“How do you eat an elephant?”, goes the African proverb. “One bite at a time.” Like a great many people, I find the Big Society agenda is not really my cup of tea. Still, I am sure there are better ways of making my voice heard than donning my Grandad’s tin hat and declaring full-scale war on Nick Clegg. Saturday’s event at MadLab seemed like a good place to start.
This month’s fantastic Madlab Graphic Novel Group discussed the adaptation of Parker the Hunter, originally adapted from the noir classic crime novel of the same name by Donald E. Westlake.
On Saturday 5th March, Madlab played host to a Shareable Music Night. This rather interesting event was partly an opportunity to investigate and discuss the shareable music scene, and partly an opportunity to share and discover new music. Or, in other words, we broke up our discussion with sound system interludes. I might make this a mandatory feature of any other discussion/presentation I attend in future.
We said geeks talk sexy would be back bigger and better… and it certainly was.
This time we focused on the other half of the population (woman) and the focus paid off greatly.
Girl Geek Afternoon Tea
Title: Girl Geek Afternoon Tea – Robots & Art
Location: MadLab
Description: Girl Geek Dinner has got a little sister – Girl Geek Afternoon Tea!
Start Time: 14:00
Date: 2010-05-23
End Time: 16:30
Cost: £4 for parts, ink, paper… – please bring along on the day!
Girls, book your tickets here.
Girl Geeks, bring along anyone you like! Your friends, sisters, mums, cousins, daughters, colleagues… who might be interested in doing some techy stuff… Even boys can come if you want to bring them as your date!
1 ticket means 1 robot – if you want to work in teams, only 1 person has to get a ticket, just bring the other one along without a ticket!! (We’ve got parts for 20 bots).
In this workshop we’ll build (drum roll) ROBOTS!! Yesss, we’re teaming up with the HacMan boys for a “Ms HacMan” themed Girl Geek Afternoon Tea. We’re going to build so-called BrushBots from random bits and bobs, make them drive around, and probably take over the world at some point. There’s no previous knowledge needed, it’s going to be very basic, so don’t worry if you’ve never built anything like that before. There will be enough people from HacMan around to help out when you’re stuck.
After building the little BrushBots, we’re going to let them drive around on paper sprayed with ink, to create something like this [1]:
Brush Bot Van Gogh
Can I say AWESOME!!
The GGAT workshops are normally free, but since we had to buy parts for the BrushBots, we’re asking for a £4 contribution this time to cover the costs.
£4 contribution for parts (you get to take the brushbot and painting home of course!)
Some old clothes that you don’t mind getting covered in ink
Your favourite mug!
Your favourite biscuits, cupcakes, tea, coffee (we’ll have the basics, but in case you fancy something slightly more interesting…
Your friends, sisters, mums, cousins, daughters, colleagues… who might be interested in doing some techy stuff.
IMPORTANT!!!
We’re going to work with ink & paints, so it’s quite likely to get MESSY. PLEASE: Wear clothes (including shoes) that you don’t mind getting stains on, we’re not responsible for any ink-induced damages on your outfit!
Many thanks again to Madlab for letting us use their space & giant teapot!
The event is completely not-for-profit and there will be only charges for the bots (which you then get to take home) – however, MadLab would be very happy to get a few donations (for the official MadLab donation cat) to keep the space running!
[1] http://artdesignwhatever.com/ArtDesignWhatever/BrushBots.html
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