Next weekend July 16-18 is NatsuCon, St. Louis’ summer anime convention!
Guests include Chris Patton, Cristina Vee, Leah Clark, The Hsu-Nami, and Tracy J. Butler.
It’ll be at the Sheraton Chalet at Westport. And you can still pre-register for the next 2 days and get a discount on your tickets.
Also, be sure to check out my friend, artist Lorenzo Lizana who has a table in Artist Alley.
Woot.com is closing its St. Louis office after being acquired by Amazon.com, according to the Post-Dispatch.
Woot is an Internet-based seller with a business model of only selling one deeply disc
ounted item per day, in limited quantities. Sounds doomed to failure, but due to some awesome marketing and copywriting on Woot’s part, they’ve built a devoted following, a culture, even.
Woot only employed about 20 people here in town, but its not the loss of jobs so much as the loss of potential. Woot was one more place that young, geeky writers like myself could get work writing about fun, geeky stuff. It was a place that valued innovation above the tried and true, and we don’t have enough companies like that.
Woot’s loss is just one more example of an ongoing issue — St. Louis’ inability to attract and keep startups.
Currently, the awesome Square Inc., manufacturer of devices that let you accept credit card payments, also has a small operations office here in town. But who knows how long that will last.
Had a great time on Wednesday at Social Media Club St. Louis’ Social Media Day. I took the MetroLink into town, got off at 8th and Pine, then walked around Citygarden for a bit. A bunch of kids were swimming in the waterfall pool and I wished I could join in.
The meetup was at Gio’s Ristorante and it was massive. At least a hundred people, but probably way more. I don’t know if anyone’s released any numbers yet. But I saw a bunch of people I know — @RossPR, @Jen_L_N, @NickGilham, @ShemTovC, @timotab, @SuntiDesigns, and I am probably forgetting a bunch of Twitter handles. (Comment and I’ll edit the post).
A highlight of the evening was when @NickGilham and @timotab demonstrated to @SuntiDesigns and I how to do a bump with their iPhones. Easy, simple, yet so cool in that “shiny new toy” way. I’m hoping to get a bump-capable phone next time I upgrade.
Sweet. Today Unisys announced it is building here in town a facility with the overly complicated name of the Application Modernization Center of Excellence. The main purpose of the center, according to Unisys, is to have a think tank of geeks creating software applications for government and commercial needs.
But really, once you strip away the marketing speak, basically this means that there will be a company in town where tech geeks can get paid to create apps for the iPhone, iPad, and the rest of Apple’s cool nerd toys.
Better yet, the center is expected to create 300 or so IT jobs in the area by 2012, and they are already doing some hiring for people with skills in application development. I’ll keep you posted.
One of the presentations at the Arch Reactor open house covered WasabiNet, a 2-year-old community mesh network founded by Minerva Lopez and Ben West.
A mesh network is a cost-effective way for people to get Internet. WasabiNet uses about 8 DSL lines to cover 38 WiFi access points, and it covers about 14 blocks of Cherokee Street, and also provides Internet to Arch Reactor itself, near the intersection of Jefferson Ave. and Gravois. Access costs $9.99 per month for residents and $19.99 per month for businesses. Users can also access the network for free, but with speed limits and download quotas.
WasabiNet has been in the news since Friday, as PC World blogger Phil Shapiro cited WasabiNet as a prime reason why Google should bring its Gigabit Fiber project to St. Louis. The RFT interviewed WasabiNet founders Minerva Lopez and Ben West yesterday.
I’ve heard that KSDK did an interview as well, but I haven’t tracked down any video of the interview, yet.
Overall, the open house at St. Louis hackerspace Arch Reactor was a fantastic time.
(Although Arch Reactor folks, seriously, you need to have some fricking fans going in your un-airconditioned space when you host an open house and the temp is in the high 90s. None of you highly intelligent people thought of that? Seriously?)
Lack of fans or A/C not withstanding, Arch Reactor had a number of great presentations on member projects, including building sci-fi fandom costumes, Arduino, and community mesh network WasabiNet. There was also a bunch of cool old and new technology to play with: Commodore 64s, an arcade version of Tetris, a 3D printer, a large scale blueprint printer, and a bunch of stuff I’m forgetting.
WasabiNet was especially interesting, as it hit the national media the day before the open house. More details in another post.
If Arch Reactor sounds like your kind of place, but you missed the open house this past weekend, you can visit any Tuesday night after 7:30 pm when Arch Reactor is open to the public.
I host a monthly meetup for local comic book creators — artists and writers — and our next meeting is coming up. Here’s the official type blurb:
Coffee for Comics Creators
There are lots of creative people in St. Louis working on interesting comic book projects. Let’s get together and introduce ourselves over coffee. We’ll discuss our experiences pitching companies, running Artist Alley tables, collaborating with other professionals, Project Comic Con 2, and more.
See you Tuesday, July 6 at 7 p.m. at Wired Coffee, 1/2 mile south of the intersection of Lindbergh and Watson. Check out http://www.wiredcoffee.net/visit.php for map and directions.
Sometimes when I’m working on my netbook, I’m in the mood for something besides coffeeshop food or St. Louis Bread Co (love Bread Co though).
Urbanspoon St. Louis has a handy list of all the restaurants in town that offer free WiFi. Did you know that Crown Candy Kitchen has free WiFi? This amazes me, because I can’t imagine getting any work done there. I generally give up my seat as soon as I’m done eating because of the massive crowds.
Some of the other places include The U, a late night sandwich shop opened by a pair of SLU students specifically because they wanted a place nearby campus that was open late, and wasn’t fast food. The U recently expanded it menus to offer delicious breakfast food along with its signature sandwiches.
Grand Center Arts Academy is a charter school based in St. Louis City on Grand Ave., a few blocks north of SLU and The Fabulous Fox. It’s opening this August. There’s no tuition, and 6th and 7th graders in St. Louis City, and some in St. Louis County, are eligible to apply.
You can get more info about enrollment, the school’s mission, and other stuff here: http://www.grandcenterartsacademy.org/about/faq/
I’m basically a huge fan of anything that supports the arts in St. Louis, and this school sounds like it will be a fantastic resource. They’ve hired pretty much all the staff they need for this year, but as the school will be adding a grade each year, they’ll also be hiring more teachers next year. So peoples who are interested in teaching gifted and artistic students should make some longterm plans.
Last weekend I stopped off at the CWE Taste and Art Fair to visit my friend Sam at her booth for Sunti Designs. I parked on Walton at McPherson, and started walking to Euclid. I passed this guy:
The Pi Truck was just parked McPherson, and no one was inside or around it. It has a Twitter handle painted on the side. There was also a painted announcement that PiTruck accepts credit cards via Square, which is a device that I’ve talked about before.
I walked down Euclid and checked out the various booths, and stopped to chat with Sam. We got word that rain was coming in, so I said my goodbyes and headed back to my car. I walked past the PiTruck again, at about 4:45 pm and figured I would check out @PiTruckSTL when I got home, which I did.
“‘ChefBaltes’ will be serving your free pi tonight! See you on McPherson b/w Euclid and Walton at 5:30pm. 4:55 PM Jun 11th”
*Headdesk*