As usual DoES Liverpool will be running Maker Night tomorrow at the LJMU Art and Design Academy.  So come along to work on your own projects, or just to see what is going on in general be it playing with digital fabrication, hacking electronics, construction art exhibits and just general creative geekery.

We'll be running the usual introduction sessions and hands on guidance for first timers who want to try their hands at the Arduino kit (please bring a laptop if you can).  

We will be there from 6:30pm for a 7:00pm start, finishing around 9:00pm before we move onto a local pub to wrap up the night. 

Directions and more info on http://makernight.com 

Manchester Digital calls for entries for digital excellence by 5 March  

The Big Chip Awards for companies excelling in the use of digital technology are back – and once again are extending their range right across the North of England.

Awards organiser Manchester Digital is inviting companies from all sectors across the North to submit their entries for the 2012 awards. 

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The Scouse WordPress Interest Group is holding an evening of learning and networking at Leaf on Bold . Tuesday 24th January @ 6.30pm

Speakers:

• Dan Donald Reactive web design - designing for context
• Jake Smith WordPress in the wild - megadrive.me
• Lydia Bates Writing for the web
• Chris Hough Creating a theme options panel

Q&A session

Get the answers to any burning questions you have about web design and WordPress.

Tickets

• £5
• £4 for students

This is the first time they've tried to run SWIG as a larger event so head along and have a great time. 

More details : > here 

A 3-time speaker at the Thinking Digital Conference & co-host for the new Sky 1 HD programme 'Gadget Geeks'.

Tom Scott at TEDxLiverpool - Remember the answer is 31. 

About TEDx, x=independently organize event 

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self- organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. 

At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x=independently organized TED event. 

The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* 

What would you like us to write about? Let us know.

Recorded at TEXx Liverpool on 8th July 2009 at John Moores University.

Alexandra is an industrial and interaction designer. She attended the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea where she met the other founders of Tinker.it!. She has been involved in projects for clients such as Nokia, Motorola, Droog design, Thinglink, Jaiku, Blast Radius, fo.am and Blyk bringing creative and strategic leadership to multi-disciplinary teams. She is an active speaker on the next generation of technology-aided product design and heads Tinker.it!'s operations from London.

About TEDx, x=independently organize event 

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self- organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. 

At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x=independently organized TED event. 

The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* 

Adrian asks this provocative question at Barcamp Liverpool

Fans of Harry Potter might be pleased to learn that the Weasley family’s magic clock may soon be on the market. 

Designer John McKerrell is developing the WhereDial at his desk at DoES Liverpool, the communal workshop space he has helped to run since July.

McKerrell’s gadget uses information sent from iPhones and other GPS-ready mobile devices to follow members of a family or other group from home, to the commute, to work and to, of course, mortal peril.

Like many of the projects fostered by DoES, the WhereDial is a hybrid of art and technology.

Working on this principle, DoES has been running ‘Maker Nights’ in partnership with the Liverpool John Moores University’s (LJMU) Open Labs programme since January.

These informal sessions let artists, software designers and electrical engineers meet and exchange creative and entrepreneurial ideas.

“The artists have great ideas and need ways to achieve them with technology, while what the tech people do with it is very discreet,” said Paul Freeman, another DoES founder member.

“We want to marry the technology aspect with the artistic aspect to make really advanced, great-looking things.”

For LJMU’s Andrew Goodwin, the Maker Nights are a way of raising Liverpool’s prospects as a digital and creative hub.

“It’s got great potential,” he said.

“There’s a lot of very good companies – a lot of the time it’s just about bringing those people together.”

Not all the projects support by DoES are quite so whimsical as the WhereDial.

Paul Kinlan, a ‘developer evangelist’ for Google, has made DoES Liverpool the centre of his mission to equip small businesses with free web hosting and e-mail, operating from its premises in the Gostins Building, Hanover Street.

The bargain-basement rates for the rooms on the building’s fourth floor (which is otherwise empty) were welcoming to the DoES crew.

Costs for developers range from a permanent desk at £150 a month, to ‘hot desking’ with wi-fi and mains electricity for £8 per day.

But DoES’s six founders members supervise the space on a voluntary basis.

In the words of John McKerrell: “DoES Liverpool is trying to help people make their hobbies into businesses.”

You can find out more about the WhereDial from it's very own blog at http://blog.mapme.at/wheredial/

Author: Jack from Nerve

Ross Dalziel discusses Open Souce City at Barcamp Liverpool