Make San Antonio: November 2014

We are making amazing strides with Make San Antonio. We've been chatting with community members, and meeting various leaders who support our plans to build a makerspace in San Antonio. We thank you for venturing along with us as we take the appropriate steps needed to get this idea from a dream to a reality.

Here's a quick rundown of where we're at:

We have over 100 contacts on our e-mail list and we're generating buzz on social media every day. If you haven’t signed up on our e-mail list, or would like to follow us on social media, please visit makesanantonio.com.
We kicked off our first Make San Antonio survey on Reddit in October and have received several responses. If you’d like to participate, please find the survey here.
On November 5, we pitched Make San Antonio during Café Commerce’s 1 Million Cups event and received some great feedback which we are currently implementing into our business pitch and model.
We recently hosted our first event, Makevember, which was held on Saturday, November 22 at Lone Star Studio.

Makevember
Although this was our first event we had over 100 people attend Makevember and had plenty of surveys filled out, including several new email list signups. We've read through the surveys and the overall consensus was a desire for a larger event and more hands-on activities. We will put your suggestions into action for our next event and try our best to hit both points.

What’s Next for Make San Antonio?

We are actively seeking venues that could possibly house Make San Antonio. Our filtered list is any space between 5,000–10,000 sq./ft., but we will pursue any and all reasonable options.
We are scheduling meetings with successful entrepreneurs and venture capitalists who can mentor us and help us refine our business pitch, provide advice from their own experience and help us refine our current business path.
We are going to be pitching our business at several local events. As we've already pitched at Cafe Commerce’s 1 Million Cups event and received some amazing feedback we hope to replicate that in future pitches.
We are starting to toss ideas around for some events in early 2015. As we are in the initial stages, thinking of possible participants, event locations and themes, any suggestions are appreciated.
We are planning to kick off a membership crowd funding event in early 2015. We believe this will be the cornerstone that will allow Make San Antonio to receive full funding. We’re working to offer discounted membership rates for our initial contributors so keep an eye out for additional updates so you won’t miss out on some amazing deals.

In the meantime, what can you do? Support us by following us on social media, and reading our e-newsletters. Chat with your friends about us, and ask us questions. Once again, we thank you for your support so early on in this venture. We value your support in us to create a makerspace in San Antonio. We're on it!

Go Team Go! Go Make San Antonio!

To throwie or not to throwie!

Spoiler: The answer is always to throwie. Throwies are fun, easy to make by yourself or in a group, and don’t require much to create a great effect. The elements of a throwie are pretty simple: a battery, a diffused LED, a magnet and some tape. Putting all the pieces together is not only fun but educational. Once everything is together and working the adventure begins. The essence of a throwie is exactly as it sounds, you have to throw the light onto a metal object, thus “throwie”. It may take a few tries but they’ll eventually stick if you follow the throwie recipe. So what’s so great about a throwie on a piece of metal? What if you have 10 different colored lights or 200, like we had in our own wedding? The effect produced is pretty amazing. The life expectancy of these lights is roughly 2 weeks, but in our experience most of our lights were still working at two months and even at a year old there were a handful of lights that still had some life in them. The LED life expectancy is quite a bit longer than the battery so if you can retrieve the throwie after they go dim you can replace the battery and have a brand new working throwie once again. If you haven’t heard of or about throwies before, check out this instructable on the topic. There are some pretty bare metal bridges around San Antonio that are just begging for some color... What would you do with them?

Here's some inspiration: