Again I’m not sure exactly how many people have heard, but along with our invitation to Nashville, we’ve also been invited to check out Makers Local 256 in Huntsville, AL. Our current agenda is for us to leave at 7:30 AM on June 26th so that we can meetup with the guys in Huntsville around lunchtime on that Saturday. From there we’ll checkout the shop, stay the night, and come back again on Sunday morning. Since we will be making use of discounted hotel rooms, we will need a head count no less than two weeks in advance to know how many rooms to get. If we do not do it at least two weeks before hand, we may not be able to get the discount. So bottom line, if you haven’t said anything by the meeting on the 11th of June, then you’re not going to be able to join us. That being said, everyone is welcome to come that wants to. You just have to let us know in time. Feel free to send in an e-mail to the mailing list, or send in one to info@midsouthmakers.org and let us know.

It would seem to be that those involved with the Zombie Walk this weekend had an excellent time. We’re terribly sorry to those of you who couldn’t make it, and equally sorry to those who do not enjoy this sort of thing. It was all a great time with a bunch of people just being goofy for the sake of being goofy. Everyone needs a little entertainment every now and then.

The walk started at G.E. Patterson and S. Main out front of Ernestine & Hazels where it progressed north down S. Main to Beale St. From there every zombie traveled down to the New Daisy where the walk ended. There were really tons of types of zombies. It was estimated that 500 people where there participating. We did not get the opportunity to make use of this public event to advertise ourselves like we had hoped, but we still had a blast and that was the great thing. There was tons to see and plenty of material for pictures. Take a look at our Flickr account if you’d like to see more. Let’s try and make it where we have even more people and something even more elaborate next year. It seems to be that stranger you are at this the more you stood out. John was even mentioned in the Flyer’s YouTube video post for this year.

Just to try and get as much of the word out there as possible. THERE WILL BE NO MEETING ON May 28th 2010!

A handful of the members will be at the Zombie Walk (see the wiki) during the normal time of this meeting. Everyone who wants to is welcome to come, whether it be dress up and parade as a zombie through downtown Memphis, or as a potential victim, or simply as a supporter of the event. We hope all members that are capable, will come down and help promote Midsouth Makers in whatever way they can. The event starts at 6:30 PM (I highly doubt you will be able to miss the zombies) at Earnestine & Hazel’s on South Main St. We’ve heard that the crowd is rather impressive and makes it hard to find each other if you don’t all get there at the same time. Well obviously that isn’t going to happen without everyone standing on one foot while whistling the Pac Man theme and the planets aligning in the heavens. So as an alternative, there is an invention we all love, the cell phone. If you would like to have my number to call and meet up feel free to send me an e-mail at dhess@midsouthmakers.org and I’ll gladly send it to you so you can find us. Hopefully everyone is excited about going, and we look forward to seeing you there!

Ok, so I don’t know how many people have heard, but we’ve been invited to Nashville to check out the Hacker Consortium’s space. The current agenda is for us to leave at 8 AM on June 5th, meet up with the guys at HC, hang out with them and checkout the shop, stay the night, and come back on Sunday morning. The Nashville hackerspace has specifically asked for a headcount, and really we need one anyhow for the logistics planning of the trip. We have a potential for some “discounted” hotel rooms courtesy of Hilton. So the one catch is that we need to know how many people are going two weeks in advance to make use of this offer on rooms.

In short it would be preferable to not turn in the request right on the two week marker. So please everyone who wants to go can, but we need to know no later than this Wednesday May 19th. We will be putting in the request on Thursday, so if you don’t let us know before then we’re terribly sorry and hope that you might join us on the trip to Huntsville a few weeks later. Feel free to send in an e-mail to the mailing list, or send in one to info@midsouthmakers.org and let us know.

For those of our members who are interested in helping in the Arduino community you now have a chance! It is very simple, you don’t even have to do anything heavy duty. The Arduino Designers are looking to make the next model, Arduino 1.0, and they need to collect information. If you own an Arduino, or have used one, then you can go to the Arduino website and fill out this survey (http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ArduinoUsage) they have put up. They are looking to use this information collected to assist in the development of the next model. It is very short, only takes a few minutes to do, and it could be Memphis’ way of helping out with such a great community. So take a few seconds, hop on over to the website and answer those questions!