Dublin Maker - Confluence 3

Quick overview of who and what Dublin Maker is about, as well as the MADE programme, past activities and challenges encountered so far with Covid-19.
Vicky took part in the panel afterwards.

Event: Science Gallery's Science Learning Webinar: Equity, Access & Coronavirus
Links:
- https://dublin.sciencegallery.com/news/confluence
- https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/science-learning-webinar-equity-access-coronavirus-tickets-113107882722

Dublin Maker Links
- http://dublinmaker.ie
- https://twitter.com/dublinmaker
- https://instagram.com/dublinmaker
- https://facebook.com/dublinmaker
- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGrfQgjDsIZqUuXl4nanjpg
- https://dublinmaker.buzzsprout.com (Podcast and available platforms to listen to it)

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NOTES FOR SLIDES
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Slide 2: I’m Vicky, and I’m the Maker Advocate on the Dublin Maker team.
Outside of Dublin Maker, I’m involved with a few not-for-profit organisations running tech and games events and I also advocate diversity in tech with organisations such as Coding Grace, PyLadies Dublin, Women Who Code Dublin and GameCraft (to name a few).

Slide 3: For those who don’t know, Dublin Maker is an annual Maker festival that has been running from 2012. It’s family-friendly, and free. What’s more, it’s held in the park bringing along a carnival atmosphere of fun. This festival brings together anyone who’s interested in showcasing their projects and skills from traditional crafts like wood-turning, knitting right up to hi-tech such as laser cutting, 3D printing and engaging the general public on areas of STEAM through Making.

Slide 4: David McKeown (Co-founder of Dublin Maker, Assistant Professor UCD, EIRSAT-1, Science Hackday)

Slide 5: Laura Tobin (Consultant, Researcher and Science Communicator)

Slide 6: Jeffrey Roe (Telclic General Manager, TOG Hackerspace CEO & Engineers Ireland council)

Slide 7: Tomas Ward (Co-founder of Dublin Maker, Professor at DCU)

Slide 9: Let's step back a minute...

Slide 10: What is a Maker?
A maker is someone who creates something with their hands, takes things apart, up cycling, recycling and more. This includes hobbyists, educators, libraries, museums, small and big companies, artists, crafters, costume makers, and anyone interested and curious about making. For Dublin Maker, this is also an opportunity to engage the public on how creativity in culture of Making promote the areas of Science, Technology, Engineer, Arts and Maths.

Slide 11: My role is part of an ongoing program (this is year 2) funded by SFI Discovery Programme called MADE, which stands for Maker Advocacy in Dublin for Everyone. And part of this was hiring a full time Maker Advocate (in comes me). It’s part of my job to
- connect with the fragmented Maker community
- promote the Maker culture
- help others and ourselves make activities and resources accessible to minority and disadvantages communities
- help the team run maker-related events like Science Hack Day as well as their biggest flagship event, the Dublin Maker festival.

Slide 12: Community engagement - Dublin City Council Public Libraries
- advised on kitting out maker space for Coolock library (launched beginning of this year)
- Advised on kitting out maker van and was at Dublin maker 2019

Slide 13: Community engagement - DCC Culture Company
- advised on kitting out their community maker space
- Connecting them to local organisations in its programming
- Met up with the local community about what they want to use out of the space
- Launched earlier this year just before covid-19 - closed temporarily at the moment

Slide 14 - Community engagement:
- Science Hack Day
- Dublin Startup Week - Maker Monday with Maker Van out back and talks

Slide 15 - More engagements with different communities:
- Poster Session at SCI:COMM
- CHAT - Spoke at Assistive Technology event
- Paper circuits and promoting Maker culture at FingalCoCo stand at BT Young Scientist
- Creative retreat organised by Makers and educators (Roisin Markham for inviting me)

Slide 16: Overwhelmed with everyone putting activities online on top of COVID-19 government and health advice
Didn’t want to make for making sake of putting something online, takes the joy out of making, although there’s administrative work to be done, the engagement with the community was a challenge. Initial tack was share info with the community via our social media platforms, show what other makers are doing and share that and do shout outs. Trying to push away that isolation.

Slide 17: I did have some maker projects from completing a Makerfaire project I was going to bring to Berlin Makerfaire before it cancelled in April. Created a zine accompany that project (that was prompted by one of Science Gallery’s newsletters on zine workshop), I wanted to make my own reusable masks and I had no inkling how to and learnt how to use a sewing machine and picked up a new handy skill. The other one was a timer for washing your hands for 20secs. Blogged these projects and shared with Maker community.

Slide 18: With many events going remote, we are thinking how we can connect with other Makers, and since we are not having Dublin Maker this year, postponed to summer 2021, why not bring our Dublin Makers to folks virtually via podcasting.
And that’s how we decided to create our first series chatting to Crafty Nathan Creations (costume maker) to National Print Museum, to Techspace and Kate from Maker Create Innovate.
It was definitely hitting the floor running as I’ve never released podcasts before, I do have some ideas on editing but logistics on podcast workflow was all new. And it was enjoyable to talk to other Makers and it’s triggered excitement on wanting to make stuff, and refreshing talking to folks outside of home. :-)