A hacker space is a place where people (mainly geeks) can come and use the facilities on offer to collaborate, hack and learn. Usually it's technology based, so there is wifi, computers, and electronics gear but this is not the limit of what could go on. Small grass-roots organisations could use the meeting rooms, people could learn to sew or even build machines and art there. Anything could happen, it just needs a place to nucleate all the talent of the city.
It all started off with a suggestion, from Jonty Wareing, to start a Hacker Space in London on the Open Rights Group Discuss mailing list. Almost immediately a Google mailing list was set up, and more people started getting interested. There are now 80 members of the mailing list and have a meeting planned in a few weeks date to be confirmed. The London crew have since gone even further and have set up a limited company called the Hackerspace Foundation!
The London Hacker space discussion then spawned an offshoot here in Birmingham, with Antonio Roberts setting up another mailing list to try and start a hacker space in Birmingham! Our mailing list is currently at a membership of 25 people, not too shabby for about 3 days! But we need more people willing to get involved, to build momentum, to build a place for us to hack and collaborate in.
If you are interested please join the Google Mailing list for your area:
Say hello and join in the discussions!
For the Birmimgham group a meet-o-matic has been set up, so we can organise a date to meet. Visit meet-o-matic and put in the dates you are available. I will be closing the meet-o-matic on Thursday and announcing the best date for the meeting. The meeting is likely to be held at The Bull Inn (Birmimgham City Centre)(map) It has free wifi, good beer and a nice atmosphere.
Got all that? Good! Now blog, twitter and tell people, friends, family, artists and enemies. As we said we need people to do this, people willing to get their hands dirty.
Goodbye, and see you on the other side!
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Now that Birmingham is complete, I did a video party render of all the GPS tracks I could get a hold of for the Birmingham area.
Here is the result
This is the slow version, a higher (time) resolution version is available from here.
This video represents an enormous amount of raw data 398MB. That is also just the GPS data. It doesn't show the ways and points-of-interest associated with them, which is what gets rendered by OSM and is viewable on the website.
Hope you like the video.
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I know its been a while, but all the recordings that were made on the first day of PyCon UK 2007 are available on the PyCon UK Wiki.
Get them while their hot.
The Sunday recordings are knocking around somewhere. When I find them I shall get them done as soon as possible.
Until then enjoy!
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Software Freedom Day is a global, grassroots effort to educate the public about the importance of software freedom and the virtues and availability of Free and Open Source Software. Local teams from all over the world organise events on the third Saturday in September. The most recent event involved over 200 teams from all over the world.
From http://softwarefreedomday.org/
I have registered a group for the Birmimgham, UK area. Because I registered before the 31st July I was able to get some free CD's, stickers and T-shirts to help with promoting the day.
I hope to get a group of like minded individuals together, to go out on Saturday 15th September, in a prominent spot in Birmingham City Centre, to give away free CD's, stickers and talk about Free and Open Source software.
I have created a wiki page on the SFD's website, linky. I have never organised anything like this before, so any and all help is gratefully needed.
If you have ideas, email me with them or post them on the wiki.
Thanks, and see you on the 15th September.
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I just sent off the sponsorship money that I raised from doing the Great Midlands Fun Run.
The grand total was £63. Not a lot, but I'm sure Amnesty International won't mind the extra cash.
I hope to do it again next year, but make more of an effort to raise money. Seeing as all I did this year was put up the sponsorship form in the work kitchen.
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