Making it at the Library with TBLC
We had a great time meeting with a terrific group of forward thinking Tampa Bay Library Consortium members today, at the Bruton Memorial Library in Plant City, who came out for our Creative Programming for the 21st Century Library workshop. About 20 librarians,...
You Gotta Dream Big
Life is short and you need to do what you wanna do, what you have a passion for… The thing is you gotta dream big and that’s all there is, you just gotta dream big... Ritch Branstrom While on a trip to the Upper Peninsula in Michigan recently, we stayed at a little...
The Power of Tinkering
Tinkering is a minor risk taking activity without any great consequence; it is not goal directed nor are there defined outcomes. There are no key performance indicators for tinkering. Thus, tinkering is suspended from the pressures of defined goals and time limits....
Help us Obi Wan: Why Science needs Science Fiction
There's a very interesting dialectic between science and science fiction. If you take a look at, for example, Edwin Hubble, the greatest astronomer of the 20th century, he was destined to be a Missouri country lawyer. He remembered reading Jules Verne as a child. As a...
Instructables Nation
The community that now calls the site home, is an amazing mix of wonder from around the world. Every day we continue to be amazed by the imagination, curiosity, and simple awesomeness of everyone who shares their creations with us on Instructables. The Instructables,...
Reality Based Living: Ask the Hard Questions & Follow the Evidence
I want to know that it's real, that it's not just something happening inside my own head, because it matters what's true... Neil DeGrasse Tyson In a recent opinion piece titled, "Rhapsody in Realism," New York Times columnist David Brooks talks about the value of the...
Decision Making by Popular Media
A little background: At the end of June, the Pasco County School Board took under perfectly reasonable consideration the idea of eliminating the titles of valedictorian and salutatorian in public high schools, a proposal that passed unanimously on first reading,...
The Power of Simple Solutions
Simplicity is the shortest path to a solution. -Ward Cunningham In our work with FIRST robotics team students, we often remind them of the KISS philosophy - Keep it Simple Silly! - encouraging them to look for simple, elegant solutions to their game challenges. It's...
The Gift of Unhurried Time
This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it. -Ralph Waldo Emerson I came across an article recently, that referenced a thoughtful piece that ran last summer in the Huffington Post. I don't remember anything about the article that...
Gulf Coast MakerCon and the Power of Making
Many thanks to Wayne Rasanen, inventor of the In10Did keyboard, and president of the Tampa Bay Inventors Council, one of our fantastic Gulf Coast MakerCon partners, for this nice look back at our 2014 event. I enjoyed the interview and the opportunity to share why I...