BW )(: SMARTLab visit to Bristol Mon 10 Aug

[Peter Ferne]

Apologies for the cross posting. If you are on the BCC list it's  
because you expressed an interest in a robots workshop a while ago and  
I thought this was closely related. I won't send you any more about  
this unless you ask me to. Or you could just sign up to the  
hackspacebristol list [1].

As some of you know there are plans afoot to set up one or, hopefully,  
two Hacklabs in Bristol. The likely locations are the Bristol Wireless  
lab at Hamilton House and the Arnolfini.

We will be hosting a visit from Toby Borland and Mick Donegan from  
SMARTLab at UEL [2] on Mon 10 Aug.

For those who don't know the SMARTLab provides a public access  
facility, similar to the MIT FabLab programme, but with a strong  
commitment to open source. They have a laser cutter, a RepRap [3] and  
various other bits and pieces.

The idea is for the SMARTLab to come to Bristol and to see Hamilton  
House and the Arnolfini (the two proposed Hacklab venues) and perhaps  
the Pervasive Media Studio too. They will get a chance to meet some of  
the people involved at this end, from Bristol Wireless, Bristol  
Hackspace, Dorkbot, Futurelab, Arnolfini etc. and we will all get a  
chance to hear about the work of SMARTLab.

Following on from this the idea is to explore ways we might  
collaborate. For example we might identify a core group who would be  
commited to running the spaces in Bristol; this group would go up to  
London for a workshop over a couple of days to train them up in the  
use of all the equipment; they could then be the custodians of the  
equipment in Bristol, facilitate public access (and ensure public  
safety) and, in due course, train up more people in Bristol.

The exact agenda is TBD but I'll be firming it up over the next day or  
two. It's likely to start with a brief meeting with the Futurelab  
team, followed by visits to Arnolfini and Hamilton House, in that order.

If you would like to come along please email me off list, or give me a  
call, so that I can get a handle on numbers. Despite the wide  
distribution of this email we aim to keep this meeting relatively  
small and informal, numbers are limited. I will of course report back  
to the list(s) after the event, and there will be plenty of other  
opportunities to find out about what is going on as things develop.
--
Peter Ferne,  +44 (0)7970 942 261,  petef at bristolwireless.net

[1]: http://lists.psand.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hackspacebristol
[2]: http://smartlab.uel.ac.uk/
[3]: http://reprap.org/
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