It’s been a little quiet from the GreenHouse team this semester, but fear not! We have been busy cooking up ideas! We’ve had an action-packed semester with over 20 workshops and events (!!!) ranging from hacking Amazon Alexa to talks about the importance of mushrooms. I’m here to share a little about the highlights from the semester.
It all started on October 5. Simon and Ashley partnered with Major League Hacking to help students learn about Alexa skills. With the help of MLH, the four hosts led 20 students to develop their very first Alexa skill! Thanks, MLH!
On the hardware front, MakerSpace TAs Pallak and Akash led a workshop on working Raspberry Pi and TAs Gui and Beamlack led a workshop on Arudinos. These two devices are super cool to use and may be useful for your next project too!
Don’t worry, we didn’t forget about software. TAs Sayed and Orion led four workshops on introductory and advanced Solidworks skills, TA Jason led a workshop on Fusion 360 where participants learned how to model a lamp, and TA Hala led a workshop on introductory machine learning where participants learned how to use machine learning for image recognition. These were all well-received events and let people take the first steps into software for their school or personal projects.
There were plenty of hands-on workshops too! TAs Jason, Jess, and Luis led three workshops on Halloween accessories, costumes, and decorations as well as a holiday gifts workshop. TA Rachel led a workshop on creating carbon fiber laminate, where every participant got to make and take-away their very own piece of carbon fiber laminate! TAs Keaton and Kathy even led a group of students to talk about how to develop their own board game. We even explored the world of electronics with TAs Eshka and David in an intro to electronics workshop.
Last but not least, in the machines and tools department, TAs Jonah and Kashish led a workshop on using the Othermill with Fusion 360 as well as laser cutting 3D sculptures. Participants here definitely got some new and cool skills to use for future projects! TA Nowsha led some students to design and print stickers with a vinyl cutter workshop. Later in the semester, TAs Joseph and Alec led a workshop on how to safely use hand tools and manual fabrication, it was the perfect workshop for people who wanted to get down and dirty with manual labor!
Of course, the GreenHouse is all about ideas! So we organized a three-part ideation series starting with how to ideate with Eli Bozeman, design sketching with MakerSpace GA Gabrielle and IDM grad student Kevin, as well as a prototyping workshop with Hannah Berkin-Harper. These workshops were designed to help people ideate and, judging from the audience, everyone came out of these workshops with great ideas and new skills!
This semester, we even had a VR talk that I led on what I and some of my fellow IDM graduate students learned at the Oculus Connect 4 conference in San Jose. We even organized a two-part food and sustainability series working with NYU grad student Jonas Günther to bring in speakings to talk about the importance of food sustainability as well as the importance of mushrooms.
This semester really has been filled with fun and exciting workshops and events. We thank everyone who came out to these events and workshops for an amazing semester. The year is not over there so, fear not! We’ll have many more fantastic workshops for you in the Spring.
Got an idea for a workshop? Contact us! We want to help you make it happen.
