Weeknotes are a habit I'm cultivating where I share what I'm working on or thinking about, primarily in my professional life, without worrying too much about the ideas being full-formed.

thinking about / working on:

A new term begins today, along with a bunch of new and old programming. This morning over coffee while reading the newsletter Dense Discovery the author Grace Burrowes posed the question “What problems are we trying to solve?” as a question worth asking, and I thought I would use it here for what I am working on this week.

• How do we support users who want to experiment with computer and electronics prototyping in our existing space without changing our access model?
  • This week I am meeting with a group of faculty, students, and lab technicians to talk about how to turn one of our rooms into a space for computer and electronics prototyping. This has been an under-explored area since we opened almost 3 years ago because it’s hard to do within the space and expertise we have, and also because there’s ways it could break our current access model of “everyone can walk in and use everything within 2 minutes.”
• How do we craft a position description that meets our department’s immediate and future needs while combining experience real candidates actually have into a job that someone could successfully do?
  • We recently failed a job search, and so we need to re-think what we are expecting. There are, as always, constraints, but we have some room to try to make the position better and more likely to be successful.
• How can we provide computing power to users for exploring AI within an open lab environment?
  • This isn’t mine directly, but something happening I’m being asked my thoughts about, and which I care about a lot since we really need a better teaching lab for the Makerspace. I am leaning towards wanting a space that has enough compute to run basic local models, but nothing so fancy or specific it can’t be used for things like 3D modeling, video editing, etc.
• How can we provide introductory workshops for the users who need the permission a workshop gives them to come into the Makerapace, without becoming a teaching space?
  • When we opened I didn’t want to teach any workshops. Last year I did a few and they quickly filled up. People clearly need the permission a workshop provides, even if they know that we will literally just be making them do the tutorial that is on our website and they could do anytime. I’m still working on finding a balance here, both pedagogically and for my own workload, but I suspect I will do more of these this semester, including a new workshop on AI.

That’s all I have time for this week!