What is Maui Makers?

Since I’m starting to leak the existence of Maui Makers, I guess I should post something on the vision.

I have spent 30+years doing software development in various bleeding edge industries. First UNIX, then computer animation, then cdrom/multimedia, virtual reality, military C4I, location based entertainment, augmented reality, etc. I’ve tried to apply the Software Engineering I learned in school, although its hard in small, fast projects (commercial, research or DARPA).  A few years ago, I started learning about Fab Labs, mostly from online resources and of course Neil Gershenfeld’s book “FAB: The Coming Revolution on Your Desktop–From Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication“.   I attended the MakerFaire and some classes at TechShop. The TechShop got me excited but requires a large capital investment, and large support population. Last year (2009) I learned about Hackerspaces.  I helped startup CrashSpace in Los Angeles and got myself a Makerbot Cupcake CNC 3DPrinter.

I also got (re)married and bought a house in Haiku. I’m still in the process of moving (plan to be there in August 2010). My hope is to meet up with like-minded people on Maui and create a hackerspace on the island. I came up with the name Maui Makers and created this blog/web site as a start.

Maui doesnt have the population to support a TechShop, but perhaps it might support a Hackerspace.  If you have an interest, comment here or drop me an email (isdale _A_T_  gmail dot com)