Ylab members volunteered themselves to test out and be tested themselves in our first two formal classes since moving into the DDO – our Intro to 2D CAD, followed by our Ylab Laser Cutter Certification.
No actual rats harmed by this laser cutting.
Since we want a solid foundation to build-on, we used the free version of DraftSight, a CAD program with great 2D and 3D capabilities, and a user interface that’s compatible pro-grade tools like AutoCAD.
Participants suffered through some trial and error. We allocated some extra time. And some more extra time. But by the end of the class, participants had etched their own dog tags and cut out their graduation certificates.
2D CAD layout. Your name could be here!
We now have great intro material and better structure for the next set of classes, which we’ll be announcing soon.
BONUS FEATURE: Thanks to the people at TechSoup who do so many things for non-profits, we’ve acquired a full license for AutoCAD for the maker space at a very, very significant discount. Now to find and adequate PC to put it on…
Open house is cancelled this week – Wednesday April 13 – due to our members-only laser cutter class taking over the space. Ylab paid-up members are allowed to come in for whatever activity they normally do.
Ylab’s laser cutter at work. What else would we cut?
Come out and hear how three York Region companies have innovated to use cloud computing to create new lines of business.
These companies are building and running successful ventures on an international scale that would not be possible without the resources and technology of the cloud.
Our speakers are not just users – they’ve been leaders in addressing the regulatory, security and data locationon issues with government and some of the biggest cloud suppliers.
Find out how they’ve handled business, scaling, security and other issues – and join in the Q&A to get your own questions answered.
Larry Keating – President and CEO, NPC(http://npcdataguard.com )– invented and brought to market his industry’s first secure managed endpoint computing solution, changing how laptop computers are managed for business. NPC uses the cloud to secure, manage, monitor and back up laptops in a way that’s superior and cheaper than companies can manage themselves. As president and CEO of Keating Technologies he founded in 1987, Larry has brought more than $1.5 billion in technology and services to Canadians, and is a 3-time national winner of Canada’s 50 Best Managed Companies award.
Anthony R. Pearlman – President and COO, Intertainment Media ( http://intertainmentmedia.com ). When some of the biggest names in entertainment hold their special events, Intertainment Media is there. Through their divisions and various company investments, they manage the dynamic web presence and ensure it can scale to meet the demand. They syndicate live content to millions of users globally. They’re enabling cloud-based ventures like Yappn for real-time e-commerce translation services. Anthony has over 25 years of hands-on technology experience from co-founding and running early stage late 90’s e-commerce start-ups all the way to the C-suite in large public enterprises.
RJ Juneau – CEO and Founder, Maxxian( http://www.maxxian.com). Maxxian provides world-leading technology for managing and securing millions of video set-tops and Internet access devices for cable operators from Alaska to the coast of South America. They use the same virtualisation and system management technology used by cloud providers to manage systems at their customer sites to reduce their costs, speed deployments and increase reliability and flexibility. RJ’s been at the leading/bleeding edge of technology for over 30 years in banking and trading systems, supercomputing, MPEG video and other fun things.
On Monday night we took delivery of our brand spanking new laser cutter – a monstrous 90W unit with a 24″ x 36″cutting surface.
OK, it’s a big giant laser. Now what do we do with it?
You can feel the excitement. At least he didn’t take a selfie with it.
Now comes the hard part – figuring how to use the infernal contraption. We’ll be working out all the rules and procedures and safety issues, and setting up a formal class.
Last night we worked feverishly to get our first design cut.
What will we cut out first? Duh!
Just made it by closing time!
Ylab – a proud part of the community since 2015.
(*) If you actually speak latin… yeah, Habemus lux gladius is not the greatest translation. But it fits nicely in a headline. If you really want to get picky about it, Habemus cultellum excitata per lucem is a better description. Habemus lux gladius could also be used to describe a light sabre. Remember: Google translate is your friend.
Hasn’t been a blog post in a few weeks… because it’s better to be doing than blogging. But once in a while, we need to post something – or people claim nothing is happening!
York Region is the y and the why of ylab – and this week we had a bunch of firsts in three different cities.
At our DDO maker space inRichmond Hill, we had all three 3D printers fired up for the first time. Big thanks to Jay and Richard for making it happen. More gear appears every week, more gears are being printed, and they’ll soon be joined by our new laser cutter.
York Region Coffee and Code kicked off the first PHP user group in Markham on Tuesday night. With Maxxian agreeing to loan their boardroom to kick it off, organisers Glenn and Simon ran out of excuses and just did it. 13 people attended ranging from newbies to some very serious talent to help them.
That very same night, Pong Studios hosted the first Unity game development meetup in Vaughan. In our newsletter, we said they were going big by bringing in top Unity evangelist Mark Shoennagel… and they went even bigger! Mark is an excellent speaker, and he provided the world’s first public demo of the new networked, multi-player version of Unity. He took us through a full sequence of game development, explaining all the features and built-in defences against hacks and cheats, all while connected to one of only five operating network servers in existence. We got to see it before everyone else at the upcoming Game Development Conference.
Lots more happening in the background for light sabres, robotics, more coding groups, haunted house, ham radio, hackathons…
Everything went so well at our Enabling Hardware Technology event that something had to balance it off. Mayhem struck the Robotycs group on Wednesday night.
The first arrivals faced the elements and a locked door at the DDO. There were less people waiting outside than expected – a few of those registered had to bow out due to last minute work problems. And that included Ramy Ghattas our speaker for the evening!
Relieved Robot Ross Restarts Robotycs
But things always seem to work out nicely for ylab . The right person with the key arrived to let us in. And Ramy gets our Standup Guy of the Month Award(we just made that up) for sending us a replacement in the form of a large and well-qualified Paul Giampuzzi.
Paul’s the tall one. Nice line-up picture that could get published in snapd.
Paul is New Products and Innovation Director at Logics Academy, and co-founded the University of Toronto Robotics Association (UTRA) with Ramy.
Paul vividly described their experiences with several Gold and Silver prize winning entries in the Robogames international robot competition held in San Mateo, California. They designed, built, repaired and drove their robot named TSA Inspected, shown here demolishing a competitor.
Paul and Ramy’s TSA INSPECTED lays some hurt on the competition.
It was a great evening for all who attended, and we thank Paul and Ramy for their continued help and support for ylab.
Audience hears tales of destruction
We’ll be posting more detail on the Robotycs page shortly.
Update Jan 30 2016: a photo album has just been posted on facebook, and snapd Markham posted about us here.
Our Technology Enablers night was a huge success with almost 80 people in attendance. We went all corporate, and there were enough suits and well-dressed people to make it… well, kinda weird for a ylab event.
Yes, we really did take over Lenovo’s space.
Nevertheless, it went off without a hitch – if you don’t consider way more registrations than expected and scrambling for more chairs and food a” hitch”. Why so many attendess? #FREEPARKING seemed to be our meme for the night.
Our panelists – Mehdi Sharifi from Lumicision, Brett Hagman from Arduino and Rogue Robotics, John Frangella from Proto3000 and Peter Koster from Qualcomm were phenomenal. We’ve got to know some of them because they’re good friends of ylab, and it was even better to hear their stories and thoughts on so many topics. It was all expertly handled by our panel moderator Karen Mortfield from the DDO. Her experience in crisis communications clearly qualifies her for hosting a ylab event.
Panelists Mehdi, Brett, John and Peter, and moderator Karen
Big thanks to
Lenovo Canada for hosting the event and letting ylab run amock in their amazing new space. Nothing was too much trouble for Stefan, Kathleen, Kevin and David.
The growing cast of ylab members – Brooke on sound, Pek as announcer, Richard, Lucian, Ross and so many others for setup/teardown, Ruby for the food; and other volunteers like Murray and Andrea for registration duties.
Startup York, Coffee and Code and others for helping get the word out.
Our good friends at North of 41 for inspiring us and helping us in so many ways to get it organised.
And, most of all, we appreciate everyone who attended. We’re overwhelmed by the community support.
North of 41’s Jeff Musson, some guy who keeps showing up in our pictures, Karen, and Lenovo’s Stefan Bockhop.
Second Update Jan 30 2016:
Thank you attendees for all the positive feedback. The less-technically inclined business people who attended said it was a lot of fun, but some stuff was over their head. So it was perfect!
BATTLEBOTS! Ylab’s monthly Robotycs evening is back with a vengeance on Wednesday January 27. This month’s Robot Talk features battlebot veteran Ramy Gattas. Ramy hosted our first Robotycs events at Logics Academy last year. It’s a privilege to have join us at the DDO for the evening.
Ramy will be sharing his adventures in building and participating on the University of Toronto Team entry in the Robogames competitions in great places like San Mateo, California.
Not a robot. Breaks other people’s robots.
You can check out some of the mayhem his team wreaked on their opponents here and here.
As always, bring your own robotic creation for Show and Tell time, continue work on your toy hack, get some help and help some others. Ross has been advancing his own creations with a Raspberry Pi board and Python code, and is eager to share what he’s learned.
Did ylab sell out to corporate interests? No, we’re just trying to bring together interesting corporate technology people and companies to join in the ylab community.
North of 41 has been hosting informative, entertaining and always relevant Chat with the CEO events for several years now… but always downtown. Their speakers include tech founders and entrepreneurs, Silicon Valley luminaries, investors and other fascinating people. We often meet other York Region people at those talks.
Ylab has partnered with North of 41 to bring it north of Steeles Blvd.
We’re bringing together a great panel of tech entrepreneurs from Markham, Richmond Hill, Vaughan and Toronto on Monday, January 25, 2016 at 6 PM. And Lenovo Canada is hosting us for the evening in their impressive new facility in Markham.
All the details about the event and the speakers can be found on the registration site.
No boring powerpoints. This will be an interactive discussion panel. We’ve had the opportunity to sit a couple of these guys down together. The ideas flowing back and forth should have required a confidentiality agreement for anyone listening in.
This one’s not to be missed. These speakers have impressive backgrounds and some great tales to tell.
Just another way ylab is building real technical community north of Toronto.
Monday January 4 was our first member-only night of 2016. We formally welcomed as new members ylab regulars Brooke and Jay . That’s a polite way of saying that they each gave us a cheque. We need to work out some kind of formal ceremony. Maybe something with a light sabre. Any volunteers to dress up as Princess Leia with the cinnamon bun hair-do?
We took delivery of a big workbench, some cabinets, and a refreshment fridge. Jay made great progress with the Rep-Rap 3D printer, and light-saber engineering continued.
It was all made easier and more pleasant by the work some volunteers did over the holidays. More clean-up. The second metal press has been removed. And a computer rack has appeared.
More tools and equipment are trickling in. Soldering irons ordered and arriving Any Day Now. Internet connection is running reliably.
The technical crew has been reviewing laser cutter specs and haggling with suppliers. We’re down to the final candidates. Everything was slowed down by the vendors being AWOL over the holidays.
Mondays member-only nights and Wednesday Open House nights are now scheduled on the ylab meetup.com site, and be sure to check out the great new banner picture from Avery. We’ll be adding the Open House nights to EventBrite. We’re working on how to get the meetup calendar up on the ylab web page.
