FreeCAD News

In case you don’t read the forum, I’d like to announce FreeCAD’s 2024 North Amer­i­can Meetup!

In Spring­field, Illi­nois, on August 15^th — 18^th, we will be host­ed by Inno­vate Spring­field, just south of the Old State Capi­tol down­town (pic­tured above.)

For FreeCAD users, devel­op­ers, and any­one inter­est­ed: all are welcome.

Before I get into the details, if you’re plan­ning on com­ing, please help us esti­mate atten­dance by fill­ing out this form.

The first and last days of the meet­up will be free-form hackathon events, allow­ing for those who have to arrive late or return ear­ly, and to pro­vide space for com­ing and going to take part in local food and tourism options.

On Fri­day, August 16^th, in addi­tion to ongo­ing “hack­ing on the side” in oth­er parts of the build­ing, we will sched­ule some light­ning talks and short & medi­um pre­sen­ta­tions, i.e. times­lots of no more than 5/25/50 min­utes. If you have FreeCAD-relat­ed knowl­edge you’d like to share, some niche but inter­est­ing work to show­case, or even a bold plan you want to argue for, please reach out! Pro­pos­als can be sent to spi24@freecad.org.

For Sat­ur­day, we’ll be doing some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent: pub­lic out­reach. The idea is that there are plen­ty of peo­ple “out­side the fold”, so to speak, who might nev­er see this announce­ment but could find FreeCAD inter­est­ing or use­ful, like Spring­field-local engi­neer­ing & man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies, or per­haps a high school stu­dent inter­est­ed in path­ways to a career in soft­ware (or hardware!).

With an open invi­ta­tion to the pub­lic, please come ready to show­case what you can do with FreeCAD, or even things you’ve done or made; how to use FreeCAD, how to make it bet­ter, or lessons you’ve made to help learn it. Con­sid­er this some­thing an infor­mal poster & booth ses­sion with a chance to show­case to future users, devel­op­ers, cus­tomers, or even fans. If you have any ques­tions, or know specif­i­cal­ly what you’d like to show­case, please con­tact spi24@freecad.org.

For more detailed and up-to-date event infor­ma­tion, please use the short link freecad.org/spi24, which points to the wiki page for the meetup.

As with sim­i­lar events in the past, the FreeCAD Project Asso­ci­a­tion is offer­ing trav­el grants. Please reach out to the FPA at fpa@freecad.org for infor­ma­tion on how to apply.