Report from Labs at Makespace: next steps! (and next next steps)

[Jenny Molloy]

Hi All

tl;dr: if you would like to be involved in further activities for planning labs at Makespace, review what we discussed last week, join the Labs google group, RSVP for the next Meetup and sign up for a team (bio, electronics, fabrication, outreach).

It was great to see almost 20 people last Thursday who were keen to think about what Labs at Makespace might look like. Apologies to those who missed us due to a google meet double link mixup - we hope you can join the next one.

We had a brief recap of a proposal presented at the May members meeting for building out labs if new space becomes available at Mill Lane. We then went around the room and heard from people what they would like to be and happen in that space. You can see the full notes here.

People are excited about a clean space for bringing together lots of different types of technology and benefiting from the diverse community at Makespace in terms of everything from IoT, AI, biomaterials, art and more.

In summary, there was interest coalescing around four areas of activity:

1. Electronics: proposing more provision for advanced and surface mount electronics 
2. Biology and imaging: considering how to bridge biology and making, what facilities make sense to move from Biomakespace to Mill Lane 
3. Fabrication: thinking about 3D printing but also microfabrication, biomaterials and microfluidics
4. Outreach: courses, projects and workshops that could build a community, starting from now and continuing if and when it is possible to get space. We had an offer on the night to run a monthly intro to engineering with biology for non-biologists and we're keen for more ideas and offers of fun events for the Makespace community and the public.

We now need to dive into these areas to come up with more concrete plans and proposals to take to the Makespace community and board, even though the availability of space is still a moving target. To enable more discussion we have set up la...@makespace.org google group (sign up here) and will run a monthly one-hour hybrid meeting on the third Wednesday of the month, just before the Biomaker Meetups (RSVP to the next @ 18:30 on 17 Aug). 

We're now looking for people who are willing to join a team focusing on one of these areas (sign up here) and someone willing to co-pilot the next few planning meetings. Get in touch if this could be you!

Thanks all and it was really inspiring to hear all of the interests and ideas pouring out on Thursday. Looking forward to the next round!

Jenny

[Jenny Molloy]

Hi All

Thanks so much to those who have already RSVP'd to the next Labs Planning Meetup on Wednesday @ 18:30 in the Makespace classroom, if you haven't and are interested, please consider attending either in person or online! 

For those in person, sandwiches will be available while we transition to the Biomaker Meetup (this month featuring a qPCR teardown and training on no-code programming for IoT in the lab) and it would be lovely if you can hang around for that!

The teams to take forward planning in the four main areas that we identified (bio, electronics, fabrication, outreach) are also getting sign ups, if you think you can help in any of those or would like to add another area, sign up on the spreadsheet or contact me directly, whichever you prefer.

The group at the last meeting were very excited about a clean space for bringing together lots of different types of technology and benefiting from the diverse community at Makespace in terms of everything from IoT, AI, biomaterials, art and more. Looking forward to seeing those ideas progress this week!

Jenny