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[janezcimerman]

Day 19

The day started great with the Design Thinking workshops. Tassilo and Mehdi told us about this great new way to go from idea thru testing into product. This technique is used in a lot of big companies all around the world and it continues to be proven as successive, that’s why I think it is great that we are learning it. I’ve never heard of this new technique before, but I am excited to use it in all my future projects. It is a shame that I am in the prototyping phase with my LEDFlowerPot already but I will try to use it from now on.

I do not feel that I made much progress on my project today. The main reason for that was my almost pointless trip to Conrad. On the other hand I learned how to sync data from Arduino and its sensors with processing which will be very useful to me in the near future.

[janezcimerman]

Day 14

I’ve finally started to work on my project. I started drawing the PCB even dough Mark was not there due to his illness. I also helped Charlie and Vanta on the inventory. The brightest part of the day was my Arduino workshop at 6 at the evening. During the day I’ve constructed a simple robot and then I taught a small girl named Julie to control its servo hands. I was amazed how quickly she learned everything I showed her. Her father who was also there said that he taught her only a couple of basics, but in everything else she was a total beginner. I was surprised because I was having Arduino workshops with older people and they were a lot slower than this little girl.

[janezcimerman]

Day 13

Today we learned how to do a PCB. It was really interesting for me because I tried to do that in the past and failed, and now I did a much better job on the first try. This taught me a lesson that cheaper isn’t always better. The board that I made was not perfect but that was due to incorrect foil material which could be easily replaced. We will see from further tests if we can discover the material that would suit us the most. Also interesting for today was my and Marc’s interview of the owner of Princess garden about what the gardener would find good to have data about. Turns out that according to him, we should instead of LED vase, build a probe which should read data deep underground. Tomorrow I plan to make more interviews to see if all florists share the same opinion. 

[janezcimerman]

Day 12

Today we started with Arduino workshops which i was leading. I found the experience of teaching people really rewarding and i can easily make a sequel to the session like Charlie asked me to. I found that a great way to explain new things to people is by connecting them to things they are already familiar with. I also found the session about lean learning and scrum type of research really helpful. It gave me ideas about how to start the LED vase marketing. I am really happy that Mark decided to join me because i will probably need as much help as i could get with my project.

[janezcimerman]

Day 10

This day took of really fast because we immediately started with a soldering session mentored by a really great guy, Clement Quinson from Electrolab. The mentor and I had a conversation on creating DIY PBC-s (Printed Circuit).  I’ve tried to do that before but failed, which is why I found his tips really helpful. Clement and I discussed about his Electrolab in France and he gave me useful suggestions on starting a MakerLab community like his back in Ljubljana. Next thing we did was a fast cleanup of the whole camp before the Creative Coding workshop began. It was quite interesting, but my Laptop battery was starting to run low and that’s why I’ve decided to help others learn as much as possible. It was a really good experience because one minute I was thinking of how I could explain things better and when I put myself to practice I noticed it takes real skill to make programming simple and interesting for ultra-beginners. 

[janezcimerman]

Day 10

Second Monday in MakerCamp Berlin started with a session with a great woman named Miho Tanaha from AirMaker. She was talking with us about building our first sturtups. She shared with us a lot of techniques and personal experiences on her path to building her startup. I really like the one on one session because I get information about specifics of my project. The fact that the people with experience take time to talk to each and every one of us just amazes me because we can’t dream of anything like that in my community. In the second session with Andre Knoerig showed a little more “realistic” side of my project and showed me that I need to think what do people need and not about what I want them to think. 

[janezcimerman]

Day8

This was the big day, the day that we finished all the final preparations. We set up all the built furniture around the place, we prepared all the drinks and so on. The workshops were a total success in my opinion because there were no people standing around having nothing to do, and according to their feedback they were all happy with them. The party was a different story because the neighbors were complaining about the loud noise and called the police that shut us down. I guess there’s always going to be people that are just problematic and are kind of a burden to the whole society around them. All in all I think we did a good job and can now start doing our own projects which I am hoping are going to be successful.

[janezcimerman]

Day 7

This was a very long day of finishing all the work for the workshops and the camp before 8.8. We worked really hard all day and I think we are prepared good for all the challenges for the future. I am curios how everything is going to go for tomorrow. I hope we get enough money to pay of the depts of that was put into the whole project, even if it is almost nothing. I feel that in the offices the work is more stresfull than outside and that they realized more about the scale of the whole project and now that they shared their experiences with us, we also got the hang of it and that motivated us.

[janezcimerman]

Day 6

Today we made more furniture and painted them pink. We finally got the tour of the Factory with all the Soundcloud offices. That was useful for us because we got the chance to see how all the big company spaces. I find it really important to know my surroundings wherever I am, so with the tour they went really in the right direction. I am really glad that we all get along so great and that there are no resentments between any of us. The atmosphere like that is really good for group work.

[janezcimerman]

Day 5 at MakeBerlin

This was the usual constructive day at the MakerCamp. Guys were busy making the chairs and the tables while the girls were painting and making decorations. At 16.00 we attended the CreativeCoding which was wery interesting and educational. I see a lot of ways implementing Processing in my future projects and I am interested in hearing more about this next time.  

[janezcimerman]

Day 4

Yesterday was really fun. Besides making the furniture and planning the party we got into one of these really cool places in Berlin where you can build your own things out of trash. We attended bicycle workshop where we actually build two working bicycles whit which we're going to wonder the streets of Berlin. After you build your thing you can actually take it you for free but they just ask you for a little donation which we gladly gave. Despite that you got your bicycle like this for free you take care of it more than if you had to pay for a new one in the shop. Also we had a very inspirational talk from Angrind Hammer who is a representative for the big save-the-environment company and is making such a big difference about how world manages its garbage.

[janezcimerman]

First productive day at MakerCamp Berlin

After the 10 crushing hours of car ride I can finally begin being productive. Till now I’ve only heard about some plans but the actual work is just around the corner. My expectations for the whole thing are quite high. In the next couple of weeks I want to see a lot of new, exciting and interesting things. I’ve actually just met a lot of new friends from different parts of the world and we’re already sharing different ideas how to make things very cool. That is why I also think the party on 8th will be great.