Category: Blog
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Intentional Things
I was recently asked to write 3 pieces for Kickstarter about building values into maker-led businesses – for the kinds of people launching hardware products on their platform. These pieces follow on from a series of talks Kickstarter and Machines Room hosted in late 2017. The first, on Ethical Electronics, has just been published on the Kickstarter…
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Podcast news
Episode 7 of the Hello Shenzhen series will be the last Looking Sideways episode for a little while. I have a couple of podcast ideas in development, and they’ll be shared here if and when they come to fruition. In the meantime, I’ve started a new weekly podcast called Unreliable Devices, which is tracking my progress…
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Back to school
Big changes afoot in 2018 – I’m going back to school. I’m taking part in this year’s Fab Academy programme at the new Fablab at the University of Brighton. Fab Academy is a 5 month course that teaches students ‘how to make (almost) anything’ using the tools in a fablab.
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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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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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Making the network work
Back in February I was asked to contribute an article to a forthcoming publication documenting the life so far of the Maker Library Network, … a British Council project that connects designers and makers around the world. It facilitates knowledge and skills exchange amongst professionals and encourages public engagement with making. A Maker Library combines three elements…
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Frictionless copying
Two weak signals in one day means something worth noting on the blog: Firstly, this in the Maker Pro newsletter: “And if you can’t win by coloring inside the lines, check out this profile of a pseudonymous hustler who identifies up-and-coming crowdfunding campaigns — and then does whatever it takes to beat them to market. We’ve discussed this moral…
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Making trends, past and future
I spent some time in earlier this year trying to sketch some sort of Venn diagram of my interests with larger trends: within the realm of things that interest me, what the issues that have urgency, which directions are we moving in, what are the forces that I should engage with? This was in large part to…
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Body Augmentation and Prosthetics at Make Shift
I was lucky enough to be invited to chair a panel at the Craft Council’s innovation conference, Make Shift, which took place this November at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. We had a very small amount of time to cover a huge amount of ground with three smart and interesting guests. So…
Andrew Sleigh 