Okay, so this blog is raw energy, so pardon the lack of thought here.
Today I was at our weekly meeting at the makerspace, and I think this was the second or third one at the new space ( can’t remember tbh) and we have stumbled across REALLY cool people.
Like. SUPER impressive people. Some guys building crazy motorcycles, crazy RC plane projects, casually building rocket engines ( another one, not in reference to me, that was not casual lol).
And we’re slowly building the single most technically capable network of individuals to come out of Texas A&M. It's super hard to beat what’s being built here because there’s a lot of factors at play working to keep this spiraling in a good direction.
A) The community crosspollinates knowledge. With limited amounts of oversight, and just nudges in the right direction, the community basically does whatever it wants, and people here are naturally curious. It’s a given pretty much for anyone in a makerspace. And these people will all learn from each other.
Like these guys I met. They’re totally cracked at electrical engineering. That’s my weak subject, that’s something that I am super pumped to learn about from them and that’s something that is TOTALLY POSSIBLE.
I can learn more from these guys than I can in all the classes at A&M combined. ( not a negative reference to a&m, just a superfluously positive reference towards their capabilities).
And it made me realize just how powerful we could be as a community. Like we can wake up, and build whatever the heck we want. We need an electrical guy? Got em, rocket nerds? Got em.
Mechanically talented biker boys? Got em.
3d printer/robotics/laser people. Got em in spades. The crosspollination is real.
And you know what, these people typically cluster in small groups and then once one of the group members is reached, they bring the rest of the group. And it continues, so in the end anyone who is really serious about building hardware has zero choice but to come to the makerspace, and they’re ALL TOTALLY PUMPED ABOUT IT.
It’s insane.
It’s magical.
There’s so much knowledge here it feels like a mini silicon valley. Like this might just be my favorite place ever. Because in high school you were limited by people who really didn’t have much experience or exposure ( not to dog on my high school friends, I love em to bits), but at a school with 70,000 people, all you need is a couple guys who are really good at a single subject, then they meet people who are really good at another subject. Game over. GAME OVER. There is not a technical challenge we can’t solve. This community is just getting started, and I can already feel it going supercritical. We really have been mostly quiet, only somewhat advertising because we don’t have power, but already there’s dozens of people who want to be a part of it who are really excited to do something like this.
And you know what. They are free to do it.
The freshman are insane btw. We have a seriously high proportion of freshmen, maybe because we are all freshmen and that is skewing the data, but you know what, these freshmen, they all have been doing some really crazy stuff.
Honestly how do I describe how this feels.
Analogy. Imagine you are mining for gold and let’s pretend like you had some magnet for gold ( gold isn’t magnetic naturally) and this magnet just pulled the gold out of the dirt and to you. And the gold was really happy to see you, and all the gold came out to you in this area and you were really rich and really happy and the gold formed a goldfish, and you now had a living tangible thing made of gold.
And it’s a huge dopamine rush the entire way. I’m not sure if it translates through the blog, but I am just pouring out this blog, it’s crazy, it’s a wild feeling because this is really cool. We can all learn from each other, and it will be the best education one could possibly ever ask for. Like seriously, there is no better way to learn how to find your place in the world than to just DO things. And the people that we are attracting all either already do things or want to do things.
These guys are building planes in their apartments, robot arms in their dorms, random things in random places and finally we have the magnet for the gold and I could not be more happy about it. It’s insane. This is going to be big. I feel it now more than I think it.
Like when a project begins, you hope that it succeeds, you basically by sheer force of will drag it into existence questioning yourself and your expectations along with way, but when it works, holy crap it’s mind blowing. It’s a feeling it’s tangible, it’s visceral it’s what keeps me up at night thinking about where it could go. It’s some harry potter level magic.
Anyways, if ONLY WE HAD ELECTRICITY. ( coming soon though)
But yeah, calming down a bit, this is huge. It’ just. a small indicator that what we sought out to do is working and that makes me really really really happy for so many different reasons, like oh man, the projects that come out of this place are going to be world changing. I don’t know how else to describe the chemistry of this place. It’s going to be huge. I just feel it. I’m also really excited to get back to building hardware, it’s an itch at this point, but now I’m so much more hyped for it because we have people who can guide me, who I can learn from on my weak areas, and we have the infrastructure and support to do it. Like soon I’m going to be able to build hardware on a whole new level, and so will everyone around me and it’s going to create some serious superstars. So hyped on so many different levels.
Mindblown,
Ismail.
This is sick man. Maybe I’ll come down during spring break if you guys are off on a different week
dude this is amazing! Creating communities like this is one of the most useful things you can do not only because of the excitement but also because of the things that will come out of this that would not have happened otherwise.
FORWARD AND ONWARD!