Things are happening! Dinacon will be happening in July, but we will do a scouting trip and take some supplies over ahead of time!
Scouting Trip April 10-20
Andy, Kitty, and Craig are going on a scouting trip in April. We are going to check everything out, get the lay of the land, and help plan even more exciting things for when we are all there!
Supplies for Dreamspace
Andy and Kitty will be going up from Panama to stop in Atlanta to pick up supplies to bring to Dreamspace. We are trying to bring scientific equipment and tools to donate to Dreamspace and that we can help use during Dinacon. Many of these tools are extra important because of the challenges facing Sri Lanka right now. For instance there is shortage of many things because of economic problems with the Forex thing, and so some folks are working on some bioengineering projects to help out farmers without having to import fertilizers.
We will be able to take 4-6 suitcases we can fill with tools to Sri Lanka with us. If you are interested in donating equipment you can contact us for an address to send supplies to in Altanta, USA. If you are interested in just donating cash towards supplies on Dreamspace's wish list, you can send cash here 2022.dinacon.org/sponsor/ and also let us know.
Notes on Sri Lankan economic hardships:
Some folks have been recently learning about many of challenge affecting Sri Lanka all over. We asked Aravinth from Dreamspace to elaborate:
"This crisis has been going on since 2019 when ISIS attacked Sri Lanka. However, we are surviving. The current problem is a shortage of electricity because of shortage of fuel because of shortage of forex reserve. We have some UPS (uninterrupted power supplies) and asking our impact investors to support with solar panels + batteries. So we should have uninterrupted power supply when Dinacon will happen.
Other things are going okayish in the country like everywhere in the global south."
Dreamspace: Dreamhive
Dreamspace has been busy as ever and just opened an extra facility we will have access to at dinacon! They also just finished the construction of their container based micro-factories called "DreamSpace Collective" that is 500m from Academy. Congrats Dreamspace!
Global Open Science Hardware Grant!
Wowee! Dinacon got its first major grant funding of about 10K from GOSH! (openhardware.science). They had a call for funding regional events that promoted the development of open source science hardware, and we were one of the recipients!
That money will be used to provide scholarship or reduced rates for many participants, supply Dreamspace with extra gear, keep our regular registration costs as low as possible, pay documentarians, and hopefully be able to let us help sponsor extra field trips at dinacon!
psssst..... extra secret information, GOSH will be having its own GLOBAL GATHERING for OPEN SCIENCE HARDWARE in Panama Oct 26-29! I'll send out another announcement about that probably later this week!
