Our next Junk Independence Day at the Hacklab is Sunday April 9th from 2pm-8pm. Bring your e-waste or other electronics you want to get rid of, root around in other people e-waste, and walk home with new treasure. On previous Junk Independence Days people have gone home with wonderful treasures like a classic Macintosh, old but still good LCDs, Stereos and lots of random electronic bits for hacking on. Come with your e-waste and have some fun socializing with other hackers!

Maker Festival, after the great success of the component art workshop last year, is in particular looking for colourful old electronic components. If you’ve got pretty-looking capacitors, old vacuum tubes, awesome looking ICs, or any other small components that could be used as decorative pieces in a “component art” sculpture, please bring them out, and we will put them to good use. Note: they do not need to be functional, merely good looking!

Anything left at the end will be picked up on Monday April 10th and responsibly recycled by Revolution Recycling, who have been participating in our Junk Independence Days since the very first one. Thanks Revolution!

Hacklab is a big part of the Maker Festival Satellite Events this year – we’ve got EIGHT workshop/events all queued up for the Month of Making (June 15th – July 17th)! I’m especially excited about the Soldering Workshop – Component Art and the Sewing 101: DIY button up shirt workshops, but there is something for everyone! We’ll also be exhibiting at Maker Festival July 9th & 10th, at the Toronto Reference Library. Come check out our booth!

The hacklab hackaday bring your hack meetup, back for the second year. Get your (free) tickets here:
https://hacklabhackaday2.eventbrite.ca
Hacklab.TO and Hackaday are hosting a Bring A Hack meetup on April 20th 2016! Doors 7pm, talks start 8pm. Party till late.

We’ll have drinks, snacks, hacks and swag. It’s a Bring A Hack style meetup, where you bring the project you’re working on and show it off to enthusiastic supporters.

There will also be lightning talks, which are short talks about projects or ideas you’re working on.

Sophi from Hackaday will be in town to talk about the Hackaday Prize, the engineering competition with $300,000 in cash prizes (you read that correctly!). http://hackaday.io/prize

Want to get on the talks list? Let us know! (contact sophikravitz at hackaday.com)

NOTE: as with last year, we expect overwhelming demand. Seats will go fast, grab them while you can. Then we’ve got some standing room only in the back/side of the room. If you’re really interested in checking out hacklab, we also offer an Open House every Tuesday 6pm till late, so feel free to drop by.

Our upcoming 100 Member Party is THIS FRIDAY, March 11th, starting at 6pm till late. Because of its proximity to Pi Day (March 14 = 3.14) I’ve decided to combine the parties, so it will also be our annual Pi Day Party! For those who don’t know, Pi Day is an annual celebration which involves consuming a LOT of pie!

It will be free to attend, and everyone is welcome – you do not have to be a member of hacklab to come and join the fun. Please tell all your friends.

If you’d like to consume some of the pie, we ask only that you either bring a pie (sweet, savory, pizza, whatever, all kinds of pie are awesome!), or donate suggested $5 (PWYC) to hacklab. This ensures we’ll have enough pie for everyone.

Hope to see you all on Friday!

Hacklab is proud to be hosting the official launch party for the new Toronto Studio Commons!

“Toronto Studio Commons is a diverse group of independent artist studios, workshops and collaborative spaces, sharing a common goal in promoting artistic and creative expression in our city. Founded by a new generation of artists and entrepreneurs, TSC represents a wide range of operating structures, such as open studios, galleries and/or shared spaces.
Acting as an inclusive platform and forum that supports creativity in any medium, TSC seeks to empower artists and creatives through mentorship and education, providing the right tools, experience and environments for success. With our varied spaces and expertise, we promote collaboration among artists and studios across any form of media to open new avenues of creative expression.”

The launch party will be at hacklab, 1266 Queen Street West #6, on Friday November 20th, from 8-11pm. There will be snacks and reps from each of the various spaces on hand to talk about what they do. VR demo and soldering from hacklab :-)

We’ve been at our new location 1266 Queen St West #6 in Parkdale for a year! Come celebrate with us (free RSVP here) on Saturday Sept 26th, 8pm till late. We’ll have Moldover from San Francisco here making live electronic musics (take his workshop that afternoon!), and we’ll be generally having a good time – come learn to solder using the maker festival rocketship kits, or see us powering up our new backyard mini foundry! All are welcome – you do not have to be a member to attend, bring friends! BYOB.

Back by popular demand, hacklab will be having an open house this Saturday (Sept 12th), noon-6pm. Come get a tour, socialize with our members, work on your project, see our new milling machine, just as you would on a Tuesday evening, but on Saturday afternoon instead!

Hacklab will be hosting 4 satellite events for maker festival:

Hacklab 7th Birthday Party and BBQ – Saturday July 25th at 6pm – late. Tickets are $10 and get you free food and drink! Project Show & Tell event at 9pm, come and see or come and show off yours!

Hacklab open house – Tuesday July 28th, 6pm-11pm. Get a tour on our most crowded open house of the year! Come hang with fellow makers and get some last minute help on your project.

3D Hubs & ColorFabb Workshop Toronto – Wednesday July 29 6-8PM. Tickets include some samples of cool new 3D printer filament materials and workshop on how to use them.

DIYbio.TO presents The Evolving Landscape of Open Source & Biotechnology, a discussion of open source and biotech with Ryan Merkeley – CEO, Creative Commons; Abigail Cabunoc – Lead Developer, Mozilla Science Lab; Raymond Hui – Scientist, Structural Genomics Consortium; and others, including you! Free or PWYC.

Finally, Maker Festival itself is August 1st and 2nd at the Toronto Reference Library, hacklab will be an exhibitor, come and see our stuff. And the stuff of ~100 other makers! Tickets are free!

Hacklab will be at the Maker Festival this coming August 1st and 2nd, showing off our awesome member projects. Previously known as the Toronto Mini Maker Faire, it’s back this year bigger and better, with more room for exhibitors, and a upcoming set of satellite events all across Toronto and the GTA. Maker Festival celebrates making and the people who make things, including things near to dear to hacklab’s heart like electronics, robotics, 3D printing, wearables, and drones. Tickets to the event are free and you can RSVP now to avoid the waiver-signing line. If you’re a maker, the Call for Makers is still open – but hurry it closes May 30th at midnight! We’d love to have you at a table beside us at the festival!

Hacklab.TO and Hackaday are hosting a Bring A Hack meetup on April 15th! Doors 7pm, talks start 8pm.  Party till late.  Please RSVP on eventbrite: Bring a Hack, this will let us buy the right amount of beer and pizza :-)

We’ll have drinks, snacks, hacks and swag. It’s a Bring A Hack style meetup, where you bring the project you’re working on and show it off to enthusiastic supporters.

There will also be lightening talks, which are short talks about projects or ideas you’re working on.

Sophi from Hackaday will be in town to talk about the Hackaday Prize, the engineering competition that sends you to Space (SERIOUSLY).  http://hackaday.io/

In fact, Hacklab entered the competition last year and will talk about their project, Retro Populator. Want to get on the talks list? Let us know! (contact sophikravitz at hackaday dot com)

UPDATE: just to be clear, you can totally just come to see the talks and hacks, you don’t need to bring your own, and nor do you need to be a hacklab member.  Just RSVP and come have some fun!