Hal is a valued member of CCCKC. As a member of our board of directors, Hal has provided insight and guidance in our day to day operations, helped run our organization, and planned a few great parties while he was at it! We got a chance to do a small Q&A with Hal, and this is what he had to say.

Q: What is your background in making/hacking (how did you get involved in the Hackerspace?)

A: My interest in hacking and taking things apart started at an early age. My parents would buy items and bring them home only to find them apart a short time later. I recall once my father purchased an Atari 2600 and within about three weeks I had it apart and was tinkering inside. My problem at that age became how to get things back together again.

I have always been fascinated with the inter-workings of things. When I look at something for example a ride at an amusement park I don't think "man that's cool", I think "man I wonder how that works".

I got involved with CCCKC I guess close to two years ago now and it started by a simple Google search. I wanted to find people who had the same passion and love I do for "tinkering" and "hacking". I came to a meeting in the cave, kind of shy and sitting in the back. After talking to Joel and Luis and the rest of the guys I knew I had to not only be a member but do what I could to help make the group bigger, better and badder :)

Q: What are your favorite projects right now?

A: Right now I am working on I don't know how many projects. I basically get into something full bore and then I see the next "shiny" project and move on to that. I guess my big ones now are my provessional patent that I recently received for a design I'm working on (along with some recruited members of the space). Other projects include hacking the Kinect (thanks to Mike Overstreet for getting me interested in this), building my 3D printer (thanks to Luis for this one), and saving up to buy a biped robot (again Mike...). I am sure by the time this is published I'll be able to add and project X (thanks to X for that one) to the list.

Q: What is your profession? Have you had any interesting jobs in technology?

A: I am a Telecommunications engineer. I started off in IT working for a dial up provider supporting the equipment (IE: modem banks, T1 lines, routers, etc). From there I moved into teaching at a college (a technical school if you will), to teaching at a corporate level. That got old quick as I was on the road close to 300 days a year. I taught everything from IT Sec and programming (Java, Perl, C) to Unix (Solaris 8) and Shell scripting and quite a bit in between. Wanting to come off the road I ended up in Texas working for a client as a Java programmer on a new "project" from a company they acquired. However they decided to go .NET and not really caring for programming at the time they wanted to find me a new role. Well, when I was teaching I was required to get certified (CNE, CCIE, MCSE-P) so they figured they'd stick me in the network and telecom group. After about two months of working on their middle-ware call center configuration (using Genesys) I became the project lead. From there I helped build up the call center until I got the call from Farmers. They needed someone to build out a new division here in KC from the ground up.

This was a great chance for me to improve my skills. They relocated me here and I began the process of designing their new telecom infrastructure for the new division. Along with a couple other folks we built the infrastructure and routing from the ground up and two more sites after that. Due to potential outsourcing I moved to another firm as an IVR developer. There using Java as well as my standard PBX and routing background; with one other teammate created an IVR that handled over 53,000,000 calls in one high volume peak period or about 5 months.

Once this project ended I started to do contract work building up call centers for other companies and now I work for a professional services group that does that for two major companies in the DFW area.

Q: What issues do you feel passionate about in technology/making?

A: I believe that the technology you own should truly be yours. You should be able to tinker with it, take it apart, enhance it or what have you. I also believe that knowledge should be free. Should this be in the form of software, open source parts or whatever I think if you can learn from it, you should have that ability.

Q: For fun: If you were trapped on a desert island with unlimited Legos, but could only build one thing, what you build?

A: Well hell, I'd build a boat and get off the damn island or well maybe a small resort community and just relax and enjoy the quite. No.. I'd build the damn boat.

Saturdays Starting November 3rd

• 8-11am Advanced 3d printing - Tim Middleton
• 12-3pm silk screening - Tim Middleton
• 4-7pm Basic 3d priting - Jestin Stoffel *starts nov 10th*

The classes will occur every Saturday in October - check with the Google groups for messages from the instructor regarding cancellations and schedule changes.

• Kinect - Open Programming - Hal gottfried - 8am to 11am
• At-tiny - workshop -Tom Collins - 12pm-3pm
• 3d modeling with Hexagon- Tim Middleton - 4-7pm

Please contact education@c3kc.org if you have any questions.

CCCKC will be participating in a brief set of talks on community projects for google fiber. If you have a project, please feel free to drop by the fiberspace and share your ideas with the fiberspace community.

Ckick here for the Google Fiberspace page

The fiber space is located at:
1814 Westport Road Kansas City, MO 64111

The meeting is around 5:30pm. email Mike Overstreet for more information.

The September class list is out.

September 2012 Classes:
Saturdays Starting September 8th

• 8-11am photography - Hal Gottfried
• 12-3pm Arduino 101 - Jestin Stoffel
• 4-7pm silk screening - Tim Middleton

Contact education@c3kc.org if you have any questions.