Many of you know Mary Johnson from the Rhode Island Mini Maker Faire or her efforts to get robots into the hands of kids and their families through the FIRST LEGO League and the Robot Block Party. She’s also a program manager with Polaris MEP, Rhode Island’s Manufacturer Extension Partnership, where she works at the intersection of innovation, design, and manufacturing. At the September 2017 Providence Geeks, Mary will share the work Polaris MEP is doing to increase collaboration among Rhode Island designers, inventors, makers and manufacturers.

The event itself is FREE! Beverages and food are for sale at AS220’s excellent bar and restaurant.

Doors open at 5:30pm. Socializing, eating and drinking up until the 15 min presentation/q&a around 6:30. Afterwards, back to socializing, eating, drinking.

It’s totally casual. Wear whatever, bring whomever, arrive and take off whenever! And don’t worry about eating or not – come famished or full – eating is optional, and frankly, the least of the festivities (that’s not to say the food isn’t good – it’s actually great).

Topics of conversation will vary as they will at any gathering of geeks, but many of us will be talking about start-ups, new devices, innovative business models, 3d printing, interaction design, social computing, digital art, web services, and more! There is Wi-Fi so bring your connected device of choice.