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Shenzhen Special 4 – Violet Su at Chaihuo X.Factory
In China, the term makerspace can mean many different things; some unrecognisable to people used to a European or American use of that word. But Chaihuo X.Factory would be familiar to any maker coming from outside China, with a co-working desk space, machine shop and woodshop, and an enviable selection of tools. Chaihuo is perhaps most…
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Fake brands and free watches
This week in friction, Alexis Madrigal in The Atlantic, The Strange Brands in Your Instagram Feed. He investigates how his social media feeds have become populated with ads for clothes, one of which he takes a punt on, with disappointing results. The story isn’t why is the coat so bad, but how is this a business? And…
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Shenzhen Special 3 – Vicky Xie at SZOIL
In this episode, I speak with Vicky Xie, who’s the global cooperation director of SZOIL (Shenzhen Open Innovation Lab). As well as running a fablab, they help foreign companies plug into the local supply chain, helping them understand how to work with factories, component manufacturers and designers in Shenzhen.
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Shenzhen Special 2 — Christina Zhang from Kittenbot
In the 2nd episode of this special series reporting from Shenzhen, the world centre for electronics manufacturing, I speak with Christina Zhang, the co-founder of Kittenbot. Kittenbot make educational robot kits with motors, sensors and onboard computers, all built using open-source hardware and software. They’re built on the popular Arduino platform, and can be controlled…
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Dynamicland: physical computing in shared space
I wrote a couple of days ago about how I’d like to see more making activity out ‘in the real world’ By which I meant, moving beyond the typical makerspace communities. In the same post, I also mentioned thinking with our hands, and in particular, “how can we use handwork to help people explore or…
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Looking forward to 2018
I’m going to put a few stakes in the ground about interesting things I’d like to work on in 2018, by reflecting on the year just gone.
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Shenzhen Special 1 — Maker Faire
Welcome to the first in a special series of Looking Sideways focusing on maker culture in Shenzhen, the world centre for electronics manufacturing. Over the last 30 years, this city has grown to a population of 15-20 million people, who’ve flocked here to work in factories, and the associated supply chain, or start businesses in design,…
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A winter trip to the Lake District
Early December is one of the best times of year to go to the Lake District (one of the best mountainous regions in the UK). So we finished up a few jobs we needed to complete, and installed a couple more prototype bits of furniture and headed north to make the most of it. The weather…
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2017-12-03: Deadlines
We’re feeling the pressure. We’re going away for 4 days this coming weekend, so we need some basic stuff sorted out in the van. And we’ve hit our 6 month conversion milestone, which means a demanding letter from the insurance company looking for evidence that we’ve converted the van sufficiently from a panel van to…
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Looking Sideways in Shenzhen – Trailer
This is a trailer for a new series of Looking Sideways coming direct from Shenzhen, the centre of the global electronics manufacturing industry. I’ll be interviewing makers to tell their stories, and find out what makes Shenzhen’s Maker culture so special. I hope you’ll join me.
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Andrew Sleigh 