Maggie Kane

]Maggie Kane (http://www.streetcat.media/) is an experimental artist that specializes in the design and development of sustainable social systems via technology and accessible educational programming.

Streetcat is ~ A free knowledge + education advocate. Founder of feminist/ trans/ non-binary friendly makerspace. Recycled materials artist. Aspiring anime character.

Dinacon 2 Project:

Plastics Hacking! Let’s demystify plastics recycling on a micro-scale and explore various methods of creating new objects out of recycled plastic with various open-source + easily accessible tools.

Maggie is currently focused on developing sustainable educational and income-generating programming for community organizations in the Atlanta area. She serves as a Director and Chair of Activities and Culture for Freeside Atlanta, famously known as Atlanta’s original hackerspace. There, she develops and manages the weekly educational programming that provides free or low-cost classes and events for the community to learn about robotics, electronics, knitting, DIY arcade building, and more.

Update #3

Time is getting close! Applications only have about a week left! Here’s details on what’s coming up, and 2 incredible opportunities to go hop on a boat!

-Application deadline! Jan 30!

If you have applied yet, please do if you want to come! www.dinacon.org/apply

and help us spread the news for any last minute folks who want to join!

– mid-con sailing adventure! 

– a cool contingent of people including Jan (fellow NUS prof),  Miguel (fellow NUS Prof), and Yasu (Sound artist), are wanting to put together a little local sailing trip

They plan to “block 17-26 June for sailing in Phuket, and plan to sail for 7 days sometime within that time.

We have already 5 of us, so would need just 3 more for an 8-person crew (which I think shld be easy to find, or otherwise we cld get a smaller boat for 6). I am very preliminarily calculating that the bareboat rental would be about 50ish euro per day per person, so about 350ish euro per person per week (but could be a bit more or less, and there might be other hopefully-small expenses, deposit, insurance, beer fund, etc—but that remains to be researched).

http://yachtcharterinasia.com/yachts/isabella/   — maybe something like her.”

If you want to get involved with this mini-expedition, the point person is probably: Jan Mrazek <seajm@nus.edu.sg>   (they are also possibly considering a trip from around singapore to Phuket)

Alex Rogers

[June 3 – June 23]

Alex Rogers is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Oxford where his research focuses on developing and applying artificial intelligence and machine learning within physical sensor systems to address real-world problems around sustainability. Recent work has addressed future energy systems, such as the smart grid, citizen science platforms, and environmental monitoring. Much of his current work is exploring how to use the tools of open-source hardware and software, the ethos of online maker communities, and emerging low-cost lost-volume manufacturing, to develop open tools for environmental scientists. With two PhD students he is developing the AudioMoth acoustic sensor (www.openacousticdevices.info) and using it to search for a rare insect in the UK and to monitor tropical forests in Belize for illegal hunting and logging.

Alex is a computer scientist and engineer at the University of Oxford exploring how to use the tools of open-source hardware and software, the ethos of online maker communities, and emerging low-cost lost-volume manufacturing (such as 3D printing and laser cutting), to develop open tools for environmental scientists. One example is AudioMoth (www.openacousticdevices.info); a low-cost acoustic sensor that can be manufactured for $25, compared to $1000 for commercial devices, that is being used to monitor animal species and human activities, such as illegal hunting and logging, in tropical forests.

At the conference, Alex will deploy these devices to perform an acoustic survey of the island, capturing the sounds of native bird and insect species, and will explore a variety of designs for low-cost submersible waterproof housings to extend the range of AudioMoth to the littoral zone.

Update #1 – Free Food!

Some Recent Cool things!

-100 folks! We reached about 100 folks already signed up to come to our awesome conference! That’s really cool! and we expect lots more folks to apply before the deadline Jan 30th!

– People renting their own bungalows- Some folks are renting their own bungalows which expands the conference a bit It looks like at max capacity we will be able to accommodate about 200 people for the 2 months we will be there!

-Free Food! An anonymous sponsor chipped in 1000$USD to help us hire a local chef to provide free vegetarian food for participants (and work with participants doing local-food based projects!) Sort of like we had at Pif.camp

-Other donations- we had about 300$USD worth of other donations people already pitched in to go towards sustainability measures for the conference, travel stipends, and documentation. If you know someone interested in tossing us extra money to sponsor these features for the conferece (or if you know folks who became incredibly rich with crypto currencies over the past couple months) send them over to www.dinacon.org/sponsor

-More node leaders- we have a couple more new node leaders enlisted to do public projects that participants can join in on- check them all out here: www.dinacon.org/people

-Next Steps- After Jan 30th, we will review the applications, and sort logistics, and hopefully send official acceptances a couple weeks after that!

Thank you! and help us keep spreading the word around! Applications are open until Jan 30th, so help share our conference www.dinacon.org
and its informative https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sLuYeLH1Ho
and silly videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZArUoSMDk0 with cool people you know!

andy and tasneem!