We’ve made the decision today to postpone the Maker Party planned for Saturday 13th September at Campus North, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
Although there were lots of people interested in the event, the timing proved problematic for potential mentors and attendees alike. We’re going to huddle next week and think about a more suitable time – perhaps in November.
Thanks to those who got in touch about the event and offered their support. 🙂
I’m delighted to announce that we’ve confirmed the date for this year’s Maker Party Newcastle! Building on the success of previous ones held at the Centre for Life, this year we’ll be at Campus North, home of the Ignite100 startup accelerator on Saturday 13th September. Many thanks to Lyndsey Britton and Lauren Summers for their help in making this happen.
Maker Parties are for everyone, but given Ignite100’s links with Code Club, we’ve decided to make it relevant to the new English primary school computing curriculum. Children of all ages will be welcome, but if you’re a teacher – or aged between 7 and 11 – it will be particularly relevant!
We’re looking for mentors to help out with this event. The most important qualities are enthusiasm and a willingness to be a co-learner. Some rudimentary HTML and CSS skills would be a bonus. Extra points for JavaScript!
If you’re based in the North East of England, please do share this widely with your networks. 🙂
Booking travel/accommodation for what my team are calling ‘Badge Camp’. It’s a work week up in the mountains in Maine, USA where ‘yoga’ and ‘sleeping in’ sit alongside ‘strategy discussions’ as official agenda items. Win.
Talking to Robin Raymond, the lead developer of Open Peer about Firecloud.
Discussing aligning with the Web Literacy Standard with Paul Allison. I’ve realised there’s an issue for those without developers: most (all?) of the third party platforms lack the ‘alignment’ field in the latest version of the OBI specification.
Encouraging people to sign up for MozFest. It’s the best decision you’ll make this year.
Sorting out my expenses for June. It was a busy month. 😮
Purchasing the firecloud.co domain name and setting up a blog. It’s trivially easy to do these days, it really is.
Inviting the major contributors to the Web Literacy Standard to ‘half-hour hackfests’. They worked really well and I’m thinking of running some more next week!
Meeting with Carla to discuss what’s left to do with the Web Literacy Standard before the beta launch. Also, plans for some kind of ‘contest’ for people to align with the standard in various ways between MozFest 2013 and MozFest 2014.
Talking with people about integrating with the Open Badges Infrastructure (OBI) as I do every week. 🙂
Taking Friday off to look after my two year-old daughter.
Next week I’ve got meetings but no travel so I’ll be cracking on with getting the Web Literacy Standard ready for the beta launch on July 26th. I’m flying to Maine on Sunday 21st so it needs to be pretty much finalised by close of play next Friday!
