Member(s) with strong writing skills

I no Englush good!

I try to update this Talk forum with Science Committee events, and sometimes even other committee events. Where were you thinking we would post your suggested updates? Hardly anyone uses the DMS Facebook page, for example. We don’t have a newsletter or magazine. Hardly anyone (relatively) reads this Talk forum.

I was thinking about articles being submitted to publications like Make magazine, online sites like Hack-a-day, perhaps even more general publications like Popular Science and Popular Mechanics, or for the stuff your group is doing Scientific American.

The nice thing is that the person(s) who took up this challenge would have the possibility of getting paid for their efforts by these publications. Not to mention developing a nice portfolio/resume if writing/reporting was something they were interested in.

During the last couple of PR meetings we’ve talked about amping up blog posts and made plans to do so.

That being said, if anyone wants to submit their own posts for consideration to the blog I’m willing to edit for clarity and content.

@KrissyHeishman anything to add?

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@MellissaRhodes

Thank you! Blog posts are fantastic; however, when we were discussing this we were mostly thinking about Make magazine. DMS has at least ten times the membership of any other maker space in the country, yet if you read Make magazine you would think that Tech Shop or Fab Lab were the bigger spaces. With 900+ members we must have a few with a passion for writing. I would love to see a DMS writer with a column in Make. And with all of the neat projects at the space, it should be easy to find enough material to produce such a column.

That said, I write only when I have to, because it isn’t something I personally enjoy. But I would love to see us discover DMS’s own Bill Gurstelle, Forest Mims, or even John Iovine… And our version wouldn’t have to produce all of their own projects to have material to write about!

@MellissaRhodes Blog posts would be good. Where are these located?

@wandrson Submitting for publication in a commercial magazine is somewhat ambitious. We could do it, but this isn’t something we are likely to succeed in doing with just a casual write-up about a random project. These magazines are looking for something special, usually. I’ve had a letter to the editor published in an electronics magazine, and I was offered the chance to submit projects to another electronics magazine.

The nitrogen laser has about as many articles about it as people who’ve done it. It’s educational for us to do it, and we can use the laser later, but I doubt very many publications would choose our nitrogen laser project over all the others already available on the Web.

No, we need a special project, something with a good hook to it. Either that, or it would have to tell people something actually useful that they might not find easily elsewhere.

In any event, we need more than just a status update. We might interest a publication in a story about DMS, itself, though.

Is “the blog” this: http://dallasmakerspace.org/blog/

I have to say, this is the first I’ve heard mentioned of a blog and, even a search on the Wiki turned up no hits except for an outdated “improvements” page which appeared to be dedicated to some graphics stuff. I then (unlike me) scanned the wikibar on the left side and saw “Blog”, which took me to this page. Surprise! It’s even largely up to date.

We need to stop keeping this secret!
I’m not sure where to advertise it, but seriously! Needs to be more well known, ammirite?
If I may ask, what is the “attention flow” for that page intended to be? In other words, how would a member of the public be expected to find it?

I have a friend over at SolidSmack that has written some blogs about DMS projects and even helped promote a DMS Kickstarter. We can tap into him if you want get some exposure other than Make Magazine. He would love more content from DMS.

Here is an article for the Gocupi. http://www.solidsmack.com/fabrication/gocupi-turns-vertical-surface-canvas/

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I agree completely; however, with 900 members and some of the projects I have seen being produced, I would be amazed if a good writer couldn’t produce an accepted monthly column with the material available here.

Some things off the top of my head are:

The off road wheel chair Tom is prototyping
The go cart
The lemons car
Dealing with the fire marshall issue
A story about the space itself… Think about it… A maker space that is an order of magnitude larger then any other in the country… One that has tripled in size in a single year… There are certainly worthwhile stories there.

In addition to “editors”, we need “reporters”. I think we need people to proactively ask people about their stuff etc.

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All publicity is good publicity; however, I am about to show my age. I am old enough and set enough in my ways, that I still believe that print publications have much greater respectability and cache then any online publication (They also PAY for their articles, which provides an added incentive for the author), which is why I was thinking places like Make, Pop Sci, and Pop Mech.

It actually isn’t very up to date. It used to be directly linked on the main dallasmakerspace.org page but bc it was so sad they took it off.

I think the plan is to build it back up to a decent state, promoting the direct blog entries in social media, then have the direct link on the main page come back up.

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Fair enough. I saw the Jewelry entry, which is only about 15-30 days out of date and did not pay attention to the fact that the next newest entry is about double that…

There was a dead time of over a year before the Art Show entry (and the more recently the jewelry entry).

The projects that you mention are OK, but I think they aren’t quite good enough for a monthly magazine. They might work for a newletter, but a magazine really needs great stuff.

DMS would make a good article for a magazine, but it would take a lot of work to pull it together. Someone (non-member) actually was doing this, back around Grand Opening, as he was so inspired after interviewing several people. I don’t know what became of that.

One other negative that I have to mention. Some people in the space have became highly upset when I’ve happened to photograph their project as I was shooting random shots around the space. If you want reports on people’s projects, we will need more transparency with less hostility.

With the proper writing they are better then any of the material currently gracing the pages of the magazines I mentioned. Given that Make magazine in particularly is having a hard time finding worthwhile projects to write up, which is indicated by how they are trying to fill the magazine with other stuff.

Wow, are they that hard up? I don’t read them too often, but I’ve been under the impression that all their issues are top-notch.

There writing is good, by the projects that they are writing about aren’t that special.

OK, I’ll assume they are scraping the bottom of the barrel. I still think they want projects that other people actually would want to build. They would want something that other people at least think they want to build.

I’ve subscribed to several electronics magazines, just before they went out of business. It’s difficult to keep home hobbiest project magazines going, especially in electronics. Maybe Popular Mechanics would like some of the projects you mentioned… those projects are more up PM’s alley.

As a consumer of such articles for several decades, I can say that I am usually not interested in reading such articles because I want to build the item in question–I rarely do. I like the articles because I learn techniques and problem solving approaches I wasn’t familiar with. I learn to ‘think outside the box’ by reading how others solved problems. I also like reading about things that sound cool; like the CAD/CAM’ed go cart design. I couldn’t care any less about go karts; however, I signed up for the class because the concepts /techniques that are going into the construction do interest me.

I did not know you had such a low opinion of the projects we do here…