An open letter to makefesters, Liverpool MakeFest 2017
Last weekend on July 24th the third annual Liverpool MakeFest occured. The day ran smoothly, with little issues at the start. Out of all the exhibitors that were currated by us we only lost a few in the week leading up to it, these things happen but we had more than enough pitches, free standing exhbits and activities in marquees to fill the venue, Liverpool Central Library. It was such a good day that it’s taken me most of the week to come down from the high of it all and I don’t think I am properly there so please excuse the trumpets that are about to go off- rest assured I’m blowing not just my own- it’s only because it’s raining that I’ve decided to sit down and write, anyway… It’s been nearly seven months since Jen, Denise and myself started talking about it. Jen and I were meeting weekly in the first fews months, with the exception of April when we rested for a bit of it, and with exception to May and June when we sandwiched our regular day volunteering to organising MakeFest with late nights, early starts and weekends too. We did the first curation for…
WordPress horrorshow
So it’s with some regret that I login here to write a quick post and then I end up writing this post. For reasons common to most people who administer their own hosted wordpress I’ve only just ran some updates which has spoilt my blog- to some degree. The main spoil comes from the theme update which is now not the theme I installed but the theme on steroids, to the extent it has a lot of wasted features and some features I can’t find the off-switch for (see the image placeholder in the blog page). The regret is naturally not keeping my own site updated. <grumble /> Naturally this is a recurring theme which I’d rather do without. I’ve been convinced for a few months now that I will flatten this site and do away away with dependencies of trad. blogs (such as wordpress), php, mysql, plugins, updates, etc. and go for static site generation. I’ve been getting experience with Jekyll so that’s a likely contender. As is Hugo.
Creating a University Makerspace
Back in June last year I ended up at a meeting organised by a principal lecturer and biologist from LJMU, Mark Feltham. He wanted to meet the “makers” in the University and start a working group, the Maker Education Working Group- a bit of a mouthful so officially we’re MEWG but generally we go by the name HEdWorks; a project that Mark set up a few years prior for teaching Science undergraduates via social media and Maker Education, (tres creative!).