American Library Association Midwinter Meeting

SparkFun heads to Chicago this week to attend the American Library Association (ALA) Midwinter meeting.

Twice a year ALA throws down big events to help librarians of all backgrounds to build better libraries and serve patrons in the most effective ways. SparkFun has been in attendance for the last few years as a vendor and presenter. This year is no exception!

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We’ll be on the vendor floor at the ALA Midwinter Meeting and Exhibits, running a teaching space in collaboration with the staff of the Denver Public Library. This year we’re joined by Nate Stone and Cody Yantis, staffers from Denver Public library’s IdeaLab.

Cody and Nate have cooked up some great programming and we’ll be running hands-on teaching seminars throughout the meeting. Among the offerings, Nate will be running a SketchUp/Unity workshop.

Cody will be building Arduino powered Therimin, not the typical project you’d think of with a library, but super fun!

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Angela Sheehan will be running Ardublock programming workshops and building eOrigami projects on the floor.

In addition we’ll be doing Intro to Scratch and 3D printing workshops. We’re really streching out this year because of the great response we’ve had at past events.

If you’re in attendance, our schedule is a s follows;

Saturday

  • 9:30 a.m. - Makey Makey and Unity

  • 11 a.m. - Scratch Literacy

  • 1 p.m. Arduino Light Theremin

  • 3 p.m. - How to use a 3D printer

Sunday

  • 9:30 a.m. - How to use a 3D printer

  • 11 a.m. - Intro to Arduino

  • 1 p.m. - Makey Makey and Unity

  • 3 p.m. - Programming with Ardublock

We have a great lineup and we hope to see some of you in Chicago.