DoES Liverpool - Co-Working And Maker Community - Co-Working, Hot Desks, Workshop, Studio and Events Community Space

Week 84

Each week we’ll endeavour to publish some details of the interesting things that members of DoES Liverpool have been up to over the past seven days. You can find out a bit more about them in our introductory post.

And remember, if you’re involved with DoES Liverpool at all, let us know what you get up to so we can include it here!

Things of Note

amcewen: Lovely news to wake up to this morning, the @GNLteam kickstarter is now live! http://kck.st/WrFUsX http://goodnightlamp.com/week-43/ #2013CES
defproc: First day as #technician-in-residence @DoESLiverpool today. All up and running bar a quick run on the laser cutter!
<osfameron> the moustache-ring is not a lie #amcewen #weeknotes
<def-proc> #weeknotes revamped the setup for the doorbots to make it easier to add new users
<mcknut> Built another WhereDial ready for some filming next week #weeknotes
amcewen: Busy day at @DoESLiverpool today. #makerday all day, and the inaugural @Freehand_FACT Makers group this afternoon.
mcknut: Thank you so much to the person who put their house address in rather than the IP address of their webcam. Postcard on the way to you! #weeknotes
amcewen: Busy day of filming here at @DoESLiverpool, @notazengarden and I filming some stuff for a @nesta_uk bid with @theHatchtv

Coming Up in the Next Week

Wednesday 16th January 2013, 6:30-8pm

Friends of the Earth

Week 82 & 83

Each week we’ll endeavour to publish some details of the interesting things that members of DoES Liverpool have been up to over the past seven days (or fourteen in this case!). You can find out a bit more about them in our introductory post.

And remember, if you’re involved with DoES Liverpool at all, let us know what you get up to so we can include it here!

Things of Note

< osfameron> ELECTRICITY IS HARD #weeknotes
DoESLiverpool: New year, new you, new startup? We’re open for business so come in and hot desk or workshop and get 2013 off to a flying start! #weeknotes
WhereDial: Last WhereDial built in 2012 is the first one shipped in 2013, also the first to the US! #weeknotes
mcknut: My new year’s resolution may be to always have an iOS app waiting for review. Comedy GPS now, CamViewer tomorrow #weeknotes
< DefProc> *has submitted maker faire application* #weeknotes
< amcewen> Storing things in /the/ cloud is so last year. We’ve now got our own cloud at DoES Liverpool #weeknotes
< amcewen> Experimenting with Openstack on an old spare server #weeknotes
< mcknut> Another version of CamViewer iOS app off for testing and submitted to Apple #weeknotes
< mcknut> Another potential New Year’s resolution? finally read The Art of Electronics #weeknotes
< amcewen> Top tip: You can greatly increase the speed of your 3D prints by making them hollow when you generate the gcode #weeknotes
mcknut: Wow, these people talking about going back to work tomorrow. @DoESLiverpool was unoccupied for *one* day over the “holidays”! #weeknotes
mcknut: Goodbye Basic Sat Nav, hello Comedy GPS! Re-branded one of my apps after a few complaints #weeknotes

Coming Up in the Next Week

Monday 10th January 2013, 6-9pm	Liverpool Sewing Club
Wednesday 9th January 2013, 7-9pm	Maker Night
Saturday 12th January 2013, 10am-5pm	Maker Day

Week 81

And remember, if you’re involved with DoES Liverpool at all, let us know what you get up to so we can include it here!

Things of Note

mcknut successfully turns amcewen’s frown upside down #weeknotes
<osfameron> Steve summarizes the Internet of Things #weeknotes
<amcewen> Had a long overdue organisers meeting http://wiki.doesliverpool.com/DoESMeetingMinutes20121218 #weeknotes
DefProc: Specially commisioned photo booklet set, laser cut and etched @DoESLiverpool was delivered today #weeknotes
WhereDial: Just hand delivered probably the last Xmas WhereDial. Still time for more though if you get your order in quick! #weeknotes
amcewen: Just ordered some new PCBs for @Bubblino, which will help with writing the last chapter of @aBookOfThings too. #weeknotes @DoESLiverpool
OddEssay: Wrapping up my year here in @DoESLiverpool by laser cutting some gift labels for Xmas. #weeknotes pic.twitter.com/5L4NZACp
WhereDial: One final WhereDial this afternoon (Christmas present for Dad, shh.. don’t tell). Thanks @DoESLiverpool for the laser cutter! #weeknotes

Coming Up in the Next Week

Nothing. It’s Christmas! We’re closed (although naturally, key-holding members can still get in when the building is open, as usual). Have a good break, and we’ll see you when we reopen on Wednesday 2nd January 2013.

Week 80

And remember, if you’re involved with DoES Liverpool at all, let us know what you get up to so we can include it here!

Things of Note

<osfameron> revising GCSE trigonometry… #weeknotes
DefProc: Got to put laser cut christmas trees (http://def-proc.co.uk/b/gmupx ) on this week’s @DoESLiverpool #weeknotes
<amcewen> 19 months in, and we finally finish using all the black ABS filament that came with our first 3D printer #weeknotes
mcknut: Considering daily wake up tunes for @DoESLiverpool, today’s was “Jackson 5 – I want you back” #weeknotes
<amcewen> Getting to know the new neighbours slowly. The little dog’s name is Oscar #weeknotes
<mcknut> Time to upgrade numerous blogs to the latest WordPress version (3.5) #weeknotes
<osfameron> Learnt how to solder #weeknotes
<amcewen> An interesting afternoon meeting with Access 2 Finance chatting about DoES Liverpool, NW Business Angels and more #weeknotes
<osfameron> Played with Electric Imp and blogged about it http://book.roomofthings.com/2012/12/14/playing_with_the_electric_imp/ #weeknotes

Coming Up in the Next Week

Monday 17th December 2012, 6-9pm

Liverpool Sewing Club

Week 79

Things of Note

<amcewen> At lunch we invented cosmetic surgery via teleportation #weeknotes
<osfameron> ancient money technology in the office! (Jo is writing a cheque!) #weeknotes
<amcewen> It helps if you plug the correct thing in #weeknotes
<mcknut> Rob Nightingale is taking a permanent desk! He’ll be in the corner of Room 29. #weeknotes
<amcewen> Scraperwiki now have an Internet-connected bell which rings whenever they get a new sale https://twitter.com/zarino/status/275941817143414784/photo/1 #weeknotes
<amcewen> woohoo! Another chapter bites the dust #weeknotes
mcknut: Off to ERDF funding event for “Knowledge Economy Incubators”, I’ve got a big bag for them to put all the money for @DoESLiverpool in #weeknotes
DefProc: @DoESLiverpool #weeknotes Lattice Hinge booklets out and for sale: http://www.deferredprocrastination.co.uk/blog/2012/lattice-hinged-booklets/
mcknut: My priority list this week: Urgent top priority: WhereDial, CamViewer, Annoying Client. Top priority: New Client #prioritisationfail #weeknotes
WhereDial: We’re up for an award! Best #iot project
of the year, some tough competition including @GNLTeam, vote wisely! http://postscapes.com/awards/category/connected-home #weeknotes
DoESLiverpool: #weeknotes MT @katedesilva: this is one of the results of my dabbling in laser cutting #christmas http://twitter.yfrog.com/nulmhngj
DefProc: Laser cut Christmas tree. A half hour project @DoESLiverpool #makerday http://lockerz.com/s/267334917

Coming Up Next Week

Tuesday 11th December 2012, 7-9pm	Breakerfaire
Wednesday 12th December 2012, 7-9pm	Maker Night
Thursday 13th December 2012, 7-9pm	Lean Liverpool

Week 78

Things of Note

<amcewen> Observed at DoES Liverpool: comparing shopping carts and sharing experiences setting up online shopping #weeknotes
@amcewen: Today’s laser experiments at @DoESLiverpool. I for one welcome our felt robot overlords… http://twitpic.com/bh8gzu
@paul_furley: @DoESLiverpool Thanks again for everyone’s input at the fantastic startup weekend. Company now launched and open for business! @CustomCocoa
<mcknut> achievement unlocked: applied for a trademark #weeknotes
@mcknut: @DoESLiverpool after many hours spent laser cutting and soldering in the workshop, I shipped the @WhereDial! #weeknotes
<amcewen> Andy Powell has cleared his desk Bit of a long commute now from Manchester… #weeknotes

Coming Up Next Week

Monday 2nd December 2012, 6-9pm	Liverpool Sewing Club
Saturday 8th December 2012, 10am-5pm	Maker Day

Talking About Ourselves

One of the things we’re not very good at doing here at DoES Liverpool is talking about what the members of the DoES community get up to. If we were looking for excuses we’d claim it was because we’re called Do Epic Sh…, er, Stuff rather than Talk About Epic Stuff, but it would be better if we could find a way to let people know what we’re up to, and what goes on, without it taking too much effort and getting in the way of all the doing.

So, what we’re going to try is publishing weeknotes. These are a bit like the weekly status reports that you might have had to write for your boss if you’re in a boring corporate job, but hopefully ours won’t be as full of reasons why we haven’t quite hit the latest deadline. It’s something that quite a few different people do, and you can find out more over on http://www.weeknotes.com/

To keep the admin overhead to a minimum, we’re going to note anything weeknote-worthy in IRC (#doesliverpool on irc.freenode.net) or on Twitter over the week by tagging it with #weeknotes (and @DoESLiverpool on Twitter). Then at the end of the week, creating the weeknotes will just be a case of searching for everything with that tag, and copying it into a blog post.

So, don’t expect glorious long-winded prose, but do expect at least some hints as to what goes on at DoES Liverpool…

Next Two Weeks at DoES Liverpool

This Friday 12th and Saturday 13th October are BarCamp Liverpool 3! This should be a great and interesting event and all are welcome to sign up. However it will restrict the amount of space we have for workshop and hot desk usage. If you really want to visit then let us know and we’ll try to squeeze you in, but your best option is to take the day off and visit BarCamp

http://barcampliverpool2012-doesblog.eventbrite.com

Next Friday 19th October we’re having a lot of visitors from a local agency coming to use our workshop. They haven’t requested exclusive use but if you have any urgent need to use our equipment then you might be better to visit another day.

More positive news is that to celebrate Ada Lovelace day, recognising women in STEM, business and entrepreneurship we’ll be having a free day next Tuesday 16th October. The day will be free access for everyone so come down for some hot desking or to use our workshop. You don’t even need to bring cake!

Finally, I just wanted to mention that if you haven’t visited in a while you should really come by and see some of the changes we’ve made. Back in July we expanded into another room and moved the workshop equipment through to there. We’ve also just had a new kitchen fitted which is exclusively for our use. These changes have resulted in a much nicer clean & quiet environment for co-working, and a vastly improved dedicated workshop with some new equipment.

We hope to see you soon, and please do tell your friends!

Digital Innovation, a talk at FACT

Last Wednesday I was one of four people asked to give a talk at FACT (the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) about Digital Innovation. Once the talks were over we then had an interesting discussion between the speakers and the audience about some of the issues raised (and more). I was too busy involved in the debate to take notes I’m afraid (and I can’t find any other reports on it online), but I can share my slides. The notes here won’t be exactly what I said, but were my thoughts when preparing the talk and so shouldn’t be too far from the mark…

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(and if you want to hear more, try the original tune it’s sampled from)

Hello, I’ve blatantly stolen the idea of having intro music from a friend of mine, Russell Davies, but I think it’s good to start things with a bit of a flourish. I’ll come back to what the music was a bit later.

I’m Adrian McEwen, I build interesting things with electronics and software and I co-founded something called DoES Liverpool. More on that later too.

Thanks to FACT for asking me along tonight…

I wasn’t sure what to talk about at first, but given the overall theme is “Digital Innovation” I figured I’d have a stab at defining what that might be.

Let’s break it down first…

That’s easy, it’s about computers and stuff. Pretty much everything I do involves computers or electronics or the Internet in some way or other…

That’s the tricky one. Everyone seems to want more of it, as it’s some sort of magical elixir that will save money, make us more competitive, create new businesses and make us “think out of the box”. Which is strange, because people “doing innovation” look like this…

Which looks rather like they’re inside a big box, whereas these guys…

…are definitely outside of their box, and have re-imagined it as a shop. And tomorrow they’ll maybe rebuild it into a spaceship, and then incorporate a bedsheet to make it a lunar base…

I think “innovation” is one of those grown-up business words, that’s used by people because they don’t think they can get away with saying…

…or…

The problem is that in pretending we’re not doing any of those things, we suck all the permission to do any of those things out of ourselves, and end up trapped in a meeting room with a stack of post-it notes until we’ve “imagineered” our way out.

We’re tying to do things a bit differently at DoES Liverpool…

First off, we’re a bit hard to explain…

We hold lots of events there but we’re not really a venue.
We have all sorts of people, with all sorts of skillsets, but we’re not an agency or an artists collective. You can’t “hire” DoES to make or do things for you.

I guess you can say we’re a community of diverse and interesting people (which we’d love you to join) who have a space where most (but not all) of the related activities take place.

We’re…

DoES is full of people who are interested in trying out new things, and seeing where that takes them. We saw some laser-sintering of titanium at Liverpool University’s Engineering Department, and so John McKerrell thought he’d try it out with our laser-cutter and some sugar…

And some of the playing leads into experimenting. We were trying out some RFID technology, and installed it into the door at DoES so you get a welcome tune played when you arrive, and another when you leave. The music at the start of my talk is what gets played when I check into DoES. We’ve now extended the system so that it automatically logs the days that hot-deskers are here, so it makes running the space easier and lets us track stats of how it’s being used.

All sorts of people use DoES – artists, web developers, software engineers, designers… We’ve even got a translator and surveyor and someone who runs a modelling agency. Who knows what conversations and ideas will come about with those sorts of connections…

And there are plenty of groups that call DoES home – GeekUp, Liverpool Sewing Club, Breakerfaire (a computer security meeting), SpecFicLiv (a sci-fi/fantasy writing group), and one of the more regular events is…

Maker Night (and Maker Day). Three times a month anyone can come along and learn more about 3D printing (that’s our 3D printer in the slide), laser-cutting, or electronics (things like Arduino). If you need a making fix more often than that, the workshop is available for anyone working from the space for the rest of the time

We have a number of people using the space to prototype their projects or ideas. I use it for some electronics/Arduino kits I’m developing, John McKerrell has been iterating through versions of his WhereDial location clock with the laser-cutter, and just today artist John O’Shea has been 3D printing scaffold for tissue culture as part of a bio-hacking project.

Lots of members of the space run their own business, so there’s expertise to tap into, and someone to sympathise when you’re having a moan about clients not paying on time… Plus there’s Lean Liverpool, a monthly meeting to learn more about the Lean Startup methodology to running your business, and the Liverpool DoES Startups startup weekends (next one coming up in November)

We’re happy to help you get some work done, whether it’s just hanging out at a desk with your laptop getting wifi and a cup of coffee, or using the workshop to laser-cut your latest project design.

You can get a desk to call your own and use of all the facilities; or have access to come in and use the workshop whenever you like; or just come and hot-desk (or hot-workshop) for a day. If any of that sounds tempting, bring some cake along and you can try us out for your first day for free.

Is any of this going to increase the amount of Digital Innovation in Liverpool? I don’t know, it’s hard to scale or force – all you can do is try to engineer more serendipity into the environment.

At the end of the day it doesn’t really matter, it’s more about encouraging more people to chase exciting and different projects, and to make a living in a more enjoyable way.

The challenge we’re setting is…

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Press Release: Community Co-Working Space, DoES Liverpool, Opens New Dedicated Workshop Area

DoES Liverpool, community workshop and co-working space in central Liverpool, has celebrated its first year of operation by expanding its space and creating a dedicated workshop area. With a 61% increase in floor space DoES has been able to create five specialised areas meaning that users can get the best out of each part of the space and avoid causing disruption for other visitors. DoES Liverpool is giving the public a great opportunity to visit and try out the space during the Grand Opening on Maker Day 11th August 2012.

The workshop now boasts some more traditional woodworking equipment such as a band saw and bench grinder to complement the existing digital fabrication facilities of the MakerBot CupCake 3D printer and LS3040 laser cutter and engraver. Stations for soldering or just general making are available for use during the regular Maker Night and Maker Day events or throughout the week by signing up for a workshop membership or paying for a single day’s use. Storage is included in workshop membership and available for purchase by other visitors. As ever, the first day’s use of the equipment and space is free if you bring along cake to share!

Removing the workshop equipment and much of the storage space from the main room also freed up more space for co-working. A cool new hot-desk hub has been created using an original Gostins dining table, and an existing pod of desks available for permanent members has been expanded. The meeting room now doubles as a comfortable break-out area with a large screen display available for viewing presentations and videos.

Richard Foulkes, Director, propertytranslator recently returned to DoES Liverpool after trying out other serviced offices in Liverpool, he said:

I’ve rented serviced offices from corporate landlords in the past and DoES has always offered a friendlier atmosphere in comparison. The recent improvements in layout and planned new facilities should make the office space an even better working environment going forward and I’m sure I’ll be using it more often.

As a regular visitor to the space, freelancer Joanna Leng offered her thoughts:

I enjoy working out of the DoES Liverpool office one day a week. I get a desk, electricity, wireless network, hot drinks, friendly intelligent conversation and networking all for £8 per day. DoesLiverpool also run lots of clubs and user groups – there is plenty going on. It is very creative.

This week they opened up a new work shop next to the office area. It is light and spacious and now if someone is using the laser cutter or 3D printer I can chat to them but I do not have to hear the machinery. I can also use the laser cutter to make some Xmas presents while I am there. The meeting room allows me to organise meetings here rather than at my home.

Further changes are planned including a newly fitted kitchen and electronic locks which will allow DoES Liverpool to expand its hours of operation beyond the standard work day.

For more information about Maker Day see makernight.co.uk, for more on DoES Liverpool – its services, facilities and prices – visit doesliverpool.com