Like most of the tools at All Hands Active, the PCs in the lab are free for general use. Blender, SketchUp, InkScape, Eclipse, Visual and much much more are available.  The next time FedEx Kinkos tries to charge you $12 p/hour to edit a PDF, consider stopping by the shop ; ).

Also, thanks to Nate Yost & i3 Detroit, we have a fully armed and operational bat… laser printer.

Check out the rest of our upcoming events. We’re playing with Conductive Ink this Thursday at Build Night, join us!

What are AHA’s goals? All Hands Active would like to see MORE of the following:

Collaboration
On projects, with other organizations, and within AHA

Promotions
Talk about and post more about what we do, attend more events as “AHA”, and invite more people!

Classes
Offer more classes internal, and external (BF), more hardware workshops (tools), and more accessible / open curriculum.

Events
More hackathon / group build nights, events that bring down more members, get people to communicate more with each other about what they are doing.

If you’re interested in becoming a Board member, please click me!

If you’re interested in reading more about our long term goals, please click me! 

If you have any more questions, email: board@allhandsactive.com

We removed The Cube and built a new Command Center Computer Lab, exciting announcements about that coming soon. As a result, the place now feels twice as large and four times as amazing. We measured it. It’s true.

Board Elections! If you are knowledgeable in the ways of Community Outreach and Serious Fundraising, AHA needs you!

Make sure to check out the events page to learn about all the upcoming things that you should know about! Notacon? Penguicon? We’re going, are you?

2) We are doing Eggbot Workshops (this thing you’re watching) on Saturday from 4:30pm to 6:30pm, and Sunday from 12:00pm to 2:00pm.

So, come down to one of our classes and learn some new skills or show off what you know, and you might end up going home with a totally rad book courtesy of O’Reilly!

The Financials
What we have in the bank as of the beginning of the February:
Bank: $1,965.14
PayPal: $713.34
CashBox: $100.00

This currently leaves us with about $800 in surplus cash for the month, which is before paying our wonderful Bright Futures staff, so we will end up with a bit less in the end; but the good news is that we’ve seen more money coming in from gaming and classes this month! Thanks to all our loyal members! We’re not in the clear just yet and still working to make ends meet; so if you want to help out, consider upgrading your $20 membership… Or maybe make a donation over there via the button on the right side of the page?

You can also view all of our 2012 financial data (compiled for our upcoming 501c3 application) here.

Speaking of classes…
…we’ve run some pretty neat ones in the past few weeks, with — in addition to our regular Arduino, soldering, 3D printer, laser cutter and CNC router classes — topics spanning Git, Linux command-line, to Atari Punk Circuits with the AADL, to Laser workshops with a Valentine’s Day twist. We’re in the process of organizing more classes and ideas for late March and beyond. Check out our current events listing here. If you want to teach a class, get in touch with us by replying here, or send a message to the AHA Shop mailinglist to float your idea!

It’s almost Con Season!
AHA plans on running another mini-hackerspace at Penguicon this year. We will be running a number of workshops, including soldering, cardboard crossbows, and more throughout the con; and we will be teaching classes on programming, Arduino, etc.. Let us know in the comments here/mailinglist if you want to help out (but do it soon, time is running out)! We can get you a discount on your Penguicon badge if you’re willing to put in a few hours of work for us. Otherwise, do stop by and check it out. Penguicon 2013 will be running April 26-28 at the Marriott Centerpoint in Auburn Hills, MI.

Also, anyone interested in checking out Notacon this year? It would be great to send an AHA crew out there.

Board meetings:
As a reminder, the Board of Directors meets 7:00PM on the second Wednesday of the month at AHA. Meetings are open to the public, so come meet the board and ask questions and offer feedback. We really do like to hear from everyone who uses the space on how we can make it better!

Previous board meeting minutes may be found on the AHA Wiki here.

Also, Backyard Brains on CNN!

More awesome news:

Studying Spikes with Backyard Brains!

Neuroscience with Backyard Brains, Atari Punk Consoles, Octave and a whole lot more is happening this month. Check out our events page for the rest.

We’re also looking for people to help out with our After School Programs, and volunteers to help staff the front desk. Contact Josh Williams if you have a few hours a week to spare!