The workshops where pitched at a good level, not starting right at the bottom and assuming a basic understanding of electronics (an understanding I didn’t have). But I didn’t mind as this made the workshops more sociable as others who did understand helped us laymans muddle through together. I merrily ended the day knowing how to power and programme enough lights and buzzers to earn instant gratification and get thinking on how to implement this into something fun.

It was interesting to hear the more experienced hackers present their work at the end of the day, and that even at this level a lot of people felt compelled to apologise and confess that they hadn’t written all the code themselves or had copied circuits from others, as if it was somehow cheating to not be able to claim ownership to every step of the process.

I know I was suffering the same needless sense of guilt in the workshops and it was reassuring to hear those more experienced feel it too. It reminded me that most people aren’t experts, we all need to start somwhere and we’re all learning as we go along, sharing our ideas and projects so we can take and re-appropriate these to make them our own. Because I don’t want to be an expert….actually that’s a lie I secretly wish by some magical fluke I’d turned out to be a programming and electronics genius, but that’s impossible and besides the point…Because you don’t ‘need’ to be an expert to play, and now I can.

Cake Orchestra (with additional percussion) from nikkipugh on Vimeo.

Its still early days for me in my move back to Birmingham since starting at Screen WM, so I’m keen to get out and about to see what geeky fun is to be had in the Second city and last night I popped along to fizzPOP in ‘Digital’ Digbeth.

FizzPOP in its own words is “a group of people with a wide range of skills and interests, bound by a common interest in tinkering with stuff to make something new. It’s a hackerspace.” this intro combined with videos (see above) of cake orchestras, knowledge of soldering and ‘Arduino’ (which I need to get my head around if I am ever actually going to build myself a Meggy Jr) was more than enough to get me along yesterday eve.

Although I have NOOOO techy or DIY skills I was warmly welcomed and in no time was soldering and data bending c/o the guys there. So anyone else interested in tinkering and hacking with tech in the midlands area should definitely get down to the next meet up in 2 weeks and I most certainly will.