Home › Groups › DIY Cincinnati › Possible project ideas (Cincinnati)

DIY Cincinnati

User login

Possible project ideas (Cincinnati)

Submitted by dave_menninger on 18 February 2009 - 1:48am to DIY Cincinnati.

Here is an initial list of ideas I came up with off the top of my head. I'd like to hear if anyone else in the group has any other ideas, or thoughts on how to work on these ideas.

CityCouncil2RSS - A lot of what council does is put online, but it would be nice if we had some feeds and such. I've also experimented with automatically adding contextual links into things like the meeting minutes.

Local Food Distribution - This is just a vague notion right now, but maybe something could be done to coordinate local farmers in new ways to get their goods to different types of consumers like restaurants. Inspiration here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CinciLocavore/message/3162

cincinnati twitter bots - ideas for bots welcome

Cincinnati Wiki - wiki.hereincincinnati.net (admittedly something of a pet project for me, but would love to get others involved).

Other suggestions welcome!

(Note: this is post is to test the waters as to how conversations proceed on the site. Try commenting, etc. to get a feel for it.)

Thanks!
Dave

18 Feb17:46

we need a DIY community workshop in cincinnati

By chrizzle

before you can DIY cincinnati, cincinnati needs a place for DIY-ers to meet, work and collaborate.

i would do more DIY projects if i had tools and a place to work so i don't disturb my family in our small townhouse. large projects are pretty much out of the question because of time, materials and workspace. also, powertools and the like are not a good idea for those of us that live in apartments or condos and want to remain on speaking terms with our neighbors. i would also do more if i knew how to do more things.

this is also true for technology projects. i have a closet full of computers and other electronics that are missing parts, i am sure there are others who are in the same boat. my not pool our resources so we can all get more stuff done?

i have a server with a bunch of unfinished software on it. i would gladly share it with others who want help me or need help from me.

if we had a shared space where we could share tools, materials, parts, and other resources, we could take on bigger projects for ourselves and our friends, family, and neighbors. here are some examples of such centers:
http://256.makerslocal.org
http://blog.cowtowncomputercongress.org
http://pumpingstationone.org/blog/
http://www.nycresistor.com/
http://techshop.ws

there are plenty of groups that would do wonders for cincinnati if they had a space and some infrastructure to get started in, like:

a cincinnati freegeek project for recycling e-waste:
http://freegeek.org
http://freegeekcolumbus.org

an infoshop for social activist groups:
http://thelonghaul.org
http://sporeprint.info

all over the country hackers, makers, artists, greenies, dorkbotters, free culturists, and other communities are joining together to work on things in real life. regardless of your interests, you can probably benefit from a community run meeting place and workshop.

19 Feb17:50

Council RSS feeds

By JaimeyWB

Hey Dave,

Do you have links to anything you're doing with RSS feeds, etc. of Council biz/updates there in Cincinnati? Wanting to do something similar here in Petaluma, CA.

19 Feb21:16

I agree. I also think a

By dave_menninger

I agree. I also think a co-working space / hackerspace / free geek / tool library
for cincinnati would be awesome.

i am familiar with some of these groups and some of them are new to me. very exciting stuff. thanks for the links.

maybe before we start looking for a space to actually call our own we could meet up and get some people together to work and talk about ideas. then, when/if we outgrow the normal coffee-shop types of venues we can hunt for spaces to take over.

i'm trying to think of some spaces that would work well for this. coffee shops and libraries come to mind first.

does anyone else want to meet up in person? have any suggestions for venues?

19 Feb21:34

Sorry, I'm at a pretty early

By dave_menninger

Sorry, I'm at a pretty early stage. What I have so far is:

- a set of scripts that pull the city council meeting minutes out of their weird cms and archives them in my own database.

- a script that runs a regular expression over the minutes and finds the Capitalized Phrases and then checks in my wiki for pages containing those phrases.

- last, I taught myself how to publish an RSS feed out of the database but I haven't done anything interesting with it yet. Right now it just pushes out a simple update each time the script runs at night.

So, it's really a handful of things I wrote over the course of a few days to teach myself how it's done. nothing really worth showing off yet.

My future ideas are:

1. publish full minutes of council (and sub commitees) as rss feeds. could probably roll this feature out if i dedicated a day or two to building it the right way.
2. automatically linkify "important" words and phrases in the minutes. my first version of this i would classify as a quick hack; it could be improved.
3. build a database-backed archive of individual council actions like resolutions, ordinances, etc. this is a bit more complex than the archive and re-publish model, but also potentially more useful and interesting.

And then, if I get all that going, I'll see where I can go next.

Let me know if you have other questions or if you make any progress in your efforts.

20 Feb19:22

possible venues

By chrizzle

cinci2600 meets the first friday of every month at the brewhouse a 7pm in walnut hills. i am there every month that there isn't a hacker con (http://www.cinci2600.com). if you want to meet up there before or after, that would be cool.

the brewhouse has a room you can reserve, if you think we would have a group that would warrant it's own room.

i am working on getting people from different groups involved in the hackerspace effort. i started a cincinnati page on the hackerspaces.org wiki, i have been in contact with dorkbot about starting a cincinnati chapter (http://dorkbot.org/dorkbotcinci) and i have been talking with free culture about starting a UC/NKU chapter.

i am sure there are lots of people who want to do things for themselves and their communities but have trouble organizing because their group is so small. the goal is to focus on what we and our respective groups have in common, which is the need for a place to meet, work, and to share tools and resources.

other venues are panera bread shops (coffee, free wifi) or khaldi's coffee shop, but it think it's closed.

any coffee shop would do though.