Hacker Haven: Far McKon Makes It

Far McKon can be seen onstage working the crowd in a video from an Ignite Philly event held last September at Johnny Brenda's in Philadelphia. With slides shuffling on a large screen behind him, McKon, dressed in a t-shirt and ballcap, talks about aerogami, or more simply, the "art" of making paper airplanes.

McKon acknowledges to the onlookers, gathered for a regularly-occurring meeting of creatives and new ideas, that he's not sure how aerogami applies to the arts in general, but he doesn't care. He just wants to see about 300 papers folded into airplanes and chucked across the room.

The scene illustrates how McKon isn't so much concerned with connecting the dots between a growing number of young, creative Philadelphians are impacting the economic landscape in the city. He just wants to make cool stuff, and wants others to join the party. As he says in the video, he wants the group to "take something flat and static and turn it into something uncommon."

Even McKon, however, will tell you there is power in the swirl of creative ideas and people occupying the city's once static neighborhoods, like Fishtown, Northern Liberties and South Philly. They are hackers (as in hacking away at computer projects, not unleashing viruses), do-it-yourself'ers, makers and fabricators, and they are doing things that are as uncommon as they are potentially profitable.

"You look at the engineering societies, the printers club from the 1770s, where printers would hang out and talk shop, and you go to the 1960s and 70s with computer clubs in San Francisco, free hobby clubs, the goal was to learn have as much fun as you could," says McKon. "Out of this comes different business ideas.

"I see it as an ecosystem. Four out of five will be just nifty ideas. Then there's that one, maybe you can really sell it or use it at your job every day."

McKon, 29 and a native of upstate New York near Rochester, says he's "just a software guy," but to others in the maker community, he's a "local fab kingpin." He has organized two hackerspaces--The Hacktory and most recently Hive76--that have become successful in teaching classes, providing space and tools for hackers and DIY'ers, and nurturing the collaborative spirit of the city's growing hacker/maker community.

McKon never blurted out "hacker" when asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, but says he caught the bug as a computer science major at the State University of New York at Binghamton, where he applied for and was accepted into a campus-recognized dorm known as the "geek house."

When he arrived in Philadelphia two years ago, McKon was struck by the "cool bunch of guys doing cool stuff," like Harris Romanoff of Make Philly, a four year-old casual forum for creatives to share ideas and build things, and P'unk Avenue, the design and development firm founded by Philly creative extraordinaire Geoff DiMasi. So McKon cold e-mailed them and was stunned to be greeted with open arms.

"I wouldn't have thought I could grab lunch with these guys. The next thing you know we're planning on teaching class on arduino," says McKon, who has organized monthly calls with other hacker spaces throughout the country to try and build synergy and more resources for the local community.

Arduino is a physical computing platform built on a basic open hardware design for a single-board microcontroller. It can be applied to household items--to control a garden hose, for example--and is used to make tools available that are available, low-cost, flexible and easy-to-use for artists and hobbyists alike.  Adruino is still taught at the Hacktory, which was co-founded by McKon and Romanoff at Nonprofit Technology Resources (NTR), a Philadelphia group whose primary focus is providing computers to low-income families.

McKon left the Hacktory about six months ago over a disagreement with NTR on how the space was managed, but has since mended the relationship and was happy to speak of it: "They do a good job," he says.

McKon wasted little time in forming Hive76, which currently operates out of a 350 square foot studio on Spring Garden Street at the edge of Center City that's paid for by membership fees. McKon hopes to set up an additional workshop studio by the end of the month where his crew can do things that are "dirty and dusty" and leave the other space as a software studio.

Hive76 holds open houses at 7:30 p.m. every Wednesday and inside, you'll find some of the most interesting people, tools and ideas in the city. There's an automatic door opener that uses a USB key as authentication.

There are the University of Arts students who wanted to come in at 3 a.m. and use one of the group's components to tinker with a guitar effects pedal.

Then there's the newest prized possession at Hive76. It's the MakerBot, an open source 3D printer that makes almost anything up to 4x4x6 inches. The machine costs $1,000, but McKon raised the funds in about six days on pledgie.com, illustrating the group's zeal for the machine and willingness to support Hive76.

When the machine arrived several weeks ago, McKon expected to be the only at the studio playing with it. He opened the door and found four others already using it.

"It's just sort of the Philly style of doing it," says McKon. "Don’t' whine, just go and get it done."

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Joe Petrucci is the managing editor of Keystone Edge. Send feedback here.

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Photos:

Far McKon at Hive76

Hive76 members converse furiously, audibly "buzzing" during  a recent meeting on various topics

A 3D printer in mid-print, built by a member of Hive 76.  Some replacement parts can actually "be printed"

Notes and to-do lists litter the walls at the small studio

All Photographs by Michael Persico