We’ve joined together with think|haus from Hamilton, diyode from Guelph, and Kwartzlab from Kitchener-Waterloo to put on a mini hackerspace conference!

Where: think|haus, 152 Niagara St, Hamilton ON

When: October 2-3, 2009

Who: Makers from all over southern Ontario and beyond. You should come too!

Cost: $25 for the first set of tickets. Use the EventBrite system at http://minisooncon.eventbrite.com or contact Seth (shardy@aculei.net) to buy a ticket.

On Friday October 2nd, the conference will host a BBQ and party. Bring cool projects to show off. Awesome badges will be handed out.

On Saturday October 3rd, think|haus will host talks, how to sessions, and a projects gallery at which anyone who is interested can give a 20 minute talk on something related to creating projects, show people how to build/take apart/modify something, or show off their cool projects.

Some confirmed talks so far are:
• You Let Your Kid Do What? A brief story about children and taking advantage of applied engineering skills in a positive way.
• Intro to Kite Aerial Photography Come learn about the kinds of kites you can use to fly your camera, what you need to build your own kite, and how to modify your camera to take pictures automatically.

Check out the website at http://minisooncon.ca and add your own talks or projects.

Thanks to Adina from think|haus for the original post I’ve semi-stolen. :D

As of July 1, HackLab.TO has been around for a year! You know what that means: it’s time for a party!

On Saturday, July 18th, we’d like to invite all of our members, our friends, our supporters, and our community to come join us to celebrate starting our second year. Let’s look back on everything we’ve done this past year, and think about what we can do to make the lab even better over the next year. Oh yeah, and let’s also just hang out, listen to some good music, have some cake*, and drink some beer**. That’d be pretty cool too.

In summary:
WHO : You!
WHAT : HackLab one year party!
WHEN : July 18th, 7pm
WHERE : …at the HackLab, of course.

* There may or may not actually be cake***. Want to bring some?
** Alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages are both ok, we don’t judge here!
*** The first person to make a Portal reference is fired.
**** Why are you reading this? There is no reference to it!

Hackers on a Plane is happening again!

Join us as we go to Hacking at Random 2009. WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG. Seriously, this was so much fun two years ago, and will be even better this time around… and you really can’t beat the price. Get on the plane!

From http://www.hackersonaplane.info/har-hacking-at-random/:

Join us as we depart from New York City and head off to experience Hacking at Random 2009. For the same price as two years ago you get:

* Round trip airfare from New York City to Dusseldorf, Germany
* Transportation from Dusseldorf to the HAR campsite
* Paid full admission to HAR
* Accommodations in an on-campsite lodge at HAR
o Nights of August 13-16 in a permanent structure
o Hot showers
o Sheets and towels included
* The opportunity to mingle with the best and brightest in the global hackerspace community

Wow, that’s a lot of stuff for only $1,337. What’s not included?

* Your transportation to and from New York City.
* Meals while at HAR and after the camp.
* Accommodations for the evening of August 17 and 18. This time is on your own and activities and lodging on these days is not included in the price. You can join a hackerspaces tour, head out to Amsterdam or Berlin…whatever you’d like!
* Transportation back to Dusseldorf is not included. (And we’re not responsible if you miss your flight back home!)

You will need to be in New York City on August 12 at 10 AM

Our current booking is scheduled to return to New York City on August 19 by 5 PM.

Because we have a group fare, we require all names to be confirmed before tickets can be issued.

Please e-mail info@hackersonaplane.info with any questions.

Yes, you read that right.

Let’s all welcome a new user to Twitter: hacklabTOilet, the (you guessed it) hacklab toilet.

Here’s the full writeup!

Hello, everyone from Torontoist!

HackLab.TO is having a job fair!

We know a lot of people who work in various tech fields. Some people are looking to fill positions at their companies, some are looking for new jobs, and others are finishing university and looking to break into the field. We’d like to help get you in touch with each other.

Bring your resume: we’ll have representatives from companies actively looking to hire people. Bring your business cards: we’ll have a lot of people from the local tech community who are interested in professional networking.

Attendance is free to people who are job hunting, although we ask that people use our ticketing system to RSVP– our space is limited, and we don’t want to be overwhelmed! The event will run from 10AM to 4PM on April 4th, with no registration for specific time slots.

For more details, and to sign up:

http://hacklabjobfair.eventbrite.com/

Spread the word, especially for companies recruiting or people looking for contract work– the more job opportunities available at the fair, the bigger of a success it will be.

Notacon is coming up, and it would be cool to get a bunch of people from Toronto to come along.

NOTACON, an annual conference held in Cleveland, Ohio, explores and showcases technologies, philosophy and creativity often overlooked at many “hacker cons”. Our desire is not to supplant other events, but complement them and strike a balance that has gone unnoticed in our community for far too long.

With each new year we build upon the successes and knowledge of the previous years. Our goal is to enlighten, educate, and entertain attendees, presenters, and staff alike. We do this by finding new ways to apply technology to graphics, art, music, or social interaction.

Notacon espouses an ethos of exploration, participation and positive contributions. Hence, while some of the material we may cover is controversial or potentially “black hat” in nature, we feel it is important to openly discuss all topics so that others can learn from the experience and create something good, fun or interesting from it.

Events during Notacon run from Friday morning through Sunday afternoon. These include over 40 presentations, contests such as “Anything but Ethernet”, game shows, prize giveaways and a whole lot of who-knows-what. Anything can happen, and usually does. New in 2009 we will be offering a Thursday night sampler, which will be free of charge and open to the public. More information will be posted as it becomes available.

If you would like to join the community, please explore our getting involved section. Be sure to check out our archives from previous years, featuring information and recordings of our past content.

Last year we had multiple cars head down (it’s only a 5 hour drive to Cleveland), and good times were had by all. It would be great if we could organize a caravan this year and bring as many people as we can to show support for this excellent event.

There will be a “temporary hackerspace” set up at Notacon, with help from people from other spaces including NYC Resistor, HacDC, and the not-yet-opened Pumping Station One. This will include representing and showing off the hacklab: our space, what we’re doing, our projects. Anyone who’d like to help out, whether just by attending or by putting something together to show off, would be very welcome!

A challenge has also been thrown down from people in these other spaces: we should show them (and everyone else) some of the cool things we can do by participating in the Anything But Ethernet competition. This can be the place for us to show off and engage in some friendly competition with our friends in hacker spaces across North America… anyone want to submit something?

I’ve been wanting to get back into playing go. There’s also this neat lab space that I can use for hosting events (maybe you’ve heard of it). While thinking about these two things, I figured that maybe they would work well together!

So, I’m going to try to start a bi-weekly go night at the HackLab. Starting next Monday, from 6-9(ish) PM, I’ll be trying to get back into playing this awesome game, and you should join me. I’ll do my best to bring extra boards so everyone who shows up can play, but if you have one, please bring it!

If you don’t know how to play, that’s ok too, as I’m more than happy to teach people.

I hope to see people there next week!

Project Blinkenlights will be contributing to Nuit Blanche this year with Stereoscope lighting up Toronto’s City Hall. From their page:

Stereoscope

After a long break, Project Blinkenlights is coming back big time in Toronto, Canada this year. Targeting the landmark building of Toronto City Hall, the group is participating in this year’s Nuit Blanche all-night art event on October 4th, 2008. The installation’s name “Stereoscope” reflects the special nature of the building with its two curved, opposing facades effectively creating a three-dimensional appearance.

Not having rested in the recent years, Project Blinkenlights has developed new technology to wirelessly control the lights placed behind the 960 windows of City Hall allowing for a large scale visual concert during the night in downtown Toronto.

Public Participation

As usual, Project Blinkenlights invites the public to be a part of the installation by opening up a variety of ways to interact with and provide content for Stereoscope.

Among the more traditional features, everybody can play classic computer games on the facade simply by using a mobile phone. The two upper parts of each tower serve as dedicated playgrounds each offering separate telephone numbers for individual gameplay. These numbers will be published on-site beginning the week before Nuit Blanche so that people can get the information where they need it – at Nathan Philips Square in front of City Hall in Toronto.

A simple animation tool and open animation data formats enable you to to create simple movies for Stereoscope – addressing one of four parts of the whole facade. Focusing on simple, low-resolution imagery, Project Blinkenlights wants to revive the spirit of the original Blinkenlights installation in Berlin that obtained its charme from the down-to-earth, barebones design of low-res imagery.

For advanced graphic artists, the group provides a set of tools running on Macintosh computers to design complex animation design that serves as the background imagery and core appearance of the Stereoscope installation.

In addition to our usual events, we’ve got two upcoming parties at the lab that you may want to join us for.

The first is our incorporation party– to celebrate our official status as a non-profit corporation, we’re throwing a party. Come join us at the HackLab to celebrate our incorporation, get ready for Nuit Blanche and SecTor, or even check out the space if you haven’t seen it yet. Yes, yes, it’s not a secret, we’re also fundraising– help us out as we try to offset our start-up costs.

Also, we have a couch now, for real. For real!

The second is an unofficial afterparty for SecTor, where we get to show off the lab to everyone from out of town.

Save the dates:

Incorporation Party – 10/3, 7pm – 3am
SecTor Unofficial Afterparty – 10/8, 8pm – 1am

We hope to see you at the lab!