Allie Irwin, a former Mechanical Engineer and now a “People Skills Strategist,” gave us great tips on how to get what we want. She explained, “Our brains are like hungry toddlers,” and if you really want to get through to someone you need to “say it like you mean it.” She shared some great tips with us in her talk, like the importance of lowering your voice as you are talking to really stand your ground. Find out more about Allie and her company Engineered Conversations at http://www.engineeredconversations.com/about

Faculty and students from MSU’s Game Design and Development program had three games setup for us to play during the reception – Greatest City, Project Shutdown, and Bunny Skate. The games were all created in a course over this past semester and varied from a mobile game, to a computer game, to a game for the HTC Vive (virtual reality system). The students also presented the games and highlighted the development process of making them. The games are all free to play and can be found on the MSU Game Development website at http://gamedev.msu.edu/games/. Bunny Skate is also scheduled to be available on the iOS App Store in the next week.

Linda Lay talked about UX Design for Social Change and being part of Design for America. She was passionate about using her talents to help others and learned through her Design for America project that there are great opportunities locally for making an impact. Her team was surprised to discover that hunger is a real issue on MSU’s campus. With the cafeterias across campus providing a smorgasbord of food options to so many students, she hadn’t thought food may not be accessible to everyone that needs it. However, she found there are graduate students and international students trying to support families on modest student wages and struggle to feed themselves and their families. That’s when Linda and her team decided to partner with the MSU Food Bank to help be part of the solution. They looked at the user experience of the food bank and helped to redesign it to be more efficient and be able to feed more people. Linda talked about how some problems can feel overwhelming or unsolvable, but explained how we can all make a difference in our community, “If everyone works a little bit to make a dent, then the problem gets smaller and smaller and eventually it makes a crack.” She also talked about the importance of, “becoming something bigger than your own self – taking what you learn and adding to the community.” This philosophy is what drives the open source community and is also the passion behind DemoCamp Lansing – sharing, helping and motivating each other in the community and highlights the great work of those who do so.

Jerry Norris talked about The Fledge – an ideation and maker place, incubator, and accelerator. He said “We made The Fledge to make Michigan ‘stickier’… we’re doing this to change Mid-Michigan.” He wants to make it “stickier” so people stick here. The Fledge is inclusive and aims to help makers, creators, doers, and dreamers by helping provide resources to make their aspirations become a reality. From a workspace, to equipment, to classes, to funding, to connections… just ask and The Fledge will try to help. To find out more about The Fledge in Grand Ledge, visit http://grandledgefledge.com

How many photos (and videos) do you have on your phone? The quantity of media we create and acquire has become massive, making it challenging to find what you want when you need it. David Riedle demoed AV (Audio / Visual) Shoebox. He created the program to organize media – audio, video, and photo files. You can categorize items, tag them, and add additional information about them, which allows you to easily understand what you are working with and how to find it.

Chris Fritz is a developer and passionate educator who tackled gamifying how to use a terminal. The non-visual, non-GUI, black screen of a terminal may be intimidating for those who have never tried using one, but Chris showed there are power in commands and it’s easier than you think. Try his Terminal Game Demo at http://shaky-adjustment.surge.sh. Chris also mentioned that the schedule for tech user group meetups can be found at https://www.lansing.codes