At Welcome Wednesday (20th February 2013) Victoria Bradbury give a wonderful informal talk about her experience with Chinese Hack spaces and the people she meet while there.

The Maker Space was packed with Alistair being relegated to sitting on the floor 🙂

Victoria talked warmly about the various makers she met while in China and what they were making. She also discussed the various problems the Chinese hack spaces had during their creation, running and sometimes demise.

Her experiences mirrored what many makers know, that when it comes to ideas and innovation people no matter where they are, want to learn, want to improve, want to share and want to socialise with others.

We also welcomed a number of visitors at Welcome Wednesday night, who stayed for the Victoria’s talk and remained after spending time taking with a number of our members.

Finally we must thank Victoria and her husband for visiting us and giving us a great talk and we hope we’ll see them again soon.

by Tony Dixon

Colin shows Chi the 3D printers

Friday’s (22nd February 2013) visit of Chi Onwurah, MP for  Newcastle Central (and also Shadow Minister for Innovation, Science & Digital Infrastructure ) was very well supported by our makers, a big thank you to all those who had the time free to come along and meet with Chi and Tony Bone, her case worker.

During Chi’s visit we showed her the Raspberry Pi computer, Will and Colin showed her and demonstrated the 3D printers and Jon discussed his Arduino project with her. It was nice to know that at least one of our country’s MP’s has done computer programming, as Chi studied C programming while at University.

Chris discussed the electric conversion of his old car which prompted Chi to joking ask if he could do the same for her 22-year old Saab.

We also discussed how Maker Space regularly helps with initiatives which help promote innovation and technology to the wider public and schools. With Jacqui from Gateshead Libraries, we talked about how Maker Space played a big part in helping Gateshead Libraries with eDay and also how with the Centre for Life we did Raspberry Jam evening.

All in all a very positive day.

Finally we must thank Chi and Tony for visiting us and we hope we’ll see them again soon.

by Tony Dixon