right now I’m spending a lot of my Fridays on a new project I’m helping lead called ‘OnBoard’ . It’s a project to get more kids designing electronics. We actually have a bit of a crisis going in that there’s a strong wheel to build more semiconductor manufacturing and electronics design around the world and yet there are not enough students going into electronics. Computer science is up by 90% in the last five years and electronics appears to be down by almost that same amount. Our idea is to create interest in electronics design in high school kids by allowing them to design fun electronic printed circuit boards. It may sound esoteric but it’s really the basis for every electronic device that you are I have.… It’s gotten so easy to create custom circuit boards… You can use online open source tools… Design your circuit. Hit a button and the thing will be completely manufactured for you on the other side of the planet and you’ll have it back in your hand to test within a week. It’s truly remarkable. Here’s some examples of the cool kinds of things that were going to help kids build
The Group I’m working with us on this is the wonderful organization http://hackclub.org which happens to be based in Shelburne Vermont. The founders Zach and Max and all of the team there. Al, Daisy, Mel, Lexi and some hack club members Kevin,. Maggie Kamalyaa… are all so great to work with.
I’m really excited about this …. watch this space !
We had beautiful weather today so when I came home from work ‘Diane and I decided to go hike Bolton. It was a little cool… But we didn’t somehow remember that there would still be some snow up there even though its only 5 miles from us as the crow flies. We’ve had some 80° days so it was natural but we had forgotten. It was a beautiful hike… though we had some deep snow to contend with.
Reminds us that will spring is here in the valleys it hasn’t quite reached the mountains yet
Had an Nice opportunity to have lunch with my friend Herman today. Herman is one of the founders of beta and came there after a long career at GE. We went out to lunch and his very beautiful Jaguar… We got to talking about our individual history’s and what it was like working i big hierarchical companies in comparison to beta. I admire him quite a bit.
Later in the afternoon my good friends and coworkers ‘Shannon and Phoebe and I spent some time wrangling a bunch of our demos into one of the beta vans. Shannon is taking them over to Plattsburgh tomorrow for a even with a large group of students. These demos are pretty… But they’re also heavy. Shannon has to start driving at 5 AM… She’s taking one for the team 🙂
Tonday was a busy build day at work. Not much I can report here. We had a face-to-face generator board meeting in the afternoon… I’m approaching my 10th year on the board and I’m really happy what generator has achieved and all that time. Next year I’ll have to step off of the board because of term limits…. Honestly I’m not really cut out for board meetings. A lot of the conversation is about money and fundraising which I know is essential but I don’t have much skill in that. Anyway… have a great deal of admiration for my fellow board members. We have such a great mix of skills there… HR people, entrepreneurs, marketing people, lawyers, accountants, and a whole ton of makers. On that… I had voiced some concern as w added new members to the board to replace the outgoing ones that we try to get more makers an artist involved. At that Meg, our leader… Asked all of the board members who considered themselves makers and or artist to raise their hands… I was so impressed about how many people had those skills…I think we’re in good hands!
As always the case after a board meetings we went over to zero gravity to get a beer (NA in my case) .. One of the folks working there was Gabe’s friend Josh… I love our small town where you can run into people wherever you go
