Month: April 2018

Week 360 – Taking Liverpool Tech to Washington

30th April 2018
"Week 360 – Taking Liverpool Tech to Washington"

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

Coming Up in the Next Week

Monday 30 April, 5:45pm-8:00pm Wearables Group
Wednesday 02 May, 7:00pm-9:00pm Liverpool Linux User Group
Thursday 03 May, 6:30pm-9:00pm Maker Night

The Big Move

Did you hear, we’ve moved to The Tapestry, just off London Road. We’re open for business, but while we’re settling in we’re including a brief update on how things are going each week.

In the past week we’ve got the RFID systems installed on the doors, so it’s back to fob access for everyone who has a fob.  That includes the shutter at the main entrance, so those of you with out-of-hours access will be able to get in then too.

Some of the smaller things are starting to get ticked off too: the Ultimakers are looking good in their newly repurposed server cabinet; we’ve got hot water to the sinks in the kitchen; and have worked out things for waste disposal.

More of the networking is done, and the heating/air-con in the main room is almost finished.

Outside of the space, the entrance and hallway has had some tidying up, and the surrounding area is looking much more colourful with all manner of graffiti art appearing thanks to Contrast Mural Fest.  Well worth a visit to see that, and pop in to see us too if you do!

If you want to help out, check the DoES Move The Tapestry and DoES Move – Settling In labels on the Somebody Should issue list, or get in touch.

Somebody Should

The DoES Liverpool to-do list is stored in the issues of our Somebody Should repository on github. Head over there if there’s something you’d like to report, or if you want to help out fixing things.

See all the issues…

Issue counts: 241 open, 536 closed

3 new issues:

Featured issue: We should have some waterproof flooring in the kitchen area. Can we move this on or close it?

8 issues closed:

Thanks magman2112, johnmckerrell, goatchurchprime!

Community Content

DoES exists to support the community that uses DoES. If you use DoES, then you are part of that community. If you would like to publicise something related to DoES, you can email hello@doesliverpool.com with the formatted content for us to use as a new blog post. Tell us what you’re up to, and we’ll show the world what epic stuff happens at DoES!

Week 359 – Lots of progress with the fit out, and a new CNC

24th April 2018
  • weeknotes
  • Weeknotes
  • Comments Off on Week 359 – Lots of progress with the fit out, and a new CNC
"Week 359 – Lots of progress with the fit out, and a new CNC"

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

Coming Up in the Next Week

Monday 23 April, 7:00pm-9:00pm Wearables Group
Thursday 26 April, 6:30pm-9:00pm Maker Night
Saturday 28 April, 12:00am-Monday 30 April, 11:59pm MakerFaire UK 2018

The Big Move

Did you hear, we’ve moved to The Tapestry, just off London Road. We’re open for business, but while we’re settling in we’re including a brief update on how things are going each week.

As you can see from some of our tweets, the main space is beginning to look really good: the floor has been scrubbed and varnished, cabinets, work surfaces and desks have been installed, and a lot of the equipment is back in working order. Plywood flooring and painting in the metal workshop have now been completed, and we’ll be moving cabinets and CNC machines in there over the next couple of days.

Next target is Room 29 (the “quiet” room for coworking and permanent deskers).  Again we’re aiming to varnish the floor, but fortunately it doesn’t have the same layers of paint as in the main space, so shouldn’t take as long.

If you want to help out, check the DoES Move The Tapestry and DoES Move – Settling In labels on the Somebody Should issue list, or get in touch. All help appreciated and thanks to everyone for their work in getting us this far.

Somebody Should

The DoES Liverpool to-do list is stored in the issues of our Somebody Should repository on github. Head over there if there’s something you’d like to report, or if you want to help out fixing things.

See all the issues…

Issue counts: 246 open, 528 closed

14 new issues:

Featured issue: Improve workshop accessibility. Can we move this on or close it?

Featured issue: Paint all the plasterboard walls white. Can we move this on or close it?

Featured issue: Flooring in the metal workshop. Can we move this on or close it?

Featured issue: Flooring for the quiet coworking room (Room 29). Can we move this on or close it?

Featured issue: Flooring in the main room. Can we move this on or close it?

12 issues closed:

Thanks johnmckerrell, ajlennon, magman2112, jackie1050, zarino!

Community Content

DoES exists to support the community that uses DoES. If you use DoES, then you are part of that community. If you would like to publicise something related to DoES, you can email hello@doesliverpool.com with the formatted content for us to use as a new blog post. Tell us what you’re up to, and we’ll show the world what epic stuff happens at DoES!

Week 358 – Final Push on our Crowdfunder!

16th April 2018
"Week 358 – Final Push on our Crowdfunder!"

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

Coming Up in the Next Week

Wednesday 18 April, 6:30pm-8:00pm Friends of the Earth
Thursday 19 April, 1:00pm-2:00pm Community Meeting
Thursday 19 April, 6:30pm-9:00pm Maker Night

The Big Move

Did you hear, we’ve moved to The Tapestry, just off London Road. We’re open for business, but while we’re settling in we’re including a brief update on how things are going each week.

As you’ll have seen above, we’ve got one room completely finished and everything moved into it!

Things are pretty close with lots of the other rooms too – the kitchen is just waiting for some edging strip on the floor and electricity to be run to the water heater.  The metal workshop has plywood flooring down, that needs the joins smoothing over and then painting, along with another coat on the walls.  The floor in the  main room is tantalizingly close to being done, thanks to lots of scrubbing and scraping from the community.  Once the final quarter has been varnished, the assembling desks and laying out kit can commence!

We’ve almost got heating in the main room now – that should happen over the next couple of days (handily coinciding with the main room becoming ready), so the co-working will switch into that side (and some of the actual co-working space) to let them fit the heating in the events space and Room 29.

So things are moving on to building furniture and unpacking as well as scrubbing floors!  Although there are floors in other rooms that still need some TLC, if that’s what you prefer to help with…  something for everyone!

If you want to help out, check the DoES Move The Tapestry and DoES Move – Settling In labels on the Somebody Should issue list, or get in touch.  We can definitely use whatever time you can spare!

Our Crowdfunder Campaign

To help pay for all the costs of the move we’re running a Crowdfunder campaign.  We need your money and, more importantly, your help in getting word out about it.

We’re into the final hours of the campaign, and sooooo close to hitting the target.  One final push and we can see whether we can get beyond the stretch goal even!

Tell everyone to visit http://bit.ly/DoEpicFunding and dig deep!

Somebody Should

The DoES Liverpool to-do list is stored in the issues of our Somebody Should repository on github. Head over there if there’s something you’d like to report, or if you want to help out fixing things.

See all the issues…

Issue counts: 244 open, 516 closed

9 new issues:

Featured issue: Confirm what’s going in the small, open workshop “room” to the left as you enter the Tapestry space. Can we move this on or close it?

10 issues closed:

Thanks KarlDunkerley, amcewen, magman2112, johnmckerrell, zarino!

Community Content

DoES exists to support the community that uses DoES. If you use DoES, then you are part of that community. If you would like to publicise something related to DoES, you can email hello@doesliverpool.com with the formatted content for us to use as a new blog post. Tell us what you’re up to, and we’ll show the world what epic stuff happens at DoES!

Week 357 – Our First Week in the Tapestry

9th April 2018
"Week 357 – Our First Week in the Tapestry"

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

Coming Up in the Next Week

Monday 9 April, 7:00pm-9:00pm IoT Liverpool: Andy Stanford-Clark – “Innovation Begins at Home”
Tuesday 10 April, 7:00pm-9:00pm Wearables Group
Thursday 12 April, 9:00am-6:00pm Jelly Liverpool
Thursday 12 April, 6:30pm-9:00pm Maker Night
Saturday 14 April, 10:00am-5:00pm Maker Day

The Big Move

Did you hear, we’ve moved to The Tapestry, just off London Road. We’re open for business, but while we’re settling in we’re including a brief update on how things are going each week.

This week things have moved on lots!  The wood and laser-cutting workshop is completely finished and looking awesome.

The kitchen has had vinyl  flooring fitted and also been plumbed in and units fitted, although we’re waiting for the electrician to run a feed to the water heater before we’ll have hot water.

There’s been lots of tidying and cleaning in the events room, which has been events room, office and kitchen for the past week, so it’s nice to be starting to expand out from that into the rest of the space.

In the main room, there’s been lots of work done on the floor.  The floors in the space are the biggest remaining task (more on that in a moment) and it’s been great to see so many people from the community pitching in to help with that (and everything else).

There’s plywood down over the most uneven section of floor, and this week that will be getting carpeted.  For the rest of the floor in the main room, we’ve been scrubbing (most of that is done now) and scraping off the old white paint, before giving it all a coat of varnish.  We’re close to having half of it varnished now, and once that’s done it’ll be a huge leap forwards in the space being fully operational.

People are working on making the space great most evenings and over the weekends, and all help is gratefully received.  Similarly if you can spare time during weekdays, we’re open for co-working and workshop users anyway and you’re welcome to do some decorating alongside them.

If you want to help out, check the DoES Move The Tapestry and DoES Move – Settling In labels on the Somebody Should issue list, or get in touch.

Our Crowdfunder Campaign

To help pay for all the costs of the move we’re running a Crowdfunder campaign.  We need your money and, more importantly, your help in getting word out about it.

The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed an excellent development in this at the end of last week…

WE HIT OUR TARGET!!!!  Thanks everyone!

Never one to rest on our laurels (and partly due to our discoveries about the flooring that we mentioned earlier), we’ve added a stretch target.

With just over a week to go, we’re extending our stretch target to a total of £7250.

This extra money will be spent on making sure our new home is at its best for all of our visitors. More specifically, the flooring of the new space needs some TLC, having withstood many years of wear and tear, paint and dust. So we’re looking for money to spend on:

  • Carpeting or lino where current flooring is not fit for use: £1100
  • Some black-out blinds for our new events space so that our projector can be used at all times of the day: £1150

Spread the good news and encourage your friends to help us reach the new target.  If you’ve been holding off because there was plenty of time to pledge, now would be a good time to dust off your credit card 🙂

Please share it with people you know, email them, tweet about it, post on Facebook or Instagram… it all helps, even if you think you don’t know many people, you’ll know different people.  Plus if you tag the DoES Liverpool accounts in any of your social media posts it lets DoES and others share your post too, so giving us more impact than if you just copy one of the DoES posts.

So, get as many people as possible too visit http://bit.ly/DoEpicFunding!

Somebody Should

The DoES Liverpool to-do list is stored in the issues of our Somebody Should repository on github. Head over there if there’s something you’d like to report, or if you want to help out fixing things.

See all the issues…

Issue counts: 243 open, 508 closed

20 new issues:

Featured issue: Flooring for the events room. Can we move this on or close it?

6 issues closed:

Thanks cheapjack, amcewen, johnmckerrell!

Community Content

DoES exists to support the community that uses DoES. If you use DoES, then you are part of that community. If you would like to publicise something related to DoES, you can email hello@doesliverpool.com with the formatted content for us to use as a new blog post. Tell us what you’re up to, and we’ll show the world what epic stuff happens at DoES!

Week 356 – Taking a Laser-cutter For a Walk

3rd April 2018
"Week 356 – Taking a Laser-cutter For a Walk"

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

Coming Up in the Next Week

Wednesday 04 April, 7:00pm-9:00pm Liverpool Linux User Group
Thursday 05 April, 6:30pm-9:00pm Maker Night

The Big Move

So, this weekend was the Big Move itself!  Thanks everyone who helped clean, pack, carry… and everything else over the past few days!  Everything is now out of Gostins and over at the Tapestry, and as you’ll have seen we are now officially up and running in the new space.

We have plenty still to do before the move is all finished off, so any and all help still most welcome.

The painting is almost all done.  The flooring and then laying things out are the big remaining tasks.  The kitchen should be plumbed in this week, and the worst of the flooring covered in plywood and carpet (and vinyl in the kitchen).

If you want to help out, check the DoES Move The Tapestry and DoES Move  – Settling In labels on the Somebody Should issue list, or get in touch.

Our Crowdfunder Campaign

To help pay for all the costs of the move we’re running a Crowdfunder campaign.  We need your money and, more importantly, your help in getting word out about it.

The campaign is going really well!  We’re at 90% of our target with two weeks left to run!!!  However, there’s nothing to stop us going over our target and making the space even better.  In fact, there have been some unexpected extra costs, or at least, the opportunity for extra costs, if we want to make the floors top notch.  So, we’re working on some stretch goals – keep an eye out for announcements on them as we get closer to our original target.

Please share it with people you know, email them, tweet about it, post on Facebook or Instagram… it all helps, even if you think you don’t know many people, you’ll know different people.  Plus if you tag the DoES Liverpool accounts in any of your social media posts it lets DoES and others share your post too, so giving us more impact than if you just copy one of the DoES posts.

So, get as many people as possible too visit http://bit.ly/DoEpicFunding!

Somebody Should

The DoES Liverpool to-do list is stored in the issues of our Somebody Should repository on github. Head over there if there’s something you’d like to report, or if you want to help out fixing things.

See all the issues…

Issue counts: 231 open, 500 closed

12 new issues:

Featured issue: do a major service on Gerald. Can we move this on or close it?

2 issues closed:

Thanks johnmckerrell, amcewen!

Community Content

DoES exists to support the community that uses DoES. If you use DoES, then you are part of that community. If you would like to publicise something related to DoES, you can email hello@doesliverpool.com with the formatted content for us to use as a new blog post. Tell us what you’re up to, and we’ll show the world what epic stuff happens at DoES!

DoES Liverpool Has Moved

2nd April 2018
"DoES Liverpool Has Moved"

 

DoES Liverpool has now officially moved to The Tapestry building.  When we re-open following the Easter holiday, on Tuesday 3rd April 2018, our new address will be:

DoES Liverpool
1st Floor
The Tapestry
68 – 76 Kempston Street
Liverpool L3 8HL

Thank you so much to everyone who has helped so far. There’s still plenty of cleaning and arranging to be done but if you don’t mind a bit of dishevelment then you’re welcome to come along and take a look. Our internet connection is active and the coffee will be brewing so you should be able to get some work done, although there’s a decent chance someone might offer you a paintbrush or mop!

This does mean that from this point our new pricing scheme is in action, as mentioned previously that is as follows:

Description Price Member Price
Single Day
(Workshop* or Desk)		 £12/day £10/day
Out of Hours Workshop £35/month £25/month
Monthly Workshop £65/month £50/month
Flexidesk £80/month £70/month
Monthly desk £180/month £165/month
Registered Address/Mailbox £99/year £79/year
Storage per cubic feet per month £3 £3

* – Gerald surcharge of £2/usage still applies

If you are interested in receiving the discounts mentioned above, or simply supporting our efforts, this page will show you how to become a member.

Any hot desk days you’ve previously bought are still valid in the new venue. If you have a permanent desk then we will work with you to determine where your new desk location will be. If you have monthly workshop membership then your storage box has been transferred and your membership continues in the new location.

If you have a registered address with us, please now update any records you have to use the following address:

Your Company
c/o DoES Liverpool
The Tapestry
68 – 76 Kempston Street
Liverpool L3 8HL

For the time being we will still be able to receive post at the Gostins Building but this will only be available for the next few months so we advise that you update your records as soon as possible.

As mentioned there’s still much to do so we don’t yet have glossy photos of our finished space, but below should give you a taster, together with the last moments in Gostins!

End. Of. An. Era. Goodbye Gostins, it’s been a fun 7 years. #weeknotes

A post shared by DoES Liverpool (@doesliverpool) on

APRIL FOOLS: UK Government Announces First Multi-million Pound Investment in UK Makerspace

1st April 2018
  • john
  • Co-Working
  • Comments Off on APRIL FOOLS: UK Government Announces First Multi-million Pound Investment in UK Makerspace
"APRIL FOOLS: UK Government Announces First Multi-million Pound Investment in UK Makerspace"

Make sure you read to the end to find out full details of DoES Liverpool’s funding efforts, or TL;DR here: http://bit.ly/DoEpicFunding

Chancellor David Lidington today put in place the final building blocks of his “Northern powerhouse” when he announced the UK’s first Maker Enterprise Zone would be here in Liverpool.

The Government is putting £5m towards the DoES Liverpool move project – a collaboration between DoES Liverpool, The Tapestry and The Fabric District

DoES Liverpool will house and support new high-tech businesses around “sensor technologies”. It will also support new and existing businesses doing UX testing, public transit, wearable technology, home made 3D printed prosthetics, spoken language translation, social enterprise support, and basically any small business that needs their support. I mean, why limit yourself! 

Sensors are the crucial link between technological devices and the world around them, which is also incredibly important.  Capturing data on a whole host of areas such as temperature, humidity and pressure is really good, but then what do you do with that data? You interpret it, you present it, and you make sure people can understand it.

They can be used in everything from home security systems to medical technology and high-value manufacturing, don’t you know.

DoES Liverpool will help inventions go from the lab to the factory floor even faster, and act as a shop  window for foreign investment into Merseyside’s high tech start ups, as it has done for the last seven years


Mr Lidington told the ECHO: “The stuff being developed here is absolutely cutting edge.

It is better than anything else happening anywhere in the world, well apart from every other maker space. What’s the point in being ridiculously competitive and claiming to be the best when you can’t do it without the support of similar people around the world.

“We are all going to use the technologies being developed here and we are going to be able to say they were made in Liverpool, with massive support from the maker community around the world”

Mr Lidington is allocating £10.4m to upgrade the BT broadband provision in the centre of Liverpool, massively increasing the speeds available. A second 9600bps modem will sit alongside the existing 2400bps modem to provide speeds not seen anywhere else in the world, since 1991. Fortunately IX Liverpool and Baltic Broadband have independently installed a 10Gbps pipe which is available for use by people who actually want modern internet speeds.

Mr Lidington added: “I said I wanted to create a Northern powerhouse. You can link great cities like Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds together and create a real economic powerhouse.

“Alternatively you could pay people who have no idea about these things hundreds of thousands to build a big overpriced building that’s not fit for purpose, but who’d do that eh?!”

The Chancellor also denied Liverpool was being left out of the proposed high speed rail projects, even though it was.

However, Mr Lidington insisted the increased capacity would benefit the whole of the North West.

He said: “Liverpool is very much on the map. Not the one we have in Whitehall, but it seems to be on this one you just handed me. It says OpenStreetMap, what’s that? I’m confused, I’m sure we told Ordnance Survey to remove Liverpool back in the 80s”

“The geographical area isn’t that different to Greater London but they are separate cities. One is called Liverpool and the other is called London. Hold on did I just say I was funding Liverpool, no.. wait.. that can’t be right, who crossed out London and wrote Liverpool. Did I sign that?! Someone call the bank and stop that cheque!”

Provost Professor Stephen Holloway, who led the bid from the University of Liverpool, said:  “Creating a new space where ideas from our sensor research laboratories can be transformed  into new start-ups is a very exciting prospect for both universities and provides great opportunities them to skim the profits made by anyone that even walks past our buildings. We definitely thought we should have got the funding even though DoES Liverpool already did all this stuff on a shoestring budget.”

And Professor Robin Leatherbarrow,  who led the bid for JMU added: “This is a tremendous success for Liverpool and a superb example of how our two universities can work together in an area where we each have considerable complementary strengths. Wait, I thought we won the money?!”


ONLY JOKING! Of course DoES Liverpool hasn’t been awarded millions in funding, and we’re definitely not bitter. We do currently have a funding drive going to help pay for our move to our amazing new space in the Tapestry building. After seven years running and helping new high-tech (and low-tech) businesses get started we’re looking forward to the next seven years and hope we can rely on your help to get us there! Find out more about that here, and tell your friends!
https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/does-liverpool
(And apologies to Tony McDonough for ripping apart his actually quite reasonable and well written article I found here: https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/business/liverpools-15m-sensor-city-best-7365286, also partly inspired by this article extolling the virtues of makerspaces: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/28/britain-ideas-factory-uk-industry-creators-economy)
Scroll to top