March-April projects and ideas

[leila johnston]

Morning!

Busy few weeks since the last letter. At some point I'm going to have to stop agreeing to bits of work for a while, be poor, and just make things. 

BE POOR AND JUST MAKE THINGS.

Working on...

As I mentioned in the last note, I'm one of the judges on the writer-tech bursary applications for the Writing Platform team. It sponsors projects devised by teams of writers and techs and there have been a LOT of applications. I'm up to my ears in ideas, yo. Some of them are really good, too. Winners will be announced this week via, I imagine, writingplatform.com

I've decided to run a 'games and stories' season on The Literary Platform, starting as soon as the first article comes in. Expect lots of good stuff from games makers and playful thinkers of our times (and... perhaps something from you?)

Tim and I have just submitted The Inner Head, our new humour book to be published this Christmas by Snowbooks! It's a sort of spoof new age guidebook, and I think it's one of the best things I've ever worked on.

I'm still working on my talk about the technology concepts of Terminator and Terminator 2 (provisionally 'Terminator: how worried should we be?") It's my first new talk for 2013 and I'll be doing it for Nixon McInnes in Brighton in early April, and Science Brainwaves (British Science Association) in Sheffield later in April. I'm also planning to do something Terminator-related for a short spot at my friend Sarah Angliss's Brighton Fringe show about Protect & Survive Monthly magazine and the domestication of nuclear war, Horlicks and Armageddon.

I won a bursary ticket to Future Everything, the major Manchester conference of nerdy ideas that took place last week, and very interesting it was, too. I'll be writing about some of the things I thought about it all, both the good and the slightly more critical, on The Literary Platform (as soon as I get a minute.) 

Roo and I have some guests lined up and can finally make a "proper" episode of Shift Run Stop again very soon (albeit over Skype.)

Campaigning...

I don't believe in much, as you know, but I believe in this. The Computer History Museum need to secure a fair bit more funding to do justice to their amazing collection in their new surrounds in Cambridge. I blogged about why I think it's important.

Appearances...

And Roo and I were interviewed about Shift Run Stop for the Little Atoms podcast/radio show that went out on Resonance FM a few weeks ago. Our episode is up! It's an hour of us chatting about the origins and thinking behind the podcast, plus collections, #IBMtills, OCD/aspergers, etc etc. Neil Denny was very nice, we had a lovely time, and it was very exciting to be interviewed in a real radio studio. Hear, here.

We also made a new episode of Shift Run Stop with a vaguely Eastery snack theme thanks to Lee, and the sounds of beards.

I demonstrated the Site Gallery's Go Free Range printer kit at the (actually wonderful) Women of Tech City Showcase that was held at Poke London a couple of weeks ago. See, here.

So that's my next two weeks: urgent talk writing, judging, recording, editing and article writing. Hope you are keeping busy, but mostly warm. Don't forget to BE POOR AND MAKE THINGS. 

Let me know what you make.

Leila xxx

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