The Chattanooga Public Library has been a part of the city’s gigabit ecosystem and infrastructure since 2012, when the 4th Floor became the first public library space in the United States to offer access to a full gig of speed.
Now in partnership with the Mozilla Foundation, the National Science Foundation and others, the Chattanooga Public Library is launching the newest layer to the city’s gigabit offerings: GigLab.
GigLab will be located downtown in the library’s community beta space, the 4th Floor, and will be the first public access space of its kind. GigLab builds on top of the city’s bandwidth ubiquity in a way that provides a separate but inclusive gig connected space designed specifically for gigabit related experimentation and learning, application testing and workforce development.
The general public will now have access to enterprise level gigabit connected hardware, as well as a variety of short session and hands on courses regarding networking as a whole, and other gigabit focused projects. Viewed as one of the 21st century’s most inspiring and potential filled
platforms for innovation and collaboration, Chattanooga’s gigabit network and the new GigLab aim to serve as a catalyst for this platform’s continued development, and the public’s continued learning, said officials.
There will be launch day activities on the 4th Floor from 4-6 p.m. on Saturday. The event is free and open to the public and features multiple short sessions and demonstrations. Refreshments will be served.
Other gig powered Mozilla funded local projects will be demonstrated on Saturday during Giglab’s launch. These Gigabit Fund teams have been able to demo their projects across the globe from World Maker Faire in New York to MozFest in London, but they'll have the opportunity to publicly show their work on a real gigabit connection for the first time at the GigLab launch on Saturday.
“Since launching in February, the Mozilla Gigabit Community Fund has supported eight projects that show the power of the Gig for education and workforce development in Chattanooga," said Mozilla Community Catalyst Lindsey Frost Cleary. "What's so exciting about the GigLab project is that its impact isn't limited to one classroom, one school, or even one organization everyone is invited into this space to use this incredible technology and to access this amazingly fast connection."
Once open, GigLab will also offer partnerships with local nonprofits and startups who would like to take advantage of GigLab equipment on a regular basis. Partnerships have already been made with a Haskell users group and Open Chattanooga, who will utilize GigLab resources for learning the programming language Haskell and generating visualizations of city data.
The GigLab will be open for public access from 2-8 p.m. Monday-Thursday and 2-6 p.m. on Friday. Equipment use is currently limited to the 4K display + A LOLA (LOw LAtency audio visual streaming) system + virtual servers. Soon there will be announcements about other GigLab offerings including access to 2 Oculus Rift headsets, a Nvidia Tesla GPU Appliance, desktop workstations, and laptops. All equipment will be available by reservation.
GigLab Launch Day Short Sessions and Demos:
SparkFun Electronics’ educational outreach coordinator, Jeff Branson, will be a guest speaker and workshop leader. Come hear about his work around the United States teaching hands on
technology projects to students of all ages. Mr. Branson will also lead a fun Internet of Things exercise using data.sparkfun.com.
Why Bandwidth Matters: Using GigLab’s 4K display, the project’s CoFounder Thiel Fellowship candidate, Jake Brown, will engage the viewer with beautiful 4K streaming bandwidth consumption.
Chattanooga As Minecraft : Chattanooga Open Data Specialist Sean Brewer will demonstrate the Minecraft world he generated from USGS Lidar data of Chattanooga. They will be running a Minecraft server that contains Chattanooga as a buildable world.
The Transmit Project: The library’s tech education specialist, James McNutt, will be demonstrating his “Transmit” project using Arduinos. This works by demonstrating how ASCII text characters (like the ones you’re reading) are coded into binary and transferred digitally.
Adagio : An audiomixing application, piloted at the Chattanooga Public Library and Barger Academy of Art, leveraging cloud storage and remote collaboration to lower barriers to music production and education.
Building an App from the Ground Up | The Creative Discovery Museum: An applicationcreation
toolbox and digital record that will serve as a design blueprint for other youth serving organizations in Chattanooga and beyond.
devLearn | Duncan Ingram, Inc: A mobile coding application for elementary school students which recognizes that, for many across the digital divide, cell phones are a primary means of internet access, and will build critical capacity for Chattanooga’s gigabit future.
Viditor | GeonCode: A new, online video editor being piloted in local schools, UTCstudent
developed Viditor is a multiplatform tool allowing students across the city to work on and edit film collaboratively.
Follow GigLab Twitter: @GigLabCha
Follow GigLab blog: http://blog.giglab.io
Follow Mozilla updates: https://blog.mozilla.org/gigabit/mozillainchagigabitecosystem/
Follow the 4th Floor: http://chattlibrary.org/4thfloor