Community Outreach

Knox Makers wants everyone to have a place where they can use new technology and the familiar tools we've always loved to experience the joy of actually making something real.

As new hardware and software tools for crafting, coding, digital design, and fabrication are emerging, we are working together to place those tools into the hands of our community. We are building the infrastructure necessary for more people in Knoxville to connect to a future in which they can personally change, modify, or create things that were nearly impossible to do on their own just a few years ago.

Knox Makers brings the excitement and energy of the hands-on global maker culture and makerspace communities to the Knoxville area, to provide a lifelong learning environment alongside a locally run workspace soaring with possibilities.

This page is dedicated to information and resources about our community outreach projects and partnerships.

If you have information you think should be on here, please reach out to board@knoxmakers.org.

Conventions, competitions, outreach programs, events and festivals

Here you will find information about conventions, competitions, and festivals where we have participated in some way. For many of these entries, we have had presentation booths or another active, informative, and often interactive presentation. For some of these entries, we were present as volunteers or merely attended as a group.

General Community Events

FIRST Smoky Mountains Regional

2012 FIRST Smoky Mountains Regional

2013 FIRST Smoky Mountains Regional

Dogwood Arts Festival

2014 Dogwood Arts Festival

Codestock

Codestock 2013

Codestock 2014

Children's Festival of Reading

2014 Children's Festival of Reading

Blount County Public Library Robot Extravaganza

2014 Robot Extravaganza

Blount County BBQ Bash

2014 Blount County BBQ Bash

The MUSE Robotics Revolution

2014 Robotics Revolution

The MUSE/ETDC Mad Scientist Day!

2014 Mad Scientist Day!

PechaKucha 20X20 Knoxville

Volume 7: April '13

Volume 9: October '13

Volume 10: February '14

Volume 11: May '14

Marble City Comiccon

2014 Marble City Comiccon

Steampunk Carnivale

2013 1st Annual Steampunk Carnivale

2014 2nd Annual Steampunk Carnivale

Siemens Teachers As Researchers (STARs)

2014 STARs

Extended Learning Events and Projects

MIT MediaLab's Learning Creative Learning (LCL)

2013 LCL

2014 LCL

MakerFaires

Atlanta Mini-Maker Faire

2012 Atlanta Mini-Maker Faire

2013 Atlanta Mini-Maker Faire

2014 Atlanta Mini-Maker Faire

Kingsport Mini-Maker Faire

2013 Kingsport Mini-Maker Faire

2014 Kingsport Mini-Maker Faire

July 13, 2014, Kingsport, TN. Knox Makers arrived at the auditorium on Sunday with Pablo and three 3D printers, the first thing we saw was someone else's large polargraph (drawing on a whiteboard) and about half a dozen Makerbot 3D printers. We felt our thunder had been stolen, but we set up anyway.

We're glad we did. Our booth was in a high foot traffic area and remained busy all day. We met a couple of kindred spirits that we expect to see at a Tuesday workshop soon. We also got to talk to a lot of folks who had heard of 3D printing, but weren't really sure what it was and/or had never seen it in person.

We enjoyed explaining to folks that the other 3D printers on display were "store bought," while ours were lovingly handcrafted by local nerds. This attracted a lot of interest, as did Pablo's drawings that accumulated and got taped up as the day progressed. Many folks asked what business we were in, and seemed pleasantly surprised to discover that we were representing a non-profit hobby group and not trying to hawk anything. Issac gave out many KM-branded keychain trinkets, and Doug learned about the heartache of 3D printing with nylon live and in public.

Partway through the day, Bumblebee's extruder tension arm broke. Happily, Issac's (unnamed) printer was able to manufacture a replacement part on the spot, which Sam promptly installed. The tale of the one machine "repairing" the other captivated a number of folks, and the jaunty red tension arm stood out and served as a conversation piece for the rest of the day.

Toward the end, a couple of kids (about 8 and 14) from the FIRST robotics table next door came over with a laptop, having excitedly just designed a little 3D man (their ode to Minecraft's Steve) that they hoped we'd print for them. I wasn't "taking requests," but their earnest young faces were irresistible. I managed to slice it with support and get it printed just in time, and their reaction was totally worth it. It was a nice way to end the day.

Lousiville Mini-MakerFaire

2014 Louisville Mini-Maker Faire

Nashville Mini-Maker Faire

2013 Nashville Mini-Maker Faire

2014 Nasvhille Mini-Maker Faire

National Day of Making

2014 1st Annual National Day of Making

Hacker Gatherings

phreaknic Nashville

phreaknic15

phreaknic16

SkyDogCon

2011 SkyDogCon

2012 SkyDogCon

DefCon Vegas

DefCon 22

Special Tours

Volkswagen Chattanooga

ORNL Manufacturing and Demonstration Facility

Akerworks Tour

Local Motors Grand Opening

Partners, collaborators, and project facilitators

We have kept our doors and minds open to partnerships that help to enhance local and global communities both digitally and in the real, physical world. Included in this section is a list of entities where we have formed partnerships with organizations or people from organizations. Also included are special projects we have engaged in using a collaborative approach. Details are included for each organization related to official partnerships, casual partnered efforts, and/or special projects we have participated in. Not all organizations in this section are official partners.

Additionally, we have worked hard to try to include everyone we have worked with in this list. This is not only for our benefit, we really like to give thanks where thanks is due. If you or someone you know has helped Knox Makers along, pass along a message to board@knoxmakers.org with a request to add their organization to this list.

Many organizations and events listed here are nonprofit organizations, and this is not a list of sponsors or paid advertising.

Instructables

A group of Knox Makers has participated in an Instructables contest designed for Makerspaces.

For the Makerspace/Hackerspace contest, Instructables and Sugru partnered to offer free shipments of Sugru to creative learning spaces willing to dedicate to five Sugru Instructables projects. Knox Makers accepted the challenge, and we received positive feedback from the Instructables community on our projects:

Sugru Bottle Drainage Coupler Sugru Air-Gap MaKey MaKey Buttons Sugru Key Cover Patriotic Hammer Grip Last Minute Emergency Lab Party Costume

In addition, many of our members maintain their own Instructables pages where informative and educational DIY instructions are offered to the global public for free using a variety of Creative Commons, Open Source, and GNU licenses.

Joylabz

Joylabz partnered with a Knox Makers effort in 2014 as part of the 2014 Siemens Teachers As Researchers (STARs) program. The STARs program is a partnership between Siemens STEM Academy, Oak Ridge National Laboratories (ORNL), Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU), and Discovery Education. The program hosts outstanding educators from around the country for two weeks in Oak Ridge as part of a fully-paid fellowship scholarship. Educators are pitted with scientist and researcher partners at ORNL for special collaborative research projects, offered field trips and special events, and granted generous living expenses and micro-grants for their classrooms back home. In 2014, Knox Makers members treated the STARs to an educator development workshop on the Maker Movement and Joylabz helped by generously supplying each of the 40 educators with a free MaKey MaKey.

Additionally, Knox Makers members have helped to offer bugtesting for Joylabz' MaKey MaKey as well as help to provide support for their online community.

More info about Joylabz and MaKey MaKey at their respective websites.

TechCo

TechCo has played an important role in support Knox Makers. At an earlier stage, TechCo offered meeting room assistance before Knox Makers arrived at a more permanent location.

Knox Makers has worked with the Tellico Village Computer Users Club and TechCo to test the trial program Earn-A-Computer (EAC) Project. This was a program developed to benefit underprivileged children in parts of East Tennessee. By attending free weekend classes, children could learn about computers and computer programs. Upon completion of the free course, each child received a free computer.

Additionally, TechCo members have worked with Knox Makers to host special workshops and classes at Knox Makers as part of our free public workshops.

Tellico Village Computer Users Club

See above TechCo entry for the Earn-A-Computer (EAC) Project.

Akerworks

Akerworks is a professional locally-owned fabrication and manufacturing company and is a great example of how a maker spirit can add value to the local economy. Akerworks is owned by one of our own longstanding members.

Akerworks website

Knox Makers hack the media

Here you will find links to external media coverage of Knox Makers' collectively innovative and delightfully demented glory.

You can also view our blog featuring content from Knox Makers, its members, and guests.

Other basic information and resources

This section is aimed at arming an interested newcomer, journalist, sponsor, partner, ally, or Vaudevillian foe with information related to Makerspaces, Hackerspaces, and topics directly related to our mission.

Social Media

• Google+
• Facebook
• More listed at our Social Media wiki page

List of past workshops and events

Almost all of our classes and workshops are free and open to the general public. The only exceptions include rare workshops that require nominal materials fees, special fundraising events, and special workshops hosted by professional guests.

Please see our List of Events page for a full list of all our past workshops and events.