Moving Day PT II. Welcome to i3 version II.0

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As most of you are aware, i3Detroit relocated to the new 8,000sq’ facility this past weekend.  Some were there to help, and others well..  For those who missed out, I composed this short documentary of what happened this past saturday.

If you like what you see in this clip, please pledge to our kickstarter project to help.

i3Detroit V1.0 to V2.0 from Nathan Warnick on Vimeo.

The audio in this clip is licensed under creative commons sample alike, and is Maya (Ground and Sky Mix) by Sharp.

Turbo Trojans move on to State Championship!

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It’s official! One of our two FIRST Robotics teams (Team 3302 from Clawson High School) is going to the Michigan Championship Competition.

This rookie team earned their place last weekend at the Troy District Competition. Facing some of the toughest and highest-ranked teams in the state, the Turbo Trojans made it to the quarter finals and walked away with two trophies: “Highest Rookie Seed” and “Rookie All-Star”

The championship competition is this weekend, April 1-3, at Eastern Michigan University. Admission and parking are free. More info is here: firstinmichigan.org

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Moving Day Pt I.

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Ever move a Piano?  Well today we did, and at the joy of 9am.
Dedicated hackers got a truck and moved 1,500sq’ of hackerspace from Royal Oak, down aprox 2 miles to the new 8,000 sq’ facility in Ferndale.  First item of the day, the wondrous player piano.  Weighing in somewhere around 600lbs, the beast was rolled out on its heavy duty casters, dragged onto the truck lift and rolled on in.

Help i3 expand their dream with a quick donation via their kickstarter link

Moving Day Pt I. from Nathan Warnick on Vimeo.

The space is dead, long live the space!

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i3Detroit is in Ferndale now.  Keycards should work like normal at the new building.  Guests are welcome, as always, any time there’s a member around to host.  The twitterbot should be back up soon.

Thank you, everyone who helped out with the move.  Five round-trips in that truck was a phenomenal lot of work! Thank you, whoever invented the liftgate.  I can’t imagine how people moved pianos before its existence.  Thank you, Jim Ashmore truck and trailer rental, for having rates roughly half that of the national outfits.

Thank you, everyone who’s contributed to the Kickstarter so far!  Your enthusiasm can go farther if you encourage your friends to chip in. 🙂

Long day, short post. Exhausted. Feels good.

The new space is official! Here’s how you can help:

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After months of searching and negotiating, i3Detroit has a new home! It is 1481 Wordsworth, Ferndale.

Back in December, it was brought to our attention that we needed, and did not have, a Certificate of Occupancy for our space in Royal Oak.  This set off a chain of events (to be detailed in a later post), culminating in the selection and negotiation of a new space in Ferndale.  Not wishing to make the same mistake twice, we made our leasing contingent on the ability to get a C of O for the new space, which I’m happy to report happened this morning.

Briefly: The new space is huge.  It’s 8,000 square feet (up from the 1500 we’ve been calling home) and mostly warehouse.  It has commercial power, a large overhead door, and did I mention it’s huge?  There’s some pretty significant renovation and remediation work yet to be done on the front “office” area, but the back “warehouse” portion is good to go.

As a group, we poured countless hours and thousands of personal dollars into overhauling the Royal Oak space, and we can’t recoup most of that investment.  The drywall, the floors, the wiring fixes, the cleaning… None of that comes with us.  It’s going to take a lot more work and materials to make Ferndale our new home.

We could use your help!  We’ve set a goal of $5000 on our Kickstarter fundraiser, which will go a long way towards helping us meet build out costs! With your help, we can make the new space bigger and better than ever.  Remember the first time you set foot inside i3Detroit?  Please tell a friend!