This week in the Public Lab community newsletter, check out the new Public Lab store, welcome a new staff member and get ready for a holiday celebration in New York City.

1. Public Lab store has launched. A few hours ago, the Public Lab store, where you can purchase balloon kits, mini-foldable and desktop spectrometers, as well as an assortment of other equipment, launched!

2. Welcome Becki Chall! Monday was the first day for recent Public Lab hire, Becki Chall, who joins us as the Development Manager. She comes to Public Lab after three years leading development efforts for Global Green USA's Gulf Coast programs. In a past life, she worked as an environmental consultant in Washington, DC for a variety of government clients. Becki holds an MA in International Development and Natural Resources Management from the George Washington University and a BA in Environmental Science from the University of Michigan. We're really excited to have Becki on board to support the Public Lab nonprofit and the great projects the Public Lab community is working on!

3. Public Lab NYC holiday party and Winter mapping tomorrow. New York has a big day coming up tomorrow! At 9am, join the GLAM project and the Gowanus Canal Conservancy in Brooklyn (2nd Avenue and 5th Street) to map the entire 2 mile length of the canal. At 4pm, the group will move to the lab space at the Pfizer building (630 Flushing Ave, 8th floor) for our Winter Party. Check the PLOTS-NYC list for more details or contact liz@publiclaboratory.org.

4. Mapping in Winter. Down here in the South of the U.S., we see a slight increase in winds and a slight decrease in temperature, but it was fascinating to learn about some of potential difficulties of mapping during a Northern Winter. Chris Fastie outlines them here.

5. New Maps in the archive. Hot off the press (or Internet-land) are four new maps from Middlebury Falls, Vermont, Cocodrie, Louisiana and NDVI and visible light maps from a Cal Poly Engineers Without Borders meeting.

6. You're about to get a spectrometer, now what? We asked Kickstarter backers what they were planning on doing once they received their spectrometers. Check out responses from the $10 tier backers and the $200 and $400 tier backers.

7. Spectrometer shipping update. 900 webcams just arrived this morning and are shortly on their way to all of the Kickstarter backers who are expecting to receive a desktop spectrometer. While that was happening in Boston, all the way over in Oregon, the mini-foldable spectrometers were shipped out! Read an update on delivery as well as iOS and Android system updates here.

8. Education working group call. This Public Lab working group will be meeting at 2pm EST on Tuesday, December 18th. If you're interested in participating in this working group or want to know more about what this group is up to, please ask to become a contact of Public.Lab on Skype and list you name on this document.

9. Research Notes Massive updates to Spectral Workbench (posted by warren) Understanding the spectrum (posted by minot) Citizen Science on Google+ (posted by cfastie) Spectronic 20 spectrometer for comparison to our own (posted by warren)

As usual, I'd like to say happy weekend and have a great one, but I'm personally very troubled by the events that took place in Connecticut today, similar ones which have unfortunately happened many times in the last few years. Instead I want to wish everyone a restful weekend, hopefully enjoying the company of those closest to you. With regards, Shannon