The Drill Talk, Weaving Some Webs, and The Thorax at Mark Day

At Tinkering School, usually by Wednesday we have to have the "drill talk" with everyone. Today was no exception. 

But, first let's back up! What's the Drill Talk? Why are we having it?

Drills are awesome. They make holes. They drive screws. The ones we use are this satisfying weight and scale. They are fun to carry around like they are puppies or ducklings or really heavy, pokey stuffies. And this is what goes down: We only have 10 drills and everyone wants one. Tinkerers hoard them and carry them around to show off status and sometimes fight over them and call them MY DRILL. They aren't your drill. We have to share them and no one brought their own drill today.

So, we have a the talk. We have the talk where we call out this behavior and say it's not cool and tell everyone to be nice and share. Sometimes this works, and sometimes it doesn't. Different Collaborators have different ways of giving the talk, and last week we tried it Amanda Style. It didn't work. This morning Amanda tried something different.

I sat down in opening circle with eight drills in my arms and just sat there and let people question me. I said how much I loved to hold them in my arms and how good it felt to know they were there to provide me comfort and hole-making screw-driving power whenever I needed it! I had one for each hand and six back ups! It was awesome! Soon, everyone in the circle told me how rude I was and how no one would be able to work today if I carried eight drills around with me.

So, we had a conversation about that. And, during the morning build session, it worked for about 30 seconds.

After lunch, Tatian sat down with his eight drills and we had the talk again! The Tinkerers caught on much quicker and nicely told Tatian to put the drills back so other people could use them!

In the afternoon, we did much better with our drill etiquette. 

Meanwhile, Beth set up a Tinkering School first! Our centipede-spider-insect-creature needs a web, and we started to make one. Beth and a team set up a giant loom and taught one another how to weave a web! The pictures explain much better than I every could. 

Once a few people knew how to weave and made a weaving station, anyone who wanted to take a break and try their hand at weaving could just drop in and do it! This was a great way for Tinkerers and Collaborators to take a break and make a (maybe small) contribution to our project.

Thank you to everyone who worked so hard on this!

Last, but not least, I got to hang out with a team of amazing leaders and team members this afternoon. The Dragonfly-Bee (DragonFLBee) Team split into three groups this afternoon: The Head, the Thorax, and the Abdomen -- in order to more efficiently divide tasks and conquer all the details.

I got to help the Thorax Team! 

We carefully decided what we needed to do and what order to do it in. Then, we made task lists under each main task, and as the Tinkerers talked, I took notes. They lead the meeting and decided in what order we should do things and who should do what at the same time in order to make the building most efficient. At the end, we signed up for tasks and got to work!

Below are some photos of their afternoon progress!

As always, more photos on Flickr! Sleep tight, Insect Makers!