Episode: 2606
Title: HPR2606: Liverpool Makefest 2018 - interview with Dan Lynch
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2606/hpr2606.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 06:28:04

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This is an HBR episode 2666 entitled, Limitool Makefast 2018, Intermew in Dutch, and in part
on the series, Intermew.
It is posted on a June AKA Tony H1212, and in about 9 minutes long, and Karim a clean
flag.
The summary is, This is an Intermew in Dutch, one on this year's Makefast Organism.
This episode of HBR is brought to you by archive.org.
At Universal Access to All Knowledge, by heading over to archive.org forward slash donate.
So this is Tony Hughes for Hackabubbit Radio, and I've got with me, I would say, podcast
royalty.
Wow.
Hiya, how you doing?
Thanks to beer.
I'm Dan.
Danny's formerly the presenter of Linux Outlaws, if you don't know.
And the current presenter of Floss Weekly, on the Twitter network quite often.
You're back doing that, then?
Yeah, so I'm doing that again, it's, so we have a panel of hosts, so actually as I said
that, I haven't been on it for about six weeks, but every kind of few weeks I'll do an
episode.
So what happens happen is there's a panel of about six to eight co-hosts, and it depends
on availability, forgetting and pause, no, depends on availability, and stuff like that.
But yeah, I'm still doing it, yes, so we're doing some interesting stuff on there as
well.
That's great, I'm not listening to a edition of Floss Weekly for ages.
Yeah.
Have a listen, it's really good.
So the other thing since we're at Makefast, Liverpool Makefast, is that I've been doing interviews
recently with some of the makers that would come in here today as a podcast in the build
up to it, so the last ten weeks or so I've done one a week, little half hour shows called
Meet the Makers, and that's, if you go to LiverpoolMakefast.org, there's a big podcast link
or you can just Google for search for Liverpool Makefast Podcast, and there's ten half hour
episodes on there at the minute, so it'll probably wind down after this, we'll do a wrap-up
one, but we hope to might do it as a season, in like a season's thing, so we'll have a season
for each Makefast, and maybe that'll lead into other things, you don't know, I don't know.
That's really cool.
You're one of the organisers of Makefast, do you want to tell us a little bit about how
this got going?
I know it's been going for a number of years now.
Yeah, it has, so the first, so it started in 2015, and there were three original founders,
I wasn't one of them, but sorry, my radio's going off, yeah, so LiverpoolMakefast started
back in 2015, there were three original founders of the event, of which I'm not actually
one, but I was involved then with Les Pounder, you may well be familiar with, I know you're
a very familiar intern.
It's just the organisers.
Yeah, so we helped out with the crew, and we ran a lot of the kind of stuff on the
day, we helped, you know, keep it going, but it was originally started when it was a
lady called Denise Jones, who works for the library, she started wanting to do more
kind of arts and creative stuff in the library, and she did Lantern, Chinese Lantern
making workshops, got people in to do that, and then while that was going on, the other
two founders, mythic founders of the event, Mark and Caroline, they were both teachers,
still both teachers, and they came in one day and saw this and talked to Denise and said,
no, we want to run a festival about making stuff, and originally it was going to be in
one room in the library, and it very quickly took over almost every floor that first year,
and it's now, it's now in its fourth year, as I said, we get about 2,000 people usually
coming through, so it's pretty busy, and it's a big, big venue right in the middle of
Liverpool, so lovely venue, and there's so much stuff to do that, you know, we get so
many cool people coming along, the makers seem to enjoy coming along, and yeah, it's
good, it's been an effort to get it together at times, so this year I've been more involved,
I've been one of the main organizers, and so when I'm not standing out in the car park
telling people, I'm doing stuff like social media, when I get round to it, I've been
doing mostly, I've done the podcast, as I mentioned, and bits of logistics and stuff,
and there's a team of about four of us at the minute who organized, and then we've got
brilliant volunteers who help out as well.
So I'll put a link to the MakeFest website and access to those podcasts in the show
notes.
I've been interviewing some of the makers today, and everyone seems really enthused, these
people from all over the country, and from abroad, here today.
There's amazing stuff going on, I mean, some people come from all over the country, we've
had some come from America, who actually were originally from Liverpool, we've come
back from America and Canada, we've got at the moment right now, as I'm talking to
you, up on the fourth floor, there's a guy called Peter who's come over from Essen in Germany,
he works, he wants to set up makerspaces, makerspaces in a library in Essen, so he contacted
us a few months ago and said he'd like to come over, and again, round of applause, he'd
like to come over and film the event, essentially, and stream it live to the library in Essen to
show them that it was a real thing, and it was how big it was, and it could work for
them as well.
So he is doing that right now, but he's also since got another friend of his in, I think
it's Shenzhen in China, I may have got that area wrong, but anyway, it's definitely in
China, big place, and they're also linked as well, so they're linking the three libraries
together today with video streams, and he's doing kind of a live video show, and it
seems to be going really well, so that's really nice that we can kind of spread out a bit
beyond, well, not just beyond Liverpool, but also even beyond the country, who knows what's
next, the galaxy, I don't know, makefest Mars will be, or Mars makefest, I suppose it
would be, would be good.
That would be cool.
Yeah, well, we've actually got someone showing these rockets that he sends up, so maybe
we could be.
He could, although the only thing worries me is we have trouble getting the Wi-Fi to work
in the libraries in Liverpool, so how's it going to work on Mars?
Probably better.
Probably better.
Yeah, that's a problem.
Yeah, so the reason you can hear the clapping as well, which you might have heard in the
background there, which keeps going, keeps happening, is there's also this year for
the first time, we're putting like a mini conference into the event, so would they comment
at the cosy conference, I believe, and they're doing five minute talks, so if anyone's
familiar with Ignite events, we do a Ignite Liverpool event where you do five minute talks,
they're strictly limited to five minutes, you get 20 slides, I think 15 seconds each,
and then when your slide's all to advance, and when they get to the end, that's the end
of your talk, and you talk about something that you're interested in, and they're doing
that right now over there, that's why every five minutes or so, you hear a bit of clapping,
and there's also this year as well as part of that, there's a group called The Awesome
Foundation, who are in Awesome Liverpool, is one of the chapters of The Awesome Foundation,
and what they do is they every month give £500 to a project that they think is awesome
apparently, that they decide, that there's a committee of trustees, and the trustees,
there's 10 of them, commit £50 a month each to this part, and it becomes £500, and
they've funded loads of maker events, so what they're doing today is people have been
submitting their projects, a lot of the makers who have come in, normally it's limited
to Liverpool, because this is a bigger event, people come from all over, it was open to
anyone, and there's a final list of about five, so those five people, after the Ignite
talks, I think, are going to do their presentations about their five minute presentations about
their things, and then they will have a question and answer, and at the end, someone will
win the £500, and they get to take it out, but again, that's true, you're cool, what's
the, have you got a link where people could find out about The Awesome Liverpool?
Yeah, Awesome Foundation, if you search for Awesome Liverpool, I think it's AwesomeLiverpool.org,
or if you go to The Awesome Foundation, so it's AwesomeFoundation.org, there's different
chapters listed, and Liverpool's one of the chapters, so you'll find it under that.
It's the first one in England, it was the Liverpool one, I believe, there's now potentially
I believe one up in Glasgow, I think, so in Britain, and I don't know if there's any
more, but there's some in America, it's quite a lot bigger in America, so we're really
proud to have the first one in England, or in Britain, I should say, other UK, in Liverpool,
so it's great.
Oh, that's really cool, thank you very much for agreeing to take a little bit of time
out of your very busy schedule today, and it's really good to talk to you and listen to
you.
Yeah, no problem, I mean, it's great to talk to you as well, and thanks for coming along,
and enjoying the event and chatting to everyone, I hope you enjoy it.
I've been having some amazing conversations with all the makers, so it's really good as
well to do the interviews, so thank you.
Great, that's what we like to hear, thanks very much.
Cheers, thanks Dan.
Alright.
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