blit is a tumblelog.

Looking for the technically inclined

A minimal response to The City of Founders Without Hackers.

New York City has a shortage of entrepreneurially minded technical talent. It’s not that there’s not enough engineers. Hardly. Columbia, NYU and the rest of the eastern seaboard spits out engineers in spades each year. But somehow those aren’t funneled into, aware of or interested in the NYC startups, at least at the early stage. Local engineers, it seems, want to be employees, not co-founders. [emphasis added]

Why aren’t the non-technical founders able to easily find technical co-founders? Because both sides are looking for the wrong thing in the wrong way. At least I know I am. As a startup-curious technically adept potential co-founder, it is not sufficient to wait to be found, I must be seeking, doing.

If non-technical founders cannot find technical founders, blame cannot rest squarely on the “engineers”. In the passage below, Saras Sarasvathy suggests that it is the responsibility of the entrepreneurs to also be cultivating the partners they would like to have. Where technical co-founders exist in short supply may not be because potential technical co-founders are lazy, it’s because both the techs and non-techs are lazy.

I learn this lesson again and again: The world will not come to you, asking you to do great things. You must simply do them.

Experienced professionals in the entrepreneurial arena, whether they are bankers, lawyers, VCs or other investors have always agreed with successful entrepreneurs that finding and leading the right people is the key to creating an enduring venture. These entrepreneurs know that such “right” people are not on the job market waiting for the jobs and incentives the entrepreneurs can offer them. Instead the “right” people need emotional ownership in whether they are bankers, lawyers, VCs or other investors have by the belief that the effects they create will embody their deepest passions and aspirations while enabling them to achieve their best potential.

But great entrepreneurs realize something more about the central role of people in shaping the urn. Using effectual logic, they understand that they too cannot wait around to find the “right” people all the time. Besides continually striving to attract the “right” people, they learn also to nurture and grow them in their own backyards. As Josiah Wedgewood wrote, “We have to make artists of mere men.”

Saras D. Sarasvathy, “What makes entrepreneurs entrepreneurial?” [pdf]

The Four Myths of School - An excerpt from Deschooling Society

These are excerpts from the third chapter of Ivan Illich’s Deschooling Society. A longer selection can be found at http://adambachman.org/illich_03.html. The whole chapter can be found at http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Illich/Deschooling/chap3.html. I’ve emphasized my favorite passages.

This text goes a long way towards describing why I will not put my children in school, and why I try to push Baltimore Node in the direction I do. Schools take much more than they give, and the cost is much greater than can be measured in dollars. I’ll leave my own thoughts for later.

Ritualization of Progress

We cannot begin a reform of education unless we first understand that neither individual learning nor social equality can be enhanced by the ritual of schooling. We cannot go beyond the consumer society unless we first understand that obligatory public schools inevitably reproduce such a society, no matter what is taught in them.

The Myth of Institutionalized Values

Once the self-taught man or woman has been discredited, all nonprofessional activity is rendered suspect. In school we are taught that valuable learning is the result of attendance; that the value of learning increases with the amount of input; and, finally, that this value can be measured and documented by grades and certificates.

In fact, learning is the human activity which least needs manipulation by others. Most learning is not the result of instruction. It is rather the result of unhampered participation in a meaningful setting. Most people learn best by being “with it,” yet school makes them identify their personal, cognitive growth with elaborate planning and manipulation.

The Myth of Measurement of Values

The institutionalized values school instills are quantified ones. School initiates young people into a world where everything can be measured, including their imaginations, and, indeed, man himself.

But personal growth is not a measurable entity. It is growth in disciplined dissidence, which cannot be measured against any rod, or any curriculum, nor compared to someone else’s achievement. In such learning one can emulate others only in imaginative endeavor, and follow in their footsteps rather than mimic their gait. The learning I prize is immeasurable re-creation.

People who have been schooled down to size let unmeasured experience slip out of their hands. To them, what cannot be measured becomes secondary, threatening. They do not have to be robbed of their creativity. Under instruction, they have unlearned to “do” their thing or “be” themselves, and value only what has been made or could be made.

Once people have the idea schooled into them that values can be produced and measured, they tend to accept all kinds of rankings. There is a scale for the development of nations, another for the intelligence of babies, and even progress toward peace can be calculated according to body count. In a schooled world the road to happiness is paved with a consumer’s index.

The Myth of Packaging Values

School sells curriculum—a bundle of goods made according to the same process and having the same structure as other merchandise.

The result of the curriculum production process looks like any other modern staple. It is a bundle of planned meanings, a package of values, a commodity whose “balanced appeal” makes it marketable to a sufficiently large number to justify the cost of production. Consumer-pupils are taught to make their desires conform to marketable values. Thus they are made to feel guilty if they do not behave according to the predictions of consumer research by getting the grades and certificates that will place them in the job category they have been led to expect.

The Myth of Self-Perpetuating Progress

Even when accompanied by declining returns in learning, paradoxically, rising per capita instructional costs increase the value of the pupil in his or her own eyes and on the market… If it teaches nothing else, school teaches the value of escalation: the value of the American way of doing things.

School programs hunger for progressive intake of instruction, but even if the hunger leads to steady absorption, it never yields the joy of knowing something to one’s satisfaction. Each subject comes packaged with the instruction to go on consuming one “offering” after another, and last year’s wrapping is always obsolete for this year’s consumer.

But growth conceived as open-ended consumption-eternal progress-can never lead to maturity. Commitment to unlimited quantitative increase invalidates the possibility of organic development.

Inventory, April 2010

The full spread. This includes three awesome kits from Nightfire Electronics, a new soldering iron from MPJA, some hardware from Sparkfun (hook up wire, solder sponge, DIP AVR ICs), and a whole mess of hardware from Futurlec.

The Futurlec order took the longest (about three weeks), but came from Thailand via Hong Kong and their prices were VERY difficult to beat. Component prices vary wildly, and on some stuff (ICs, potentiometers, crystals) they were competitive, but on others (heat shrink tubing, male and female headers, crocodile clips) their prices were 1/10 of competitors.

From April 2010

Details

Three chips, Atmel AVR ATtiny85’s. Handy for building custom USB devices or tiny synths (with light modification to the source code). On the back side of this bit of foam is an AVR ATMega328 (Arduino Diecimila upgrade).

From April 2010

Five ATX power supply conversion kits. Banana plugs, banana plug sockets, and totally classy SPST on/off switches, all panel mount.

From April 2010

Potentiometers galore. A bunch of linear rotary pots, 70mm linear sliders, 30mm linear sliders, and a handful knob covers for making circuit bent toys looks more “professional”.

From April 2010

Workspace. This is where I do stuff right now. Handy because it’s a rolltop and can close, not handy because there’s no space to the sides for the kids to get involved. A work in progress.

From April 2010

What’s Next?

So I’ve got it, now what am I going to do with it?

Build, make, re-make, invent, explore, search, find, ponder, repeat. I don’t know, that’s why I’m building a personal lab. If I knew what I wanted to build I’d buy the kit, assemble it, and be content with hard boundaries on what I can and can’t do with the hardware. I’ve decided that I don’t want to be an electrical engineer, but the road to embedded systems design is paved with electricity, so this is a learning time. We’ll see where it leads.

Walmart in Remington

This letter came out of a brief discussion with Claire Caplan, the producer of Midday with Dan Rodricks on Baltimore’s NPR station. There’s a Walmart proposed for development in Remington, and she asked if I’d be willing to share a few words regarding my opposition to the project for a show scheduled to air Monday, March 29. While I certainly do not claim to possess all the answers, this was a good opportunity to organize my thoughts.

Claire,

So the short answer to, “why don’t you support Walmart in Remington” is that I do not believe Walmart’s long term goals are the same as Baltimore citizens’ long term goals. It’s easy to take potshots at specific problems Walmart has, but they’re so huge (no other retail services corporation can compare) that anything that can have gone wrong at some point, will have. But the problem I see is deeper than just, “I heard one of the managers was a jerk”.

What people in Baltimore want to see is more prosperity, what the city wants to see is more tax revenue (a city’s version of prosperity), and both groups want to see these things with as little effort as possible. A big-box shopping center—on the surface—promises these things on a very short time scale with limited up front cost to the city, but does so with a huge long term expense. There are a few problems with the proposed Walmart that outweigh the benefits.

First, more prosperity for citizens in the surrounding neighborhoods cannot be created out of thin air. Walmart’s business model is undercutting the prices of and siphoning customers from existing businesses. This means we’ll see a wave of closures in North and Central Baltimore (Remington, Hampden, Charles Village, and Waverly for sure) starting a few months after the store opens and continuing until a new, more one-sided, balance is reached.

Second, once Walmart (or any out-of-state chain) has the money, it’s removed from the local economy. That’s very bad in the long term. The big boxes (Walmart and Lowe’s) are not going to build up Remington, they’re going to drain it.

Finally, the kind of traffic (both vehicular and human) that comes through a big box retailer is not interesting and doesn’t contribute to the character of Baltimore. Walmart is designed for closed-loop consumption. You drive up, walk in, buy your products, and drive out. I applaud the consideration and effort that has gone into not making the site another brutalist wasteland, but it will still be a primarily auto-friendly strip mall, which is not something worth celebrating.

The culture Walmart promotes is not one I want to be a part of. To Walmart, I am not a person, a citizen, or a neighbor; I am a consumer, good only for spending money. This is an institutional position brought on by the sheer vastness of the enterprise. That they hire P.R. firms to polish their image is not a statement of changing goals or improving business models, it’s the standard corporate acknowledgement that they suck at being good, so they have to controlling the discussion.

I can’t say a Walmart in Remington would be entirely bad. It’s going to replace a dying business having few customers with a new businesses with a lot of customers. If the development project, in general, were pursued in a staged manner with more involvement from groups like the Chesapeake Sustainable Business Alliance (http://www.csballiance.org/pages/memb.html), then I would be more likely to support it wholeheartedly.

What I want to see for Baltimore, is more opportunity for people to do interesting and productive work, more encouragement from the city for small businesses and entrepreneurial activity, and more meaningful interaction between humans who care about where they are and who they are living next to. Walmart does not support those goals.

Barebones Arduino Synth

Two potentiometers, one speaker, and an hour of spare time combined to form my first (real) Arduino circuit and the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

// based on "Arduino Sound Hello World"
// originally by David Fowler of uCHobby.com
// modifications and adaptations by 
// Adam Bachman of adambachman.org

// Open the Arduino serial monitor at 9600 baud to see debug output

/* 
circuit:

digital pin 9 -> pot 1 outer -> speaker A
speaker B -> ground
analog pin 0 -> pot 2 inner
5V in -> pot 2 outer 1
pot 2 outer 2 -> ground
*/

int soundPin = 9;      // the I/O pin for our sound output
int sensorPin = 0;     // input pin for the potentiometer
int sensorValue = 0; // control frequency

void setup(void){
  //Set the sound out pin to output mode
  Serial.begin(9800);
  Serial.println("I'm alive!");
  pinMode(soundPin,OUTPUT);
}

void loop(void){
  sensorValue = analogRead(sensorPin);

  //Set the pin high and delay for sensorValue uS
  digitalWrite(soundPin,HIGH);
  delayMicroseconds(sensorValue);

  //Set the pin low and delay for sensorValue uS
  digitalWrite(soundPin,LOW);
  delayMicroseconds(sensorValue);

  // spit out the sensor value (sanity check)
  Serial.println(sensorValue);
}

The scene of the crime. I had to sit close enough to the computer to program the ‘duino and read the references. All soldering (wires to speaker) was done elsewhere.

The circuit (as described in the code) is one potentiometer between the speaker and the arduino to control volume, and one sending data directly to the analog input to control frequency. When I took the second potentiometer out, frequency was all over the place. Depending on where I touched the wires, I could pretty reliably get some interesting electronic pops and squeals. Almost more fun than twisting dials.

Nowhere to go but up.

The Next Hackerspace 001: Why Baltimore Node?

For whatever reason, I’ve recently become renewed in my excitement for Baltimore Node. Maybe it’s the new year. A new sense of purpose?

Maybe it’s a push from other folks who are getting down and dirty with the hackerspace movement. The hackerspaces.org mailing list and baltimore-node-discussion are both seeing increased activity.

Maybe it’s a sense that Baltimore Node is getting stale. We’ve been going for six months, but relatively little has changed in that time. We haven’t lost many members, we haven’t gained many members, churn is low. From an institutional perspective that might be something to celebrate. For the organization’s whole existence, we’ve been essentially profitable in strict financial terms.

The institutional perspective is boring. Finances aren’t the only measure of value.

Whatever the cause of my current mood, I’m ready to start questioning (again) what it is that’s happening in, with, and around the Node.

[some of] The Questions

What elements of the current hackerspace movement are baggage, and which are lasting?

How are hackerspaces & coworking tied together and why are the things they have in common important?

I see a strong call to move past a space focus and back (forward?) to a people focus. We don’t share a workshop because the tools are better, but because there are people around.

What is it I’m trying to do?

Why non-profit? Why not? Why am I not excited to chase after non-profit status? Is something like Fusion Partnership applicable or relevant to our mission?

What is next?

How does Baltimore Node grow? Should it be grown or should it be split? Should we be spending our energy as members or administrators growing this thing, or should we be seeking to plant more hackerspaces (or hackerspace-like things) in Baltimore?

This is not an exhaustive list, but it’s a starting point. I’d love to hear from other people here, on the mailing list, or on your own sites. This isn’t the start of the discussion, we’ve been going at it on the list and in person for most of a year now. It’ll keep going when we’ve all moved on because it’s really not a hackerspace discussion, it’s an enabling people conversation, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

“What are you trying to do? Why Node?”

This is bigger than tools and more important than work and workspaces, although those ideas are very tightly connected to the Node. This is, at its core, about people. This is about providing a focus for the latent creative energies of as many people as we can reach.

“Latent,” you say, “but Node is made up of creative people. There’s nothing latent there.”

Well sure the folks who are part of the Node are creative, but I’d attribute that to the fact that we’re all creative people. I’d argue that they weren’t all using it when they showed up. I am a believer in a natural range of talents—some may never be as good at ping pong as others—but I am also a believer in the capacity for interesting work present in every living human.

When I say, “not about tools,” I am calling up this capacity, this propensity towards great works; the desire to be part of and responsible for interesting work. I seek to encourage this in myself and others because I think our society largely seeks to take it away from us. In this way I am doing my part to form an anti-corporation. Don’t misunderstand me here, I’m not hoping for collective identity. Something along the lines of the communists, or Anonymous, for example. I want to see more individuality and independent identity, not less.

One funny thing is that it doesn’t take a hackerspace to do that. The hackerspace is a means to an end, but not the end in itself. It is extremely valuable as a central point of contact for a large group of people (I’m calling 17 members, 20+ including affiliates “large”) who are seeking similar ends, directly or obliquely. The hackerspace is not the only tool that can serve that purpose, though.

As a comprehensive or complete workshop, Node is relatively unremarkable. There is very little any member can do in the space that they could not do before in their basement, bedroom, or office. Maybe there would be a longer wait for parts or a harder time with fewer specialized tools, but the point stands. The Node, by existing, the fact of its existence alone, did more to nudge people into action that the tools inside it. The physical reality of the space, its existence as a meeting place and a working place is worth more than the tools, chairs, and tables inside it. Those things are fungible. More or less of them can be acquired as needed. People, on the other hand, are not fungible.

Those people are why I’m doing it. Because they burn like I do for an outlet. They have been bottled up in schools and jobs, and they’re willing to step away from it. I want to invite them along for the ride.

Why do I want to support Baltimore Node?

• To create new things.
• Encourage self-reliance.
• Encourage inter-dependence at a local scale. Grow connections, relationships, and information flows between humans instead of between companies and humans or companies and companies.
• Gather and grow a community of doers excited and equipped to solve the immense present difficulties.
• Help people prepare themselves to solve problems that we are not yet facing.
• To reduce the unintentional isolation of the technical community within the framework of society. i.e., diminish the role and influence of the techno-priesthood by throwing open the doors and inviting others in.
• To explore systems that are too big for me to manipulate on my own.
• To find out if I can build something people will love. It is a testing place for me, in that way. It has something of a, “because it’s there” aura. (not claiming that’s a noble reason, just that it’s on the list)
• To redirect the free energy of as many people as I can away from waste and into productive, creative pursuits. It is waste when someone spends their day grinding themselves down at a job they hate simply because it provides money. No person should hate their work. Node is not a career path or an employment agency, but it can be a starting place in a personal search for meaningful work. Because it is so open ended, because it is so ripe with potential, I believe it may be the best starting place possible. If it’s not already then I want to continue urging its growth in that direction.
• I am looking for something. I can’t say what it is, but I can say when and where I have seen it. I know when it strikes me that we’re on to something.