Category: News

On Friday, August 1, 2014 the Spare Parts Fine Arts Fair was held. The CM Collective was asked to snag some photos and pick up some video of the event. We have covered Spare Part activities in the past, but this one holds a special place in our hearts. The Spare Parts Fine Arts Fair main event is a re-use give away of materials for k-12 teachers. The purpose of the giveaway is help k-12 teachers with the hardship of having enough arts supplies for the entire year.

The cost of entry is a 10 dollar donation that goes to helping sustain the yearly event. What transpires at the Fine Arts Far is an amazing attendance by San Antonio teachers who come with all kinds of approaches to gaining the maximium amount materials. Event veterans come with huge suit cases and for n00b’s they often end up being coached by the veterans in line as to what to expect.

Overall the event is an amazing experience for all involved, whether you are a volunteer or a participant there is a certain energy that is created unites us all. If you want to get involved with next years event or would like to attend as a teacher, contact Spare Parts through their contact page. If you would like to support or donate to their cause, visit their Donation page.

We look forward to future collaborations with Spare Parts!

We initially helped consult with OpenED Jam CMC co-founder joey lopez and member Mariah Villarreal came up with the idea for the conference. We helped develop a video and helped with the development of the social media campaign of the event. We also consulted on various aspects of the actual “day of” and coordinating of DJ’s, speakers and other components of the conference.

We are proud to say the event was a huge success! It was hosted at Rackspace (A big thank you goes out to them for being forward thinkers!) on August 14th, 2014. OpenEd Jam had an international attendance with presenters and key note speakers from all over the world. Attendees came from across the nation, as well as across our city to participate in what turned out to be a very informative conference about open education. The presentations were not only paper driven, but demo driven, with multiple workshops showing how open education can be approached from software, hardware and cultural/social aspects.

Key note speaker Walter Bender not only gave a stellar keynote speech, but also held an early morning child oriented workshop where he worked with a group of kids and taught them about programing and robotics.

Joseph Prusa, one of thought leaders in the first wave DIY 3D printers gave a talk about his work that gave attendees an idea of how DIY projects have been being integrated both in the University and in K-12 education.

Local presenters from Palo Alto College presented on their open education initiative, it was great to see how San Antonio’s local community colleges are keeping pace with some of the latest trends in education around the world.

On the last day of the event, OpenEd Jam teamed up with Cafe Commerce and the San Antonio Main Library to host the final keynote speaker Joseph Prusa, as well as a hackathon. The maker day was sponsored by SparkFun who provided a wide array of hardware. We had awesome attendees like Brandon Wiley, Mike Perez, Jeremy Zunker and Mark Barnett attended the final day that helped new comers to concept of a hackathon and gave hands on help that really built a sense of community between everyone by the end of the event.

OpenEd Jam even had DJ Jason Torres (A frequent speaker of the CMC Talk Series) come and perform during the event. Jason’s performance was awesome and involved all creative common’s licensed works.

Back in the summer 2014 the convergent media collective was approached by 10bitworks to help them with a fundraiser to purchase a laser cutter for their space. 10bitworks is a 501(3)(c) non-profit that focuses on maintaining a physical space for the greater San Antonio community to come to and interact with like minded makers and hackers, aka people who are passionate about new technology, art, engineering, science and much more.

Andrew Valdez, Christian Rios and joey lopez teamed up to help develop a full on media campaign. joey and Christian developed a call to action video. Andrew Valdez worked on all the graphics for the campaign and all three of them helped with the social media initiative. Mike Perez and Jeremy Zunker, 10bitworks members, developed a custom crowd funding interface. Together with the 10bitworks board we also helped develop the various donation levels.

In order to gain further information about the laser cutter and the culture around them 10bitworks along with the CM crew took a trip up to ATX Hackspace in Austin, Tx to check theirs out.

10bitworks finalized their budget and on 9/18/2014 we launched the campaign and within 43 days we successfully raised over $12,000!

Since installing the laser cutter, there has been a huge community response with makers, hackers, artists and small business owners using it for various tasks. Within the first quarter of 2015 10BitWorks increased their membership by more than 50%! Much of that growth is owed to having available such a useful piece of equipment. 10bitworks is currently developing a laser cutter training module for members to be able to take to be certified in the use of the cutter.

Convergent Media Collective members along with students have also been able to join in on the fun and develop ideas and projects with the cutter as well.

We would like to thank 10bitworks for asking us to team up with them and we look forward to the next collaboration!

Here is the video we made for them: