For the next couple of months I’m leading an Introduction to Gadgeteer class every Wednesday night for 90 minutes. We posted the first 3 classes and they filled up within 30 minutes with a waiting list so there is definitely some interest. I’ve also been approached by a number of other groups and organizations that are interested in having this class, so it looks like I’ll be a busy Gadgeteer teacher for awhile. I might have volunteered for more then I figured, but that is excellent.
This is an introduction class to Gadgeteer, but there is already interest in Gadgeteer for IoT and Automation/Robotics, and I’ll see about doing those later.
What is really fun is the local Microsoft Store is hosting this event and providing Surface Pro 3’s so this ought to be a lot of fun. The target audience is for junior high school and up students, makers, developers, local tech/SCADA/etc companies as given the petroleum industry is huge here and with the latest down turn in the price of oil etc, there is a lot more interest now in reducing costs and expenses via smart devices, automation and IoT then before.
I’ll post some photos from the events later.
14 Likes
Did the idea of GHI loaner kits go anywhere? This picture of 15 kits makes me think it might have…
@ ransomhall - Those bad boys are mine. You know I’m one of the biggest Gadgeteer Junkies around who has wanted to do this for a very long time and with a little luck and continued success I’m trying to convince everyone involved that supporting efforts like this are a very smart business decision and certainly it appears that everyone is awaking to the real potential of Gadgeteer so perhaps support for efforts like this are coming.
One of the nerve racking decisions I had to make to do this was to pick a particular reasonably priced project that I thought would be interesting, have enough buzz and yet couldn’t use a network connection as I might not always have that where I doing this, and didn’t involve motors etc as again I would need to justify the extra costs etc, and so far it looks like I made a reasonable call on this.
Hopefully the benefits of this will be clear for Microsoft, GHI and Zing Pow (ie me) so the program can be extended to other projects (IoT, Robotics, etc) and locations as I’ve had a lot of people express their interest in doing this as well, but we need more then just interest, I have to be able to show building of community.
1 Like