♪ [opening music] ♪ >> brent skidmore: i'mhoping that the brown bag's fairly casual but i'mbrent skidmore i teach in art and art history department. that's my primary duty here andthen lots of recent focus
overhead router woodworking events, has been on the development ofthe steam studio project and deference to not introducingeveryone in the room there are a lot of people in thisroom that happens with, that's for sure.
so and then there are a lotof people not in this room, that it happened with, so iwill get to that at one point, but i put up this title and as awrote it and felt really silly about sending it to gene, sara sanders who'ssitting on the front row, it's really our experiencemost everyday, because we're more on the frontline and then other folks are on a different front line, sobasically it seems like everyone is doing that on the team.
and then someone asked mehe said "is that southern?" and i was like or am i just oldand that's kind of what came into my mind, so as ayounger person asked me, so if anybody has any idea, butit just – its in the north east okay so if we could get someidea of where it might have came from that's good. i won't feel soconscientious about it. and then with current politicaltimes is also i think brings up a total different notion toowhich is not very pleasant.
so i put this up, because many times we're askedwhat is the steam studio, and its because it's a long trekaway people won't know we're less than a mile from hereso really its not a long trek. i'm being facetious but this iswhat we say at the front door, right amy? right. so our, our marketing andbranding crew has really helped us out a lot, they've beenpart of the vision also. the science, technology,engineering, art, math
and/or making, that'smy bastardization of the m part, because i'm a maker, they cometogether in this space engaging next generation, really you cango down there and read that and i read it this morningand i thought "yeah, that describes it." but i'll show you what itis, and in a way it's not even determined what it is, right? as we met on tuesday, the steam team we meetat five and still don't
have a beer at five,something's wrong with that, but we meet at five and meet onthis one particular point in the week that all of us canget together and we do and when we do it's a livelyconversation about drinking, really fast, but notbeer from the fire hose, and then how can we put outthe fires that have happened throughout that time,what's coming on the, you know on the front, and thenwhat can we do next to make sure we can sustain thiseffort and dream.
so, but my intersectionis at the a part, and some would say your - soanything the a would stand for that stands for the guy who getspushed to the front to speak in front of public crowds idon't know what that can be. [laughter] >> skidmore: or we'llgo out and raise money for this awesome endeavor so i getpushed to the front sometimes, but it all kind of beganright here i think, it all began witha team of people,
those include a team of peoplethat i'm not going to list because it's very long, butthere are people in computer science, rebecca brucesitting in the front, mechatronics, susanreiser, jackson martin, matt west, studentsthat are in the room, shana, and who am ileaving out, myself, and i'm leaving outsomebody key on our team, who is it? yeah, sara, who iwork with the most of all
[laughter] and this the story ofour lives right now, who did i forget todayand she goes it's me, who did you forget today oh me? so this morning it was likeshe came in and i said, "well would a hug help?" and we just startedthe day that way, it started also with somepeople that aren't in the room. so steve walsh, whowas a director
of mechatronics had a dream. i'd been here since 2007 tryingto bring something into fruition connected to this thing that was call the craftcampus essentially, build better studios forsculpture students and art students. you know that's reallywhat that was about, so it happened that we hada really agreeable crew. susan asked me aquestion earlier-
how to get the one place, and i said how to get to oneplace - been my experience here is that you work with thefaculty that are willing to step in and reallyget the work done and people respond but ithappened with steve. steve went out and raised moneyfrom the duke energy foundation. susan and rebecca have taughtthis awesome class for years called creative fabricationwhere they bring - it's a 100 levelengineering class
that solves their diversityintensive, right? so and they, when they wereteaching that class focused around assistivedevice technologies, so similar to sculpture right? so we all looked at each otherand said yeah we can do this. so essentially it's aclass that comes together, or it has come together i thinkwe've done it three times now, and if i get any of this wronglike forgetting sara just like go like that or say not that.
there's matt actually drawingwith a computer in front of him, which is a crazy thingthat happens with an art education student andan engineering student and matt west who'ssitting in front, our technicianand teacher in art. another art student over thereand that's so - in this class, they team up as engineersand artists, right? so not one thing remains moreimportant it seems like of the s t and the e andthe a and the m.
and then that wasgoing along, right. that was the 3d labin rhodes robinson. that's where sara and i probablymet one of the times that we met in this incarnation ofour knowing each other. and then we endedup with some parts. so what they do in this class is they actually designassistive technologies. so all of this is going on, while we're designing the studio
while we're raisingmoney actually. i think i raise - help raise andyeah 1.2 million came in during that time. we were all still teachingthose classes. the 400,000 was on the books alittle bit earlier than that. then a 100,000 came in. you can do the mathnow, we're up to 1.2. so, all that money - themajority of it raised outside of house,
which has been a huge effortand it continues today. as my colleagues know, ontuesday when we were talking about another onethat is coming up. so we get together and we'redoing all that inside - the time of this class and i put inthis timeline because i had a presentation without thistimeline and then i realized how important the nexus ofus all coming together, looking at eachother and saying, "we can do this".
because my nextcall was from maxi, it might have been from sara, could've been fromkeith is to say, "do you want to comelook at this facility with us and maybe dosomething with us and that's kind of the open door. you know, it waslike there it is. like, oh finally. and i had talked to steve anumber of times but didn't know
why i wasn't respondingand then he went away. so i was like, "well hewas probably being kind." he didn't want to tellme he was headed out. so we had thisthing - open door, walked into it, sawus - the facility, all that's happeningright before this happens. and i was going to leave it outof the talk but it doesn't make any sense because everytime we revisit - drinking from the firehose everyday and doing
what we're doing - we realizethat basically there's something to be realized in the curricularaspect of the intersection of this place whereyou make things. that's essentially what it is,right and design things that cannot be realized if wedon't continue doing this part and that's when we start tothink about what courses can we offer that specificallyare just, you know, how to use the water jet. do you have an application for aturned wood bowl in your life?
so you see how diversethose things are? one is manual, theother one's not. the other one is see and see. and then it goes without sayingthat each of the groups learn a lot about eachother during this, learn a lot about whattheir processes are, what their techniques are,anything about what - and then they also stand and most ofthe time the position i stand in when the computer part starts.
the c and c, which i nowknow what it stands for, and it just like dives over myhead and somebody puts their hand on me and says "it'sgoing to be okay" you know. and then if i tell them how icould make something in wood or metal and they look atme the same way and like, "well i couldn't do that." then we work togetherto make that happen. so some fantastic thingshave come out of this. this is a kind of an interiorof a one handed -
was that what it was? - it was a one handedrollerball keyboard. and then some chain handles thatalso - i think if you unscrewed - you could put some pills intop of or something like that. and then all of these aremodeled in fusion 360. our parts of them are modeledand the part of them - some of the parts are madeeither out of a pla and printed - so everything is prototyped. so some things are cast in medaland that's what you were seeing
right before that. they're cast in metaland brought together. not exactly an easy thing to do. but what we find is that peopleget to understand things about materials and processes thatthey wouldn't have gotten to understand if theywere in their silos? so that's a dynamic thingthat launched this thing. without showing you that it feltlike i - "well i was going to show you this awesome placeand really couldn't tell you
the history and thisis really what - this is really thefoundation of it all. am i right? i mean, even this crazy thingright here that when actuated it - pushed the actuator, itinflated the little – those little silicon thingsand grabbed that cup. sometimes it crushedthe cup, i heard. >> audience member: [indistinct] >> skidmore: yeah.
and so – and this was youknow, this part right here, that's an art student,new media, engineer, and this part right here ispla this is silicon and there is a pump right here,which would have - you would need to be a realamputee to use this. we don't often have thatopportunity obviously. and then this - orprevious semester, you worked with who, rebecca? >> rebecca bruce:[indistinct] ...
i actually worked withpeople who needed help and the students designed... >> skidmore: so then we manifestthat onetime in an art and mechatronics show that we did,i think at the end of our first time together, yeah first time? so you can tell it's all alittle bit of a blur and guess what it's only been3 semesters maybe. i think this is maybe thethird semester, maybe. yeah. >> audience member:a year and a half.
>> skidmore: a year and a half. she says, feels like ten. [laughs] so it feels like tenbecause we're doing all of that on top of what we were doingto try to develop this facility that is very close to you. there's our running trackand this makes some sense, you came out theback side right here, right underneath the highwayand then right here. cheap joes is right here.
soon to be a newginger's revenge [indistinct]. and also a mock tastingroom in the same place. they're going to have mock tailsand they'll have ginger brew and maybe a little beer. sorry to beer lovers. and as you comebetween these buildings, you can enter the main buildingright here and we're in the suite that's in this corner. the big parking lot here orpark all the way down here.
this - at this end of thebuilding is going to be the north carolina blast center,which is a – a foot print larger than ours. ours is 12,000 square feet thatwill be leased for 10 years and then theirs is somewhereover 25 i think. [indistinct] if anybody has aconnection with someone who can get us the sidewalk from, right here, we need a sidewalkfrom here to here, that section rightthere that's all.
so underneath the overpass, orwe can walk all the way down and there's a sidewalkthat ends right here, but on the exit ramp there'sno sidewalk that goes here. so that's just another thingwe're trying to get done. >> audience member: isit in the cities plans? >> skidmore: it isin the cities plans, yes. >> audience member: [indistinct]...it's currently in their future plans but justlike everything here, it is the state...
but it is on their list... we have moved it up... >> skidmore: we havemoved it up the list. it helps when mark meadows showsup at the steam studio and wants to know what's goingon, so because he says, "how can i help you?" i said, "i got an idea!" he said, "really?" and i said "oh yeah" andwhen i said sidewalk he said,
"well, that's easy." i think i said it was a littleshorter than it really was. >> skidmore: yeah,is it going now? that's the question. >> audience member: it's notgoing now but they're just waiting on us totell them the plan... >> skidmore: and we'll get towhy we're waiting a little bit just a little bit further. so inside the space,this is interesting,
i put these images in there. these are obviouslyfrom the design rendering. and this is a mezzaninethat doesn't exist. everybody knows whatvalued engineering is right, as you work on theuniversity project. so that means, what doyou have to get rid of? so that was our restroom and ourmezzanine and a few windows and doors with windowsand things like that. but not a whole lot.
so we haven't realized themezzanine but i put this in here because i don't think i ever sawthese renderings and i've been this far into the project. and we brought them back outfor the ribbon cutting because we wanted people to know like, we still need supportto build a mezzanine because our computer labssitting on the floor now. so this was another concept toshow the mezzanine too and to show the whole shop.
so we did a lot of this,this is just the woodshop. sara and i designed itback and forth over the course of the summer. sometimes - i know we knew moreabout what was being asked of the engineers - no offense,but about the workings of this space, you know, and how youwould move through it and what would happen in there. and often timesthat wasn't heard. so we're working throughsome of those pains.
but most all, it's been a reallyawesome project to work on in my opinion because of scott walker,who's been the project manager and what actually often -becausehe had so much going on - to further us about whatwas at the front lines. and this was over thecourse of the summer. and that's just basicallyas we are beginning there. so the building when i went intoit and when sara went into it you could walk into 50,000square feet and i literary said the first time i went there,"i'm not going in the building."
he said, "why." i said, "because i don'twant to go in that building." you couldn't see light at theend of the 50,000 square feet. they had covered over all ofthe skylights in the building. so there's 80 newskylights in the building. sometimes you can walk into thesteam studio and you don't need a light turned onto work in the shop. it's quite pleasantand then we have high efficiencylighting in there.
lots of chaos over the summerthat we came in and checked on, sent back scott like "well it'sreally not the way they say it is, you know", things like that. or, "it's really awesome,i can't believe it." or, "why are they building thatwall the way they are around the dust extraction system?" and you know, just details like,"oh because if you need to move the dust extraction system youneed to be able to take down the wall that's aroundit so you can bring it
somewhere else easily." things went along likethis for a long time, then hit a little bit of a spot. really not any bit near thespots i've heard of and that was largely because wejust kept pushing. added a couple of robots inthere from arvato and we've had some in-kind donationsbut not a whole lot. but these two robots came fromarvato and sara can speak to that more if you're interestedbut basically i heard that -
this is number 11, and thenrecently i'll show you number 12 rolling in to that space thereand us looking at each other and going, "wheredo we put that?" so things like this happen whenyou're colleague leaves town. >> audience member: [indistinct] >> skidmore: i waslike wait a minute, i thought you said theywere sending a water jet. this looks like a boat. so this is greg from facilitiespulling a water jet off
of a ramp truck. there we were gone on that one. so she was training on the waterjet while these two giant things showed up from greensboro. this is a c and c mill. awesome thing about shopbotsis that you can put them in a woodshop as we have to, butthe more awesome thing i think they think as a manufacture youcan put them all in a box and somebody else canput them together.
so matt had this experience ofbeing really lucky and so did i that we had our shopbot show upand it was put together wrong and really in a way that wasnever going to be fixed so we had randy from shopbot come overand hang out with us for 3 days while we put ours together,while matt and he put it together actually. i laughed, because suzie sams,she's so awesome for us but on our website today she has me andthe quotation by the photo is, "brent checkingthe printer", right.
it's a 2000 pound plainer thati've just taken out of the box and we've had to spinit around on a forklift but i'm checking the printer. so some days it was – youknow, i mean we were often doing things that if you waited for -i wouldn't say safe because we always do things safe, but ifyou waited for every step to -every t to be crossedand i to be dotted, then we'd still be waiting. and so we just got things done.
one day i remember actuallymoving the plainer - they set it in place and then i realized itold them to put it backwards. so it was like 2000pounds has to just spin, you know. that's when sam's friend is intown and he's the guy who does all the rigging for navitat. and so he rolls inwith all his straps and we turn the plainer around. without that it wouldhave been a little bit
more difficult that day. that's him in the white shirtthere getting his [indistinct]. matt reconfigured some wonkythings about the shopbot, two big boxes that stick out andour tight space that you could hit your leg on. even painted them yellowto match their branding. jackson helped a whole lot. i don't know, i want to thankanthony the electrician, not our anthony,
because i definitely want tothank tony our electrician. tony has been really essentialin us moving from contractors we hired to really havingthinks work some days, so that's been really essential. woodshop comingonline, dust extractor, matt going this way somewhat. that's also matt'sgantry so without that we don't get it done. and a lot of time thecommunications over there
it seemed like to me they happenwithin a second and we all were still continually collectivelyworking together to get it done. i've heard talk and urgency tolearn how to turn a wooden bowl. i suspect you'll see thatin your near future as an advertisement of please comeover and take this one-hour class and hang out and makesomething at the steam studio, on the lathes. we have four of them and fairlyample space for theme which is good.
and then we have a reallybeautiful water jet which can cut all kinds ofthings, twelve-inch stone. we hear it can. we've cut two-inchwalnut, steel, one-inch steel, all of thesethings are really hard to do any other way thanwith the water jet. and there's a robot coming in,so you got everything all tidied up and then this thing showsup, like the first - before the first week of classes.
i said, i lookedat her and i said, "where was that?" you know that containerthat was down at riverside, i said yeah, i said,"that was in there." so the whole time i'd beendriving by this thing didn't know what was coming. so we have parts for a twelfthone if you need to make one. >> sara: and severalbran paisley cds >> skidmore: oh yeah
and we do have free brad paisleycds and a country music all star that has dolly parton andwaylon jennings on it because they came from arvato. so they were essentially to putcds in boxes so we have three cases and they're goingfaster than you would think. that's all i got tosay on that one, faster than you would imagine. i did watch a guy walkout with 4 yesterday. i was like, "well that's fine,we want to get rid of them."
so he's got next yearschristmas figured out. there's the shopbot. when you put it together,it looked like that. and then this is coming in towhat is one of the most exciting spaces of this shop to me. and to sara and i, we know that people walkinto this giant space right here now still, there'sactually a yellow line here now, put your safetygoggles on and everything.
these tables arein the other room. well when we walkinto this space we go, "what are you goingto do over there, can't you put it over there?" all this is to be reconfiguredfor however we want to use it. smartly, right thereand right here, most everything is on wheelsthat we can put on wheels so we can move it around,change the shape of the shop. who was there forthe ribbon cutting?
anybody there forthe ribbon cutting? so a bunch of you were - thanksfor coming - and we even had around 150 people inhere i think at one point. so we can hostwhatever open house, any sort of lecture and the ideawas actually there was actually a public interface right here. that is now our temporarycomputer lab once we finish up the mezzanine which is uphere, we will be able to do that public programming right there,which is really - a lot of what
we're doing is about that we'renot sitting on our main campus. the idea of this is that we arenot sitting on our main campus. and the idea is that ourstudents actually can have pre-professional or evenprofessional experiences quickly and faster than they could onour campus by intersecting who might be in thebuilding, i.e. designers. its already happening. it was happeningbefore we had opened, about 4 monthsbefore we were open.
and then also theriver arts district, believe it or not that's at the gateway ofthe river arts district. and i told the citythat recently and they kind of chuckled and isaid, "look at the map, you know it goes allthe way up to here." so we really are sitting thereright at the very beginning of it when you turnthe corner there. a lot of things are jokedat steam studio
is that we could make that. it would mean that, "when would we make thatis the next question." but made all the tables forthe computer lab that when the mezzanine's built out whichis coming - i am telling you, it's coming. i just keep dreamingabout that part. and you can come inand walk up the steps, have a quiet time to designsomething and then walk
downstairs and make it. sara designed this conferencetable in our conference room that's really an office on theplan because it's too small to be a conference room. had 19people in thereyesterday, a little tight. and then from the centralleft looking over - so that reconfigurable areas in here andthen here's where the mezzanine is going to go. this will be - some day thiswill be maybe where a 3d printer
might live. right now it's a humanenvironment [laughs] and we don't really want that in thereand this conference room there that's now blue because sara wanted all thesewalls painted blue. got that done. and then - what's awesome aboutthis if you're interested in metal, metal fabrication there'sone - you got a water jet here. two, you have everything thatwould be in a regular metal shop
right here and drill press, bandsaw and then you have this very ancient overhead milland then a c and c mill. so you got manualdexterity and c and c, i almost said dexterity,technologies. and then you got a manuallathe and the c and c lathes. so there's basically the 2machines driven by human and driven by a computerand sitting side by side. that's sara's design. hats off to sara for that.
i don't know how manytimes that we've given tours, that i've commented on that. i think i have adream of actually experiencing both some day,that's what it is. good luck. and we do have one of these guysthat looks like a little rocket ship or a little spaceship that landed, universal laser system. and it can doeverything, mostly,
that the water jet can't do. and i'm learninga lot about that. sara learned tons about thatyesterday and it was awesome to watch her from afar and thencome back and get a report. so we're about 1:20,no let's see 12:27, i want to be covered. can we build this tableat the steam studio? it happened. each one of those - do youremember how long these take?
>> sara: a littleover three hours. >> skidmore: so each one ofthese takes 3 hours and if you were to do this manually,could you even do it? >> sara: you'd have tohave a [indistinct]. but it wouldn't benearly as precise. >> skidmore: and it would take,how many hours would you say? >> audience member:a lot longer. those holes where cutwith the water jet. they're one inch in diameter
and that's one-inch-thicksteal plate. it's 4 feet by 1 foot. >> skidmore: so the crazy thingthat i can always tell people about the water jet is one, idon't know how to use it – i'm getting closer everyday. but it takes your regular waterpressure and it pushes up to 50,000 pounds' psi and thenshoots that and a piece a sand facing the garnet throughthe material, right. and then it goes into - that'swhy it's in a big tank because
you have to have just somethingto displace all that energy. the awesome thingabout the water jet, i think having made things in aconsiderably more toxic time in my life, paints and allkinds of things is that it's environmentally - inthat environment in there, there's no fume anythinglike that and the waste is essentially the garnet, right. >> audience member:can i ask a question, are you guys -do you guyshave, like a welding area?
>> skidmore: that is- that is sitting in the welding area, yeah. i don't think i have a very goodpicture of the welding area. >> sara: yeah, it wasa mess at the time. >> skidmore: that's why idon't have a very good picture. it looks really good now. and then we havelots of hand tools, if you need hand tools. that's my dreamheart down there,
so it's kind of like every oncein a while at owen it's like, you have to chase aroundand you realize, "oh, it's gone." so we're trying to keep – we'retrying over there to develop a culture of understanding thatwhen people walk in the door, that we built this great thingand they're there to help us keep it a great thing. right? and it's- it's getting there,students are really responsive
to it, thus far ofcourse we've what? been open a week and a half or something like thatthis semester, but thus far it just seems likesomething they really want to, so we're developinga culture of ownership, faculty, staff, student atsteam so i'm going to get to the encouraging part aboutyour intersection there. place where if you needed alittle bit quieter place, you'll probably have to put onyour headphones cause it's right
out there with everything else. the lathe. owners dressed up the buildingfor us and were very generous to us as a donor, essentially ingiving us what is a considerably cheaper rate than you'll get ifyou go there and try to get a lease right now. i can tell you that. cause i'll be keeping my studioin grovewood galleries because i can't afford tobe in this space.
so, that's what it looks like,i bet you haven't missed it, and then if you go betweenthe buildings there's a – at one point when the cardreaders are working which is supposed tobe friday at five, help us out on that one, there's a main entrance of thebuilding right here and then we have a human door righthere and two garages doors. this will likely be lockedand you'll have to come in to the hallway and accessthrough the card reader there.
another thing you get to handlewhile you don't have card readers is who comesinto the building. so we're in suite 140, itold you where that was. we had an awesome ribbon cuttingand i really appreciate all the number of people thatshowed up for that and that's really you know a lotof what i can say about that. it was again i hope people werereminded by this at least by this image and what was said atthe podium is that this place was built primarily for thestudents and then everyone else
comes after that because you canimagine building a space like this who shows up to your door? who shows up? well hopefully theobvious, faculty right? and the other obvious,welcomed staff right? we want those people. who else shows up? really? so somebody that has ajob doing something else,
that really just wantsto use our water jet, they don't care to be nice tous when they come in the door sometimes so we've got thatbalance that we're working out and once we get the folks inthere and really get the place moving then we'llhave that really, you know, you'll walk in andyou'll feel what is going on there and right now its kind ofin this space where its hard to know that, right? so, i put up this last slidebecause i'm going to check
my notes and see what i leftout, because i had this whole structure here and i wentto a different structure. think of the questionsyou have right now. that's a good thing to think of. >> [audience member]:the card reader, is that a separate card? >> skidmore: no, it'sgoing to be your onecard, yeah. and so what we'll do isbasically just like any other place on campus where youhave access with your onecard,
you know, if brandy's comeover and she took that you know two-day class with grahamturning bowls and her and susan did it together and then theyroll in there on the saturday because there's two of themthen they're fine to go, you know? this is what we envision,can you do that now? no, but that's whatwe really envision that's toward the end goal. things that you have i knowworking in your research that's
where we would want you to beable to come in with at least one other person and have anintersection and the two people is about the obviousthing for safety, and even at this point two isnot enough sometimes because what if the two don't know thetechnology then you need a third or a forth or the fifthor the sixth you know? the twelfth. so, it goes layers deep and sowe have a way that we're going to use the access as basically,there will be the card reader,
there's also another accessof training and so you make an agreement in the contract andon the back side of that you've been checked offcertain things, right? i don't foresee, youcan tell me if i'm wrong, i don't foresee agym membership; public interface,i don't see that. its just not really congruentwith an education, educational experience atthis point for this university; it might be for others.
i mean mit i'm surehas one because it makes a lot of money i bet, but they have two footballfields of making space, so. what other questionsdo you have? i said off campus,back of the building, where, when, why, this semester. this semester - i want totell you a little bit about this semester, this semester we'recalling the prototype semester cause we're prototypingthe semester,
not the things in thesemester, but the semester, because basicallywe've got a little bit of a sculpture one intersection. we have a little bit of asculpture two intersection. we have senior designin engineering, jm 485 class,which is our seniors. are juniors in thereor not, juniors not? but likely i bet i'll see somejuniors because they'll, you know, figure it out and
they'll need somethingdone over there too. and then we have an arts 310course i'm teaching with the unc asheville studentsand middle schoolers from asheville middle and we're goingto be doing who knows what yet, but that's an awesome groupbecause i don't think i have an engineer or an artmajor in the whole group. well i do have one art major,one of my sculpture students. what'd i leave out? i'm looking at the scheduleand that sae so we have
an electric car group thatis - at first i was going wait a minute, this is anotherthing to put in here, they can come inanytime they want, it's an awesome group of peopleand can you help me do that and they're ready to go. so it's been a really an awesomething to have in there and they're looking,they're recruiting. actually i heard yesterdaythey've had some success recruiting other studentsin so that's good,
and the story there is what youdon't know that you're going to handle in a space like thisbecause it is a public place, remind our students, likehey we're not on campus, so when the doors lockedand the card reader's active, someone going to cometo the door and go, you know through the windowand want to come in; i said and you're going to bethe first front line ambassador for unc asheville,for the steam studio. what are you going to do?
well you're going to beirritated at first that you have to be pulled awayfrom your work, try to get over thatone really quick and meet this personwith a smile, bring them in, find out what itis that they want you know? or why they're there. so this happenedto me on mlk day, it was a quiet place i couldfind in the conference room, all the lights were out ihave five interruptions
in the total day; the fifth onewhen i thought i was going to lose my mind because i didn'twant to open the door again i stood up walkedaround and i just like, in the time i walked around thewall i lit myself up and met the person just as i told mystudents they should meet them. who did i meet? i met the largest donor tothe engineering department, who i don't know andhis wonderful wife who is a woodworker.
so that was a good -it was a good thing. so what we're having overthere is a totally different experience that we were havingwalking around campus and that's what we're really excited about,where people can experience our students in that way. what else do we have? we had that, we had that,anybody got 80 grand? i need that for a mezzanine. i want to, don't want to letyou not know the amount
if you happen to be that person. >> [audience member]: do youhave any like idea or projected out date of when this will beopen to the faculty and staff? >> skidmore: well, so rightnow if faculty and staff - cause it is now, but if right now if someonehad a project, right? and i emailed sara, and i saidi have a project and it's to cut a mold on some machine and thento cast glass into it, right? either there's a level of i dounderstand technologies
or i don't, so all that wouldjust have to be assessed. the problem right now is thatwe still have our same duties we always had before thisbeautiful thing came online, don't worry it'sgoing to get better, we just keep telling ourselvesthat and we know it will. so basically it's to work outthe kinks so some of those are coming in now and we're sayingcan you wait till this period, can you wait till this period. so really that's kindof where we are,
and if you can justbare with us on that, understanding that rightnow our biggest challenge, cause i had down challenge but i didn't want tostart with it first, our biggest challenge isstaffing. right? so right now we're staffingthe place with sara and myself, with shana who's a studentworker and then a really small engineering slot for a techand then other students, that's it right?
that's it. so we don't really have theability to staff it in a way to where you can come in. ideally we'd have a staffposition that would be the first line of offense foryou as a faculty or staff that has a project and then they sortthrough that they go to this team or they go tothat team right? and that's just goingto have to grow, its not somethingwe can roll in.
we can roll in if we told allthe students they could stop taking theirengineering classes, and stop takingtheir art classes, and we'd be good to go. there are no grades beinggiven by anybody else, then we'd be fine but sometimesthat is the impediment. there's just not enoughof us right now, and its not a bad thing it justthis thing we keep relaxing and opening to the possibilities.
that's really what we do. so guess when we askedfor an operating budget? at the wrong time, sothere's that slight blimp too. we'll take of that toosometimes to soon. there's the publicinterface, the meet and greet, which is really an active rolesome days over there its like, what did we get done today? well twenty people came through. got that one person and thisone person and they could be
a connection for this, and thenthe bridge to the partners and the community is just alot of work you know? and so its just a basically,just a slow down and realize that it's going to be a lot ofwork and not get- and realize that we've got a ten-year lease,what are we going to have at the end of ten yearsthat we're really going to have something awesome. we'll have the problem offiguring out where to put it, we'll figure that our too.
don't worry about that. those are the challengesand the access and safety, that's the biggestchallenge, you know. any other challenges thatyou guys can speak of? >> [audience member]:so i have a question, so basically i'm hearing, we shouldn't necessarilydo a pop in or – >> skidmore:oh no, a pop in fine. yeah i hope youdidn't hear that,
especially if you'reof the home crew yeah. >> [audience member]: arethere any events coming up, like open house or something? >> skidmore: on thecalendar is a date, but its not a date, so it's inthe spring i'll say it is that we're going to have an openhouse and that was the concept last semester. what i would want you to do isnot wait until then just come over and sara is there mostdays from eleven to seven unless
she's at the brownbag talk withme today and then we've got two students over there, actuallythree or four students at this time, so come on over. yeah, yeah and really that'sthe best thing because sometimes people keep asking me. they ask me like literally,"well what is this?" i'm like "we saidit's over there?" and we invited everyoneto come please come. it's not the -publicinterface part,
what i am talking about nowis just basically it could be a really awesome potentialpartner walking into the door. it could be you know yourlargest distraction ever as a person you neverwant to come back. it's this whole you knowspectrum of things that could happen in thatand we just need a, you know, people to do that too. so sometimes we could be workingon a project with you more excited than we've ever beenabout steam because i saw her
yesterday on this thing whereshe was sorting through basically a process of makingthis thing on a laser and one advancement was like cutting thething this way or cutting the thing this way and it wentfrom 11 minutes to 3 minutes. so just knowing that and thenbeing in that exciting moment where we're sharing like ohlook and then i've got this all written down andsomebody else can do it againand replicate it. then we've got a,you know, a visitor.
so it's like – it's justbasically not enough bodies. so if you came over, what we've been encouragingpeople to do - come over, identify yourself as someone whocould volunteer time right now. that's a really big one. get trained on something or somethings and be on the schedule because that's theeasiest and best way that we see making thathappen, right now. it could be that -well it's likely to be,
i'm not going to be the onethat's the most proficient in many of these things. sara is going to be well aheadof me on a lot of things and i can walk into the wood shopand be well ahead on her. but we need these other people,you know and ideally those people are our facultyand staff and our students. you know don't be discouragedto come but instead, it's not really - i don't wantto paint the picture that it's like, ah i wish thesepeople would just go away.
that's not it at all actually. >> [audience member]: i justwant to add a logistic note to that too is that if you do comeby that door that's between the garage space, once thecard readers are active, all the doors will be normallylocked and we'll add people to the card reader registry oncethey've just gone through the little safety orientation. so once we havethat paperwork done, so come to the door withthe window and i'm waving.
>> skidmore: either that or... >> [audience member]:orientations will be set up at some point. i guess there will bea schedule for that. >> [audience member]:right now, we're doing it for, as classes meet and onan individual basis as people come in. so we don't have asystem in place yet. >> [audience member]: okay.
>> skidmore: yeah, and i thinkideally we would have schedule, send it out to everybody and go, "hey this when youcan come to this". the idea is that we willactually have a list of things throughout the courseof the semester. >> [audience member]: and youcan always make an appointment with a student. >> skidmore: yeah, an e-mail. i'm coming, yougoing to be there?
that's you know -surely canyou come on thursday instead of tuesday, you know. and you might be coming - likeyour time to get there might be during the time where weknow we have a class in there. come 15 minutesbefore, 20 minutes. >> [audience member]: doyou foresee anything with the robots? i appreciate theycan do whatever, so any ideas?
>> [audience member]:so a lot of ideas. the five-axis arm will likelybe reserved for use from our robots' class. it has lab component thatprograms those types of robots. the cartesian coordinate onethough is kind of up for a test platform for anyproject i guess. the 3d printer, therouter whatever... >> skidmore: i'dsay, icing cupcakes. >> audience member: one ofthe sculpture 2 students had
the idea that being a largeformat of little like machines that you get acquainted andpick up stuffed panda. >> skidmore: there is that too. i forgot about thataspect of ah yeah. so we're always thinkingabout that too over there. you could imagine there's afairly large expendables budget. sandpaper, tooling,things like that. you have questions forfolks that didn't get pushed to the front.
well they did get pushedto the front row at least. rebecca you haveanything to add? >> rebecca: no brent, i thinkyou know you did great job. it's wonderful to seeeverybody here interested and participating. >> skidmore: yeah particularlyif you have a project and you know like in the fall, inthe summer that you can make some time to make theconnection to a curriculum - a curricular effort.
then, yeah give us enoughlead-time on that and right now it's basically enough lead-timeis to let us know that you need it really in the summer orthe fall or the following year. and that doesn't mean if wantto learn how to turn bowls that might happen sooner than thatbut right now we're focused on basically what we can haveour classes do in there. it's not to say - i mean tonyfor instance the electrician, if he didn't have something comeup where he's going up to be with his mom, then i knowbasically he'd be in there
a lot more often. so there are staff and then dan, and silva has justsent us an email. i know he wants to be on a listof folks that can get in there and volunteer, you know exchangevolunteer time for that. i mean, what we'refinding too is that, who has a lot ofvolunteer time, right? >> [audience member]: i'mcurious about how do you handle, let's say someone'sworking on a project due,
but they are not finished, dothey just take it with them or is there a place for them... >> skidmore: howbig is that project? >> skidmore: so in thewoodshop - i mean, i know this because it'sbasically where do students put their work is like thefirst thing we can think of in owen is like, oh they put it here and thenthey have to move it down and then they have tomove it there and then,
you know basically. we've got in some places in thewoodshop where there small and then we've got other place that- this would be an awesome place for volunteers to show up. is that we have this big longworking space that sara designed and the reconfigured part andthen we're going to build bins that go underneath there. so there are placesto tuck away things. big projects, obviously if youbuild it big enough then we are
going to convince you, it shouldprobably come apart not be welded together. so i mean you havean idea on that, basically it's... >> [sara]: so there are theworkbenches that we are making, those are intended to be a thingthat the students can check out for the semester. so it's somethingthat they can store, that would be theirstorage space.
so that's something for theengineering senior design teams and of for the advancedsculpture students to be able to say that this is mine. and its tucked away and wecan move it out of the way if we need to. >> skidmore: i actually coverall that but not quite in that order. you know the how'sthe biggest thing. i put down who, what, when, why,where and then challenges and
then as i was doing all that iwas like really it's the how that's been the mostexciting thing and its really indifference to the crew thatis sitting here on the front row and the people that aren't hereand that really stuck with us throughout this. and someone asked me said, "wellwe can get the steam committee to meet on that right?" and i looked at them andsaid, "what steam committee?" so we have successfullylaunched this,
cut the ribbon on it andthere is not a committee. now there's a featin academia, right? oh no, now i knowwhich e-mail i'm getting. yeah what committee yougoing to be on skidmore? well you have anyother questions, we got twelve minutes - or not. >> [audience member]: in theinterim with that mezzanine up there not being usedof course of safety, because they need guard rails,but if there was a stair way
for—to bring up likea box or storage... >> skidmore: yeahthat got nixed. yeah we thought of that already. >> audience member: ...with thestairway in now that would lead into our temporary computer lab >> skidmore: it basically – thestairway goes down the middle to the computer lab now. >> audience member: oh it's notright on the outside or is that just the drawing?
>> audience member: it is. >> skidmore: no it's— yeahbut i'll show you on that. >> audience member: it wouldtake out the entire make shift computer lab >> skidmore: so in there, yeah— >> audience member: cause that'snot there— oh that's that— >> skidmore: the stairwaycomes right here and then there's a walkway, a catwalkthat goes across that all the way into the— looksdown the most spaces.
you know i think well— i thinkwe'll realize that mezzanine fairly quick cause— whati'm finding is that it's really difficult—you can't, you essentially can'tteach very well here, you can do it really early causeno one comes in really early. but this is in the same roomthat there's something really loud over here going on. so unless you could do it withheadphones and then could— i could speak through amicrophone and you could speak
through a microphone,in the headphone. but we'll likely have them— a mezzanine realizedbefore that happens. and we've just been reallydiscouraged like even told never to do that, puttinganything up there. there is some extra exhaustpipes up there and things, but. any way i mentioned somethingabout the public programing ideally too will realized thispublic interface that will be similar to a brownbag as it willhave a regular occurring event
there and then that's where wecome over see what's going on. and those regular occurringevents will be places to where our students can either be thepresenter or our students can experience a presenter thatwill be a direct relationship to their curriculum andparticularly to whatever they might be prototyping, you know? what- and it could be that therepresenting on a project that they're working on with theindustrial—the partner in the public, in this space,that would be ideal.
yeah and that's coming. like that's going to be one ofthe first things we do in there. we also have some hopes rightnow— and they're looking really well— of having a visiting makerin there so we'd have basically a cadre of folks thatwould come through. well only one thing they haveto be really nice and we have to help decide that, causewe have to live with them. so it's just been- its been anamazing time over there. and it really has been,
because we've been listeningto each other, slowing down, it's easy to slow down whenconstruction just stops. well they got another job, okay. any other questions? who's coming by today? i have class at 1:20 i don'tknow what sara's doing today. >> [sara]: i'll bethere till seven. >> skidmore: you'llbe there till seven. it's thursday,thursday night is—
>> [sara]: nick will be there >> skidmore: yeah someonewill be there till ten tonight. so we do have a scheduleand at some point— i put up the website, i don't have a hyperlink, but at some point we'll have theschedule on the website. and if you look at our website, its only not developed not because our awesomemarketing team,
its because of the team that hasall those other things to do has to do the website too. you guys know the story right? so i appreciate you coming andif you have any other questions offline send us an emailits always easy to get ahold of one of us. at some point even soon,i've heard but i'm not ready to release it yet cause i don'tknow if i'm on that list, there's going toeven be an email,
the email is there we haven'teven sent it out yet right? or did we send it out? we all like flinched when susansaid that the other day "no!" but yeah. so you know where tofind us all though so. it's easy to do right now. so please come and pleasethink about how you can see your students there andparticularly your own research, maybe even your own fun
and enjoyment and notresearch but peace. so there you go. [applause] ♪ [closing music] ♪ ♪ ♪
