HackyHalloween 2011 Photos Posted

HackyHalloween has been a great success – the event was very rewarding in so many ways, 76 pumpkins carved, circuits successfully soldiered by participants as young as four (yes, 4) years old, and a good time had by all.

Here are pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gwendy/archives/date-taken/2011/10/29//

I’ve used the tag “HackyHalloween2011″ on Flickr, and encourage anyone else with photos to use it as well.

If you were there, and want to know more about the microcontroller kit you soldiered up to light up your pumpkin, then you’ll want to come out to KwartzLab’s Tuesday Open Night (every Tuesday, 7pm on). Kit designer, James Bastow, made the kits to be hackable — they can be reprogrammed to do all kinds of things, not just light up pumpkins.

We had a number of parents come because their kids wanted to carve a pumpkin, but being first generation Canadians, had only vague ideas of where to begin; it was very neat to act as ambassadors to the holiday.

The Musuem staff helped so much in every way possible; from making the space available in the first place (and such an ideal space!), to making sure people knew about the event when they came in at the front desk, to helping us clean up the goop from dozens of pumpkins, they made the perfect event partner.

There are so many people and organizations that went into making this a great success; the three that come immediately to mind:
– KWAwesome Foundation– for believing in the vision and funding the event
– The Museum and staff — for being the perfect organization to host the event
– KwartzLab — for coming up with the idea, and the volunteers to make it happen

Trying to list names here would be a mistake — someone who went over and above would inevitably get missed; you all know who you are, and mad props for making something awesome happen in our community.

There is no question that folks are interested in doing this again next year — if want to know when things start happening again, send an email to “info@kwartzlab.ca” and we’ll take note of your email address, and let us know in what way you are interested (you want to help, want to attend, want to sponsor it, etc.). Tentatively, we’ll start planning sometime in the summer. We’ll definitely need sponsorship, volunteers, and another crowd of eager pumpkin carvers!

You all rock,

-Cedric

Tags: HackyHalloween2011, KWAwesome, THEMUSEUM
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