Category Archives: Community/Partners

Growing Open Design Engine

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April is turning out to be quite a busy month for Open Design Engine.  So far we have found a new software development contractor to help us with the heavy lifting required for some of our new features, submitted a grant application to cover the next version of Open Design Engine, and prepared materials for the upcoming Open Source Hardware Documentation Jam.  By next week, we should have all sorts of feedback on what the Open Source Hardware community is looking for in project hosting.

Mach 30’s Ground Station Antenna

For those who don’t know, Open Design Engine is Mach 30’s free project hosting site for open source hardware projects.  We use it to host all of our publicly available projects (aka those not covered by export controls) such as the Shepard Test Stand and GS-001 (our new ground station project).  It is also home to a number of very cool projects from other users, including Andrew Starr’s Scanning Tunnelling Microscope.

Over the last couple of months, volunteers at Mach 30 have been planning the next major release of Open Design Engine as part of the work to apply for the SpaceGAMBIT Call for Projects.  As this plan came together, the volunteer team leading this effort realized Mach 30 would continue to need external software development support.  Unfortunately for us (but very fortunately for them), Littlelines, our developer for the current version of Open Design Engine, has plenty of work lined up at the moment and is unavailable for our next round of work.  All is not lost, however.  After reaching out through the volunteer team’s professional network, Mach 30 has been introduced to Mutually Human Software.  I am very happy to report Mutually Human will be a great addition to the Open Design Engine team.  Not only are they a skilled Ruby on Rails shop (Rails is the toolchain which Open Design Engine is built on), but they also “get” open source hardware and the maker community.  So much so that they are sponsoring a local startup makerspace, GR Makers.

April also saw the completion of Mach 30’s application for funding from SpaceGAMBIT’s Call for Projects to support Open Design Engine development.  Our application includes work to completely overhall the user interface, improve the infrastructure to support git repositories (among other things), implement one or more revenue generation streams so Open Design Engine can become self-sufficient, and marketing Open Design Engine to grow its user base.  I encourage you to take a look at the application.  The team did a great job in planning this new version, and in preparing the document.

Finally, I have been getting ready for the Open Source Hardware Documentation Jam.  This three day long conference/hack-a-thon is all about what the Open Source Hardware community needs to easily publish, share, and reuse documentation for open source hardware projects.  I am very excited to be included in this event for Mach 30’s work on Open Design Engine, and I am looking forward to sharing what we have learned and where we are headed, as well as finding out what the community needs from sites like Open Design Engine.  Stay tuned for updates from the Documentation Jam, and for a follow up On-Air Hangout covering the lessons learned and the community’s path forward after the event.

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Mach 30 – It’s Not Just for Engineers

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A question that’s been coming up a lot is this – “Do I have to be an engineer or rocket scientist to be a part of Mach 30?” The answer is no! And by “no” I mean it’s critical that we have the help of non-engineers. And by “critical” I mean that it will literally take the combination of all kinds of skills to accomplish Mach 30’s mission. Don’t let the rocket science facade fool you, we’re an organization that thrives on the talents of graphic designers, organizers, non-profit specialists, authors, teachers, artists, makers, and anyone else who wants to see space become a regular part of our daily lives. Below is a partial list of some things that we need help with that don’t require a PhD in Space Systems Engineering.

Donations

This is a great way to help us out, especially if you don’t have lots of free time to give. Whether it’s one dollar or a thousand, everything counts and it encourages us to know that we’re not alone in the mission to secure our spacefaring future.  Donate now and you can become a member of the 2013 Catalyst Club! Joining the Catalyst Club makes you eligible for some special perks that are our way of saying “Thank You”.

Advocacy

We need people to spread the word about our mission, and about the fact that space is worth striving for. We’ve even made business cards for you to make it easy to share Mach 30 with everyone.

Follow, Like, Add, Friend, +1, Circle, and Subscribe

Mach 30 is on Facebook, Google+, YouTube, and Twitter. Join us there! To get updates on our recent activities, subscribe to receive our monthly newsletter called The Launchpad. Here is the archive of past issues. If you trust us with your email, it will never be given to anyone else without your permission, ever. Period.

Event Planning

We love to do events like Yuri’s Night and the impromptu Curiosity landing party, and we’d love to do even more. We’ve even talked about holding some type of open source spaceflight conference. To make these events happen we need event planners and coordinators.

Documentation

It’s hard to keep up on project documentation, and we could always use more help on this. Documentation is not just about CAD drafts and engineering analyses. There’s a lot of documentation to be done, and things like operating manuals can be even better when they’re written by a non-engineer.

Legal Consultation

We’re in a critical time right now where we have to navigate the deep waters of export controls. We need legal counsel to help us through this, and even beyond export controls there’s the day-to-day legal issues that an organization like Mach 30 encounters.

Project Management

Not every Mach 30 project has to be technical in nature. For example, we’ve recently launched the Mach 30 Book Club which is designed to allow everyone to participate. Have a look at our Mach 30 Drawing Board to see if there are any projects which you’d be interested in starting and managing. If there aren’t any, why not propose your own?

Marketing

If you can market Mach 30 to a broader audience, we want your help too. The more people that know about us and support us, the larger our impact will be. Remember, the goal here is to move humankind to become a spacefaring civilization. We want everyone around the world to know about and support our mission.

Education

Mach 30 is focused on education and outreach as part of our mission. We love the idea of helping to train and inspire the next generation of explorers. If you’re a teacher who wants to introduce your students to rocket science in a safe and fun way, an educator who wants to develop school room curriculum for our hardware projects, or just someone who wants to help us reach students from age 5 to 105, we’re looking for you too.

Fundraising

This is an area that our current Board of Directors has found challenging. Not only can we not develop the cool spaceflight projects we want without money, we also can’t do things like travel to meet interesting people like you. Every dollar that you can help us raise allows us to build the relationships and infrastructure needed to complete our mission.

Testing and Feedback

Almost every project has users, but most of them never report anything back to the project managers. Are you an Open Design Engine user who’s noticed a bug? Did you build a Shepard Test Stand and notice a mistake in one of the drawings? Were you browsing the Mach 30 website and noticed a mispelling? It would be great to have your feedback.

Graphic Design

The Board of Directors is lucky to have it’s very own mercinary art ninja, Bekah McGrady, but she’s always on the lookout for help from other graphic designers. We like our projects to look as good as they work, and you can be a part of that. Can you help us design mission patches for each of our projects? How about helping us to create merit or skill badges for people to earn as they learn new skills? These are just a couple of the ideas that are being talked about that would need graphic design.

Gamification/Skills Advancement

Mach 30 wants to work with other organizations all around the world to create a skills advancement system that would allow people to be rewarded for the hands-on skills they learn. If you want to be part of this educational frontier and help us train the innovators of the future, we have a spot for you.

Insert Your Interest Here

Did I miss what you’re interested in? No problem, there’s a really good chance that you’ll fit right in somewhere at Mach 30. We’re looking for all skill levels and interests to help us accomplish our mission. Contact Us to let us know how you want to get involved.

So, still think that Mach 30 is just for engineers and rocket scientists? I’m an engineer by profession, and some would say by personality as well, and I can say that in my experience Mach 30 has a place for everyone who loves space and wants to go there someday. Come, join us and help shape the future.

Just Launched: Open Design Engine Public Beta

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Open Design Engine KickStarter Logo

Open Design Engine KickStarter Logo

We are very excited to announce the launch of the Open Design Engine (ODE) Public Beta. The road to get here ended up being a little longer than we expected, but we’re happy with the results. We could not have made this push to the finish without the help of Kevin Bouwkamp, Bryan Christian, and The School Factory, and we are grateful for their help in getting ODE safely off the launchpad. Self-registration for user accounts is now active, and we are ready for our next round of promotion for Open Design Engine. Please share this news on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and your own personal blogs (be sure to link to this post).

If you have not signed up for an account yet, please do so. Then, start a project on ODE to document one of your own Open Source Hardware creations. Don’t have a project yet? No problem. You can start one, or join one of the projects already in progress. Mach 30 currently has two projects that are active on ODE, the Shepard Test Stand and the Far Horizons High Altitude Balloon (HAB) project. We’re always looking for help, so feel free to Contact Us to see how you can get involved.

And this is just the beginning. We are already actively improving the site. For example, within the last 2 weeks Kevin completed the funding plugin, allowing users to insert Kickstarter badges and PayPal buttons into any field which supports wiki-syntax. What this means for you is that you can ask for help to fund your projects right from your ODE project pages. Future plans include adding support for integrated git repositories and major improvements to the user interface. As always, watch the roadmap to keep up with our plans and progress.

Thanks to all of our supporters, backers, kickstarters, and volunteers. We are looking forward to growing Open Design Engine into a great site for hosting open source hardware projects. And remember, Makers, document what you make.

*NEW* Mach 30 Book Club

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We’ve been ‘incubating’ projects over on the Mach 30 Drawing Board because honestly, there are waaay too many good ideas out there and too few of us on the Mach 30 board.  One of these ideas, the Book Club, was recently brought to life during a weekly hangout.

The group decided that they wanted to kick off this new project by reading the book X-teams: how to build teams that lead, innovate and succeed.  So here we go!  There’s a ton of great background on the drawing board page for the Mach 30 Book Club idea.  I’d suggest taking a quick glance through that so you know what to expect.

X-teams: How to build teams that lead, innovate, and succeed

We’ll start by discussing the Introduction to the book on Monday, November 26th. If you want to be part of the discussion you can add comments to this blog post, even if you don’t have an account. If you click in the “Leave a Reply” box below you’ll see options to post as your Twitter and Facebook logins too. We’re really looking forward to getting started with this book, and we hope you’ll join us. If you’re a part of teams in any way, this will be a great discussion.

So, grab a copy of the book, a comfy chair, a hot or cold beverage of your choice, and lets get started!

Podcast Round Up

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Image by Silveira Neto via Flickr

We’ve been stepping up the number of conferences we attend at Mach 30 because we’ve found them to be a great way to spread the word about our organization and to connect with some really great people.  Some of those people are connected with podcasts, and we have been fortunate enough to be invited to do several interviews over the last few months.

Just last week I was interviewed on the Public Knowledge In the Know podcast.  I met the interviewer through contacts from the Open Hardware Summit.  We talked about Open Design Engine, the genesis of Mach 30, and what lies ahead in 2012.  As always, it was a pleasure to have the opportunity to share the Mach 30 message with a new audience, and I am very thankful to Public Knowledge for inviting me.  You can listen to the Public Knowledge podcast here (the Mach 30 portion of the interview starts around 18:47).

Back in November, Evadot had me on their podcast.  A contact from the hackerSPACE Workshop mentioned Mach 30 to Evadot, and not long after we scheduled the interview.  We talked about open source spaceflight, the challenges of ITAR, and Mach 30’s approach to those challenges.  You can listen to the Evadot podcast here.

Finally, in October, Greg Moran, Mach 30’s Vice President, and I were jointly interviewed on the Open Hardware Junkies podcast.  Greg and I met the gentleman who runs this podcast during lunch at the 2011 Open Source Hardware Summit.  We spent much of the podcast discussing the role open source hardware plays in the Mach 30 mission and the tools Mach 30 is assembling in support of open source hardware.  It was especially fun to have Greg along for the interview.  I think it is great when we get a chance to bring our different styles of presenting Mach 30’s mission to the table together.  You can listen to the Open Hardware Junkies podcast here.

I’m looking forward to the spring when the next season of conferences gets rolling so we can meet even more people (those associated with podcasts and otherwise) to share the Mach 30 mission and message.

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