Talk:Mitch Altman

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If someone wants to add to the Article: I received the first Maker Hero Award at the New York City World Maker Faire in May, 2011. Here's a photo of me with the award trophy, printed from a MakerBot 3D printer. Here is a video of the award ceremony (my part begins at 33:30). In the future this award will be called "The Mitch Altman Maker Hero Award",

to be presented to individuals in the “do it yourself” (DIY) and “do it with others” (DIWO) community who have made outstanding contributions to the cause of maker-related education and/or open access to technology.[1]

-- Mitch — Preceding unsigned comment added by Maltman23 (talk • contribs) 17:28, 1 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe you'd care to mention that he's something of a dick: http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/04/car-b-gone-mitch-altman%E2%80%99s-newest-universal-remote.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.84.117.78 (talk) 23:38, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Funny. For those who didn't catch it, that's an April fool's joke. Look at the date. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.243.46.59 (talk) 05:28, 4 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Mitch here. The Car-B-Gone article was written by Paul Spinrad, of MAKE Magazine. It was his idea for the 1-April blog posting, which I agreed to go along with if he added the disclaimer to the bottom of the blog post. So, yes, it was an April Fool's joke. The voice of "Mitch" in that article is so *not* me.

Hash Wednesday

I went to Deerfield High School and graduated two years before Altman, in 1973. I don't remember him, but I do remember participating in Hash Wednesday celebrations as early as 1971, and I know them to have occurred at least a year or two before that. Deaconse (talk) 23:32, 20 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Mitch here. Hash Wednesday was created by me and my friend Bruce Bethel. It was Bruce's idea. After me and Bruce and a few friends went to the annual Hash Bash in Ann Arbor, MI, Bruce asked me, "Why can't we do this at UIUC?" I couldn't think of any reasons why not, so we did -- that following April (the 3rd Wednesday). Bruce came up with the name "Hash Wednesday". Bruce and I wrote on every chalk board in every classroom in every building on the UIUC quad every night for 2 weeks, making it look like it was an organization creating it. We also used chalk to write the same thing on the sidewalks all over the quad and its perimeter. But we didn't say much, simply: "Hash Wednesday, noon, Wednesday April 21st, on the quad" What year was it? I'm pretty sure this was my sophmore year as an undergrad at UIUC, which means that the first Hash Wednesday was April, 1977. At noon on that Wednesday, along with our friends, about 200 curious on-lookers showed up. If there were any similar types of civil disobediance parties on the quad before this, I am unaware of them. But certainly none were called "Hash Wednesday" before that first one.

The University of Illinois substantiates the timeline for Champaign celebrations of "Hash Wednesday". http://archives.library.illinois.edu/slc/researchguides/timeline/decades/1970.php — Preceding unsigned comment added by Krautsk (talk • contribs) 18:16, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Multiple problems; clean-up needed

I've flagged the article with a request for a clean-up, to deal with multiple problems. Chief among them is the complete lack of sources cited, but also the fact that it reads like a PR release, and that much of the content is non-notable. I'd like to see the editors of the article give the clean-up a try, instead of doing it myself, but if no one steps up, I will. Bricology (talk) 07:42, 17 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I (krautsk) knew Altman in college at UIUC in the early eighties, and I reached out to him to get a few more bibliographical citations. I removed some of the peacock language, added more citations for some of the assertions. I am pretty sure there isn't a COI, but I thought I should be upfront about the fact that I know him, and as far as I can tell, he certainly satisfies the criteria for "noteworthyness".