Next Make is back in full swing, making stuff, holding seminars, and teaching interested people how to make cool stuff. However, most of the efforts made by Next Make Exec lately has been to get our stuff together for this year’s Large Project, the NEXT HOUSE PARTY!
Every year, Next Make decides to participate in a Large Project. The first Large Project was the 3D Printer, but as I wrote in a previous entry, the 3D printer didn’t work, so the next year the Large Project was (surprise!) the 3D printer again. Now that we have the 3D printer up and running, we can finally focus on building something new, namely party lights.
At the beginning of the year, coincidentally several members of Next Make were working on lighting systems that respond to music. Steve Levine was working on a lighting system for his room. He has a string of red LEDs that respond to the bass, and RGB LEDs that responds to the frequency. Also, Frank Yaul designed a circuit board which has a white LED that responds to the bass and a green LED that responds to frequency. This is basically an analog version of what Steve Levine was doing with his room. I was working on the EL Wire (see the previous entry, and Joe Colosimo and Scott Bezek were tangentially working on lighting systems as well.
We decided to collaborate our efforts my making the Next Make Large Project be the Next House party. We kicked off the year by asking freshmen to work on the party lighting system with us. We started by introducing Next Make Exec (Me, Steve, Joe, and Scott), saying our respective majors and project that we’ve worked on. Then we introduced the party light system and had a brainstorming session. We came up with several ideas. Then we ran into trouble quickly when we realized we had no money.
The Next Make Exec board decided to go out and find sponsorship. We decided that if we were recognized by the Association of Student Activities (ASA), then we would appear to be a more legitimate organization to potential sponsors. We worked diligently to complete the ASA application; we made it a Google Doc and we all edited it live (a pretty efficient way of editing a document). Once the application was complete, we had to go through an interview process. After going through the interview, based on the questions they asked, the concerns they voiced, and the answers they gave to the questions we asked, we decided that we didn’t want ASA recognition. They wanted us to make too many sacrifices: they wanted us to change our name, move our location from out of Next House to some other location on main campus, and actively encourage people who are not in Next House to join. We believed that these sacrifices would take away from Next-Make’s vision, which is to encourage collaboration on projects for and/or within Next House.
After that, we decided to ask for funding from Next House Exec. Next House Exec is in charge of the distribution of money within Next House, so we decided to make a persuasive presentation convincing them to give us money for the Next House party light system. We gave a powerpoint presentation that included what we have done so far and a step-by-step plan for what we are planning to do with the lights at a Next House Exec meeting. After the meeting we left so that they could vote on whether or not they would reimburse us for the party lights. The vote was unanimous. Next House Exec will reimburse us up to $1200 for the Next House party.
We are currently in the design phase of the party light system. Joe is picking out all of the LEDs and accordingly designing the PCBs. Steve is working on the music synchronization software, and I’m designing the mounting system. I’ll keep you posted on the progress.