We had our first grant and dinner on Thursday night. It was well, awesome. Erika convinced everyone to trek Northside to drink wine and eat a lot, at Hell of the North, in Fitzroy. Despite raised eyebrows from the guys at the tapas menu, the food was insanely delicious, and the company, a whole lot more. Cheryl brought along her friend Steve, the man responsible for launching a Lego shuttle into space (awesome). He gave us a quick run down on an up and coming plan/invention he has going on. If you’re into cool start ups, you should check out Steve’s new project, or at least the hype for it. Tom and Jo from Big Scary were off doing their thing overseas so sent in their votes the night before – kudos for organisation skills. The winner of our our first grant was the cool dudes at Son Valise. They turn old school suitcases and the likes into functioning jukeboxes. If you haven’t heard of them already, have a look at their shop on Etsy. Then go on the best picnic you’ll ever go on. They are planning a ridiculously cool project involving new jukes, new music, and some of Melbourne’s – if not Australia’s best talent. We can’t tell you… read more →

The Awesome Foundation begins their second chapter in Melbourne, Awesome Squared, with five positions available for the taking. There are undeniably a lot of awesome things happening in Melbourne. We are after all, the most livable city in the world. That’s why the Awesome Foundation exists. So what if there was 2x as much Awesome? Enter Awesome Squared. A whole new crew, a whole new vibe. Why? Why not? Awesome Squared currently has five members locked in, they include one that likes to draw, one that writes, one that blogs, one that tweets and one that funds other mega grants. They’re looking for five more board members. Anyone can apply for the position or a grant by contacting contact@awesomefoundation.org and providing a short and sweet bio.  

Saturday night the Awesome Foundation Melbourne met at Veludo in St Kilda. A few micro trustees were away and we had a visiting guest economist Nicholas Gruen. We discussed and named our final selection, and the grant recipient was Melbourne Macarons. However as Xavier Shay is a vegan, Xavier decided to give his $100 to the Animal Liberation Front. Today I met Linda from Melbourne Macarons. She was very happy to received the $900 towards her secret macaron project. All the best Linda, and we look forward to hearing more once the secret project is unveiled!

At the end of April the Melbourne Awesome Foundation met for dinner, and chose the Melbourne HackerSpace ArduinoLab as the grant recipient. I have to admit I didn’t totally understand their project, but the energy for their project from all the other micro-trustees was so awesome, I trusted that and gave them my vote too. We called the guys immediately, and they were thrilled to receive the grant. They were working on their project while we were eating dinner on Saturday night! Here’s their blog to explain what they do – I certainly can’t. 🙂 http://tinyurl.com/arduinolab And here’s their submission: Who: Founder of the Melbourne HackerSpace (not-for-profit community technology group) Project: High-school science portable electronics laboratory-in-a-box Awesomeness: Promotes science experimentation in schools with an affordable device that is open and customisable/extensible by teachers and students. How: The Melbourne HackerSpace has completed the initial design/prototype and has the members and track record in completing several previous projects of this complexity. We work closely with Freetronics (http://freetronics.com), a local Melbourne company that can manufacture/distribute open-source hardware designs on behalf of others. Overview: The ArduinoLab is a portable unit consisting of a graphics screen, buttons/knobs for user interface … as well as several… read more →

It was perhaps out of character that Nick and I both arrived on bikes for the handover of Awesome Foundation Melbourne’s March grant, given Nick runs the not for profit group Tram Sessions. Tram Sessions encourage Melbourne artists and bands to perform on city trams, trying to bring more culture into the public space. The sessions are recorded and uploaded to the Tram Sessions website, where you can see the awesome in action.