Let's get more events going at Makerspace

#1

On our calendar we the currently have the following events:

  • Social evenings
  • Members Meeting
  • Open Evening

Which are essential to the life of the space , and :

  • Electronics Night
  • Raspberry Jam event

Where are all the other groups? Why @electrotechs are there every single week to help people , clean around and try to make something nice for the space and we can’t get anything back from the others?

I would like to go to the @textilestechs night , the @lasers night or the @3dprinters , I would like to meet this 300 @members (And yes. I just did it.) I would like to exchange my skills , not waiting every thursday night for people to join us.

This is a call for everyone there, please , get involved , and if you need to kickstart your weekly event and you don’t know how, I would be happy to help.

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#2

The reason there aren’t other groups is because people haven’t organised them, and many other areas aren’t suitable to lots of people coming in at once.

We used to have a wood working meet up but it was permanently cancelled for safety as it ended up with too many people trying to use the tools, I can see the laser cutter and 3D printer, CNC and screen printing being similarly problematic.

Textiles is about the only one where a good few people could meet up, but there is already a local stitch and bitch event near by.

#3

I’m sorry but I think that things can made diffently , electonics doesn’t have a lot of space either and just two soldering workstation but we are there doing one thing , skill exchange and socializing.

#4

I’m not saying you couldn’t have a meet up, it’s because no one has been motivated to do it, however there are practical reasons why µMeet as it was once called is easier to get going.

You could have a meet up for the other areas, but they would be less practically getting on with a project and more talking about it.

#5

I’m sure someone will take a look at this and will think “not my fault , is not safe/easy to do”…

#6

Yes, we should consider bringing back woodworking night now that we have suitable workshop, but it wouldn’t cater for as many members as before due to space constrictions. Plud unfortunately it’s very hard to resurrect something like this once it’s been paused.

@emuboy we have had other meet ups, just less regular, and maybe less visible: there’s a laser group that meets every so often, a hand tools group, a luthiers group, and @StudioNelle has run some excellent monthly workshops …I think we need to make them much more visible, and find a way to have more. No harm in putting the call out.

We’ve plenty of blackboard space, and we have the calendar up, we can easily find space to list upcoming highlights somewhere.

EDIT: and we had some Fusion360 sessions too.

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#7

I don’t think the situation with woodwork has changed, it wasn’t just the lack of induction process that was unsafe, but the lack of space for people to work together, and we have less space in the workshop now than we did then. The tech’s have said 3-4 people could work in there at most.

I don’t see how the old wood work night could work, as it was basically like electronics night people bringing along projects and getting on with stuff, or working together and socialising. What I can see working is a meet up sharing skills, or having someone demo a technique, a great example of this is the videos from the geek group in the USA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnOFweVo8c4&index=2&list=PL6D9FE2059CC996C3

#8

Can I just point out that I haven’t talk about woodworking at a btw?

#9

I didn’t say you had but was using it as an example of where there are issues of capacity.

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#10

To be fair I think there are various members volunteering their time in many areas of the space, including @sabtab with knitting sessions, @Jonathan with fusion 360, @silkscreentechs with screen printing off the top of my head oh and a member I can’t remember the name who ran a video content session. All posted on discourse. Not to mention the informal working groups and exchange of skills among members I received help from @ana with photoshop and illustrator just one example of some of the constant skill swapping I think takes place in the space. I think that should be recognised. I don’t think electronics is the only area where there is frequent activity.

Hopefully now with the in-house calendar, online calendar and discourse, it will make it even easier to know when these are happening. Talking to others about what you need help with often materialises into a sharing of skills.

One suggestion if you would like to exchange skills, is to possibly have a board that had your picture or a picture which showcased the skill you are willing to provide and a note about the skill you would like to receive.

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#11

Everyone’s welcome to join the Hand Tools woodworking group.

We’re just discussing what to do on our next meeting Sept 2

https://discourse.southlondonmakerspace.org/t/hand-tools-group-2nd-meet-up/6825/7

Chip in with ideas! Pun intended!

Please help spread the word

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#12

I’d love to do a textiles meet up but I can’t come in the evenings unfortunately, but happy to host a daytime one?

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#13

Well , why not? :slight_smile:

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#14

Hi Andrea.
I’m ready to facilitate an event on kite making, although some of the materials can be quite expensive.

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#15

Cool! Would be great to have a theoretical introduction on that before investing in material :slight_smile:

#16

That’s for sure. Also I have been studying a collaborative leadership course and would like to suggest a small experiment using decision making and integrated consent in creating outputs for a project. :slight_smile:

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#17

Zachary’s I’d be interested to learn more about both…I’ll be in the space Thursday evening if you’re about for a cup of tea.

#18

Hi Afshin,
I’m away until next week, will you be around next Thursday?

#19

I am looking at the bela platform to create sonic visualisations of th ekite movements, also looking at various platforms for flying networks, I am lookin at this Lora component which is a long range kit, seems to be python based code. I currently use a local wifi network it about 100-500 meter radius, using the trusty nodemcu and arduino libraries

We did an art project in Newmarket https://vimeo.com/233502312 but there is so much more can be shared and continued with the tech and machine learning!

#20

Would love to organise a 3D printing evening but with only limited time available I’m going to focus on induction. Soon as the induction list as considerably reduce I will do my best to organise 3d printing / 3d modelling / 3d social evening :slight_smile:

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