The Garage at Georgia Cyber Center offers entrepreneurs new tools to innovate
Creative technologist Luke Steel plugs his laptop into what looks like a photocopier in the Garage Makerspace of the Georgia Cyber Center. The image of a starburst in a circle on his screen is suddenly being etched out rapidly on a sheet of acrylic inside the machine as a red light traces back and forth in a trail of tiny sparks.
It's a laser cutter tracing out the design of a coaster, and it is only part of the Garage's appeal, said Hacker in Residence Tony Carver. The real draw is the collaboration, discussion and new ideas and prototypes that the machines can bring to life, he said.
The Garage held a pilot workshop on Wednesday with a small group but will be hosting larger and more ambitious public events later this year, Carver said. It's about bringing people together, "creating collisions, to use the innovation vernacular, so that good ideas can flow," he said. "So it is less about the thing they are creating than it is about the larger sense of community that is occurring that is growing. It is more of a cultural aspect than it is a targeted widget development and printing."
For instance, the Garage will hold a breakfast next week for partners at the Cyber Center to come together and talk about expertise and opportunities to team up. The center has drawn praise and interest from tech companies attracted to its unique ecosystem of academic institutions like Augusta University, military and contractors and industry housed in the same building and mixing in the hallways and coffee shop.
"What we’re trying to do is give them opportunities where it is more thoughtful," Carver said. "It is about that kind of thing but to make it happen more intentionally, not just to rely on luck to happen to run into the right person at the right time."
With equipment that can create a circuit board, a 3D printer or a CNC router that can carve plywood from a computer design, the Garage offers equipment that would allow a small business to explore and create prototypes that wouldn't make business sense to purchase on their own. The workshops also provide people who aren't familiar with the technology to come in and make something and learn about it. Carver smiles at the comparison to a high school shop class.
"A pretty high-tech shop class compared to some of the ones I went through," he said. But "it is something that people find interesting. They don’t get to do it on a regular basis and it drives people to come together to work on a common problem."
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The Garage is also a traditional place where innovators worked out new ideas, from Wilbur and Orville Wright's bike shop to the garages of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Carver said.
"The idea of the Garage has been around for a while," he said. "We’re going to continue that."
This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Tools for innovation offered in new Garage at Georgia Cyber Center
