Reprap Boston meetup in 2012?

Completely agreeing with Dave - this was a great meet and greet. Thanks Jeff for hosting, and it was great to meet everyone else, and see machines printing - a great motivator!

Nice to meet you all. It was much harder to keep track of everyone's names (in person and on here). In case you guys have the same problem, My name is Dan and I had one of the MendelMax printers. My name is dmeehl on thingiverse.

Thank you Jeff for hosting a great time, good suggestions and lots of encouragement. Special thanks to you Ross, for your help getting this going on my Mac. I'm portable now! That help was enough to make the whole day worthwhile. But I got so much more out of it. Already looking forward to the next meetup.

Thank you all!

Ross

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You don't need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice.

Greetings all,

First off, thanks to Jeff for both organizing and hosting yesterday's meetup. Doing that was a real contribution.

@all:
In case you're like me and have problems putting names to faces, I was the repRap-less guy who collected the pizza money.

I had stopped work on my repStrap about a year ago (for reasons I'd rather not air on this forum.) Seeing the tremendous progress and meeting a bunch of local reprappers has re-kindled my interest. So thank you all for that!

Larry

I put together a facebook page today for Boston RepRap "Boston RepRap & Other Cool Stuff" .. I know most people have facebook, and use real names.. This might help drive more people to local events, and share information.

Facebook Boston RepRap

I know alot of people took pics @ Jeffs this past weekend.. I would love to see some of them posted.

Dave

It was great meeting everyone. Thanks to Jeff for hosting and doing the work to put together the meetup. I can't wait for the next one.

-keith (with the MendelMax)

Great turnout everyone! Multiple times I heard the verdict "Amazing success!". Glad to have been able to host, and glad it turned out so well!

We had over twenty people there, and NINE RepRaps. Incredible.

Not to step on any toes Dave, but in my own personal experience I've witnessed most of the technical people I know migrate over from Facebook to Google+ for their technical exchanges. One reason is that people can "follow" others without actually being friends with them, and another is that they can safely compartmentalize their acquaintances into Circles. For instance, I typically don't invite people I work with to be Facebook friends, but I have absolutely no problem following them (and having them follow me) on Google+. I'm still on both (and I'm fine being friends with any of you on both), but 99.99% of the RepRap-related discussions and traffic I'm seeing happen on Google+. There are RepRap circles with huge numbers of people I've seen on thingiverse.

So I created a Google+ page for our group (and I stuck with our initial New England RepRap name instead of using Boston, since some of the people in the group live further away from Boston (e.g. Bruce and Nicholas in Connecticut).

Create a Google+ page (I'm jkeegan@keegan.org there), follow me, I'll follow you back (I recommend creating a "RepRap People" circle to put people into.. people can be in multiple circles), and then go follow the following page:

[plus.google.com]

You can post your pictures there publicly. I'll post mine soon.

Everyone post a picture of yourself (and ideally of people you brought), as well as your name. Everyone feel free to follow each other when you see posts by them. Remember - Google+ has one-way relationships (unlike Facebook), where you can follow someone else without them following you back, but you can follow back too, as I imagine we'll all do.

Looking forward to seeing you all there soon. I'll post a list of who's who soon to follow up on who hasn't move there yet.

Pics coming!

..Jeff Keegan
[www.keegan.org]

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--Jeff Keegan (Just Another RepRap blog)

Hey jeff. Is there a way to see all the people that have joined or followed that G+ page?

Edit: Also, how do you make a *new* post on the G+ page. Seems all I can do is comment on existing posts...

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/27/2012 06:48PM by cratos.

"Pages" on Google+ are a relatively new thing and this is the first one I've created, so I'm trying to figure this out now. (The main thing is that virtually of the RepRap news/articles seem have gravitated to Google+).

Usually that's just by seeing other Google+ members in one of your circles (like a "RepRap People" circle).

In this particular case we ALSO want the ability to post on something like a message board, similar to either a Google Groups mailing list, or a Facebook Wall. I've been looking for a feature that lets just anyone post content on the New England RepRap group and I can't find how to do it - I suspect I might not be able to. I CAN make everyone an administrator, and they can all post content, but it'll all be AS New England RepRap, which isn't what we want.

What we CAN do is this:
1) Post something (shared to Public) and in it "mention" New England RepRap, by saying something like:

Here are pictures from the +New England RepRap party the other night..

(after typing the '+' and the New England RepRap part, it will make that a small box.. That's a TAG. I've made it so that the New England RepRap page automatically accepts tags from anyone).

2) Similarly you can share photos or an album to Public, then tag New England RepRap in them (that's what I did to the pictures I posted).

I made it so everyone can see who is in New England RepRap's "Team Members" circle. When someone adds New England RepRap to any of their circles (such as the Following circle, by clicking Follow), I see that, and I'm adding everyone that does that to the Team Members circle. Then you can see everyone who's following us, and add them to circles of your own.

3) For now, I'm creating a post about the 2/26 party, and people can comment on that existing post for now (until we can figure out if there's a better way, or if we use the Google Groups mailing list which everyone isn't on yet, etc).

I have a list of people that I think were there - I'll post that in the post, and people can respond to that so we can see everyone and everyone can add everyone else to their circles (and then reciprocate).

..Jeff

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--Jeff Keegan (Just Another RepRap blog)

For better or worse, at the very least here's a place for us all to post who we are.. Post comments in this post:

[plus.google.com]

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--Jeff Keegan (Just Another RepRap blog)

A few things..

So while it lets the New England RepRap account upload pictures directly, that isn't required to get pics on the page.
Go to your Google+ page and upload the pictures, then tag each one with "New England RepRap". It wants you to put a circle around the face of the "person" - I just put a small circle in the upper right corner of the picture and say that's New England RepRap. Then you can tag actual people too, as long as they have a Google+ account.

Once you are all on Google+ I'll share my RepRap circle with you, which should give you a whole ton of people to follow, providing a great stream of RepRap news and posts.

It'd really help to have last names, so I can know for sure who people were. Here are the names I know of who showed up - please help fill in the blanks:

Jeff Keegan - me, the guy whose house you were at. On Google+.
Chris Connelly - had the blue RepRap near the street - we built our Makerbot together. On Google+.
Ross (tinyenormous) - (lastname?) - Sitting at the smaller table in front of the vending machine (curly hair). RepRap had brown MDF with pegboard holes in it. (not sure if on Google+ yet?)
Dan - owned one of the MendelMaxes.. I think Dan was sitting closest to Chris. (last name? initial M). cratos. [www.thingiverse.com] On Google+ (Dan M)
Keith - owned the other MendelMax. Sitting closer to the pool. (not sure if on Google+ yet?)
Dave Daylor - soldered up the electronics for their RepRap - will be posting x/y/z axis motion video soon! On Google+.
Tim Wakelin - built the RepRap with Dave Daylor. The buddy system is good to keep people committed - Dave and Tim are RepRap buddies. We wanna see x/y/z axis motion! On Google+.
(Dave's nephew - sorry, don't remember his name - my bad)
Matt (wife is Katy). That is Matt Minuti, right? - had a RepRap-in-progress in the back corner between Dave and Ross Freeman. On Google+.
Katy Hamilton. Married to Matt. Katy was the one with the camera. On Google+.
Ross Freeman - made progress getting going on his laptop - was extruding 1.75mm filament by the end of the day. On Google+.
Kurt Overberg - white/blue tee shirt, he was the guy I saddled with taking pizza orders. On Google+.
Larry Pfeffer - had a notepad, he was the guy who collected money for the pizza. On Google+.
Tasker (Smith?) - former z-corp employee. (not sure if on Google+ yet?)

..and I need help on the rest.. Sorry, I promised virtually everyone that I would forget their names. Forgive the poor memory of the following "slots", and forgive me even more if I don't have a slot because I can't remember everyone. Either way, please provide info:

Guy who brought the donuts. European, was surprised to hear that Kiva was outsourcing development. I pronounced his name once and don't remember it. Thus, no idea if he's on Google+. Claim your identity!

Guy with aluminum rail and prototypes that he'd built for them (John maybe?) for a RepRap/milling machine he's building. Needed water for his car. Claim your identity!

Someone was one of a group of four, one of which was a blond girl. Had discussion about metal lathe. Claim your and their identities!

Again, huge apology if I missed anyone, that's a lot to remember (and I only reconstructed that list with Chris's help). I can't account for Sherpa Doug, Kent Flowers, tbmaker, Benjamin Wade, Rich (Cards98), olio, or gyronictonic, so maybe you were one of those above? Maybe not?

There ya go. Now remember, you not only want to add each other to your circles (I recommend creating a "RepRap People" circle, and/or a "New England RepRap" circle), but you also want to add New England RepRap to your circles too (so that you see posts from the group). We may have to use a mailing list for individual posts, and we can either use this or the Google Groups list that a subset of you are already on.

Once I see enough of you on Google+, I'll share a circle of those contacts to all of us, as well as another larger circle of RepRap people that I follow.

(And once you're on Google+, post on the Roll Call post link from the post above this one)

..Jeff

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--Jeff Keegan (Just Another RepRap blog)

Jeff,

I'll claim the "guy with aluminum rail" that "needed water for his car" slot and add "barely made it home" to the that

Thank you for hosting and thank you to everyone else for letting me nose around your machines.

I'm not on Google+ yet, but will work on it.

John Sangiolo
Newton

if this is still on i would like to join in too.

Hello folks,

Usually I post to the makerbot bosotn group but thought it would be fun to see if anybody else is interested.

We are planning a little 3d printer meetup on Wednesday the 16th at around 6:30-7pm in East Boston.

The plan is to talk about printers, check out different printers and generally goof off / fix things. Anyone is invited but say if you are coming so we generally know how many people show up. My experience is mostly with makerbots and my studio mate uses bfb printers so it would be fun to check out other peoples systems.

The address is 77 Liverpool street, East Boston, 02128 It is a stand alone two bay garage, the main area is off of the left bay.

[maps.google.com]

Feel free to swing by.

Aaron Double
(twotimes on thingiverse)

Hey Aaron, are you fine with me sharing that on the New England RepRap Google+ page?

(If so, can you post that, add New England RepRap to the list of recipients, and I can share it from there with your name as the original poster?)

I wish you guys would do these on weekends.. During the week is almost impossible for me - at least this one is after work, but bringing my printer, setting it up, and getting it printing takes more than an hour or so. Wouldn't there be far more time on a Saturday or Sunday?

..Jeff

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--Jeff Keegan (Just Another RepRap blog)

Go ahead Jeff, that would be fine.

Sorry about the weeknight timing, personally, I am a week off of putting my condo on the market so every weekend is booked with house crap. You are more than welcome to come without your printer if you like:-)

Aaron