Step 1: Set Some Goals

The first step, before you begin or even decide on which project you want to do, is to set some goals for what problem you want to solve. Think about what you want to learn. Setting goals early will allow you to work with a direction in mind and will help you get the most out of the experience. Decide why you want to do the project in the first place. Perhaps it may involve learning a particular skill set or technology. Maybe it will teach you something that will come in handy at work. You might even want to do a project just because of who will benefit from the problem that you solve. Once you’ve decided on some goals write them down. Writing down your goals will help you formalize them and make them clear.

Step 2: Research the Subject

Spending more time on research up front can save you even more time later on in the project. If you’ve already got a project in mind see how other people have gone about it in the past. If you want to do something you don’t think has ever been done before then make sure it has never been done before. Look for possible variations of your project and whether the variations have been done before. Keep notes on what you find in your research. You may want to even take notes on what you don’t find while doing research, especially if you want to do something new.

Step 3: Plan your Project

You’ve come up with a great idea and you’re getting a feel for what it will involve to get it done. Now it’s time to work on the details of how the project will be designed. Break your project up into small achievable pieces and come up with an overall strategy for how you can reach your end goal. Set some requirements for what each of the individual pieces of the project will be required to do. Start playing around with building pieces of your project and experiment by testing out any parts you’re not sure about. It will also help to draw yourself some diagrams, schematics, and or a layout of how the different parts will operate together.

Step 4: Do It!

This is possibly the most exciting step of all, as you get to see all the hard work you’ve put into the project so far take shape. Now that you have come up with a design start doing the project by working on one piece at a time. Following the previous steps and doing a piece at a time should boost your confidence in getting the overall project done. If you need any tools to help you get the job done come by the Hackerspace. You will also meet people at the Hackerspace that can offer advice if you ever get stuck. The environment is very encouraging. If you ask for it you’re bound to find help from someone with experience in solving the same type of problem you might be struggling from.

Step 5: Test It

If you’re struggling with any part of your project you may need to take that piece of your project and go back through the steps so far, beginning with step two. Since you’ve divided the overall project into smaller pieces your research should be much more focused, and your planning limited to a smaller part of your overall goal. Once you think you’ve got something that works test it out. If it breaks go back to step two. Before you move on you may want to try to make your project fail. Break and iterate, and loop over and over again till you have the whole thing right. Ask yourself if you’ve accomplished all of your goals and learned what you wanted to learn. If you have then it’s time to share your project.

Step 6: Show and Tell

You’ve solved the problem, built something awesome and learned a lot on the way. Now it’s time to tell the world. Bring your project and your experiences into the Hackerspace on a Tuesday night and show it off! If you’ve hacked something lately we want to hear about it. Post it on Facebook, Twitter, and make a video for YouTube. Share it in our forum, on your blog, or get it featured on Hack a Day, but don’t keep it to yourself. The world can benefit from your knowledge and what you have to share. Perhaps you’ll even inspire someone else to begin a project of their own.

One of the Hackerspace founders, Raquel Vélez, gave a great talk about Engineering for the Masses at Ignite Charlotte 4.

I am proud to say that my talk has been selected for B-Sides Austin TX this year.  Check out the Abstract below if you’re interested.

Name: David Maloney, @thelightcosineTitle: Don’t Pick the lock, steal the key
Length: 45 minutes
Abstract: You’ve got a problem. You’re running a pentest and the only vulnerable box is some shmuck’s desktop. Is it game over? wait, what is this WinSCP application on his machine? don’t give up just yet. The wonderful world of fail that is password storage is about to save your butt. In this talk we will break down how Windows applications store their password. Where they store them, how they encrypt or obfuscate them, and how we can attack them. Then we will follow up with some real world examples from the Metasploit Framework, and show how you can turn one workstation into total network compromise in a very short ammount of time.

Article source: http://cosine-security.blogspot.com/2012/03/security-bsides-austin-texas.html

May 4th has been proclaimed by Charlotte’s Mayor Anthony Foxx as “Hackerspace Charlotte Day”. Bring your friends and family for a night of fun you’ll never forget.

We will have:

Quadcopters
3d Printers
Rockets
Dry Ice
Liquid Nitrogen
CNC Machines
RC Airplanes

and much more!

All meetings and classes from now on will be held at the new location.

Please see the forum and IRC for more details.

We will also decide on a regular night to do the builds themselves. Tonight we’ll get a count of the people who are going to be actively building and which design decisions they are going to take. There is a balance of cost verses quality… I will detail what the differences are so that people can make their own choices.

Discuss this in the forum.

http://hsc.lt/o26Gbn

We help beginners become pros, pros become experts, and so on.  Our goal is to have everyone learn at their own pace and use the languages and tools that interest them most.

Discuss this in the forum: http://www.hackerspacecharlotte.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=356

Please take the time to educate yourself on the SOPA and PIPA bills:
SOPA: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:h.r.3261:

PIPA: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:SN00968:

This is a great opportunity to stop in and see what we have going on. Hope to see you there. -HSC.

7:30p

HSC has 10 soldering Irons in pretty red boxes. We need help starting fires, burning clothes, and making a circuit or two.