The Geek Group

A place to introduce yourself, and to meet other awesome people.

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Tim

The Geek Group

Post by Tim »

Hi all, this is something reasonably closely related to the interests of many people here, and of specific interest now for people wanting to build a copy of the latest design is that the have a nifty Haas sheet router at their lab in Grand Rapids Michigan. The Geek Group is like a makerspace and hands on museum on steroids and an internet group. The lab isn't fully open to the public yet, but people still use it for various things. The website is http://thegeekgroup.org/ but you'll actually get a better idea of what they do from the video blogs that one of their head people does http://www.youtube.com/user/Physicsduck?blend=7&ob=5 and the other videos they put out:
http://www.youtube.com/user/thegeekgroup

Pretty cool stuff. Similar intentions of spreading learning and knowledge that we have, just a different method and focus.
StevePoling
Posts: 290
Joined: 20 Jun 2009, 12:19
E-book readers owned: SONY PRS-505, Kindle DX
Number of books owned: 9999
Location: Grand Rapids, MI
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Re: The Geek Group

Post by StevePoling »

Tim, I've exchanged emails with Chris Boden at The Geek Group and he's really very supportive of DIY book scanning. I happen to know of a commercial book scanner in town and we've talked about maybe getting the company that owns it and is not using it to donate it. In the meantime, I think that a Grand Rapids community shared book scanner would be better off at The Geek Group than in someone's basement. This dovetails quite nicely with what Dan has said about putting DIY book scanners in every hackerspace. I'm glad to hear of another Grand Rapidian's interest.
Tim

Re: The Geek Group

Post by Tim »

That would be a pretty cool donation, see what you can do about getting them to move on it. I'm pretty sure the geek group people would be amenable to producing reasonable numbers of the DIY scanners when the design is ironed out too. All it would take is one of us to gather the materials, go in with some gcode that would work on the haas router, request some time, and go to work really. It could even be a Geek Group/DIYbookscanner.org joint fundraiser.

Eventually I think we should move to putting a scanner and post-processing computer in every library once the software stack matures. It would really be a step forward for accessibility where anyone with a print disability could take a book and either scan it or ask for it to be scanned and get a digital copy back that they could read.

But I also agree a DIY shared scanner at the Geek group would be a great start and better than one hiding. I hate to give the same old lame excuse, but I have almost no time for the foreseeable future to do it myself though. Also I'm not actually in GR, but I'm close enough to drive if I could get a block of time
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