Artefact cafe

Doing
we have been running design workshops at Made in Brunel at the barge house oxo tower. There has been good developments with a second probe that is looking more specifically than the first. This should be out and looking for applicants soon, when it is I will let you know. I am still getting a good response from Handmade everything in Manchester that we went to a few weeks ago.

 A studio set up with simple opensource furniture made by James Tooze, plans here the space was flexible and had a very rough and ready, working space but well considered... It was great, there were rapid prototyping machines, Printers, CAD, plasticine and a whole plethora of making tools.

There was a series of workshops ran, these were open to all at Made in Brunel. there was a great and mixed response, it went very well, engaging with various demographics of people, there were great discussions and developments about how things should and should not be done, the impacts of open design and how it can change things for the future. There will be examples of things to follow on the artefact cafe blog

second probe, working away on it....

Reading
Marcel Mauss, The Gift this is a great guide to reciprocity and what people want back for gifts, even in the act of free groups. There are some good further reading lists. This is worth looking at if you are thinking about how and what people want for things for free.
Democratised science instrumentation, Ariel Waldman This is a great occasional paper highlighting different areas that people can explore due to open science and open access. This is a good solid insight and Ariel often writes for the Institute For The Future, pretty cool.
The primitive economics of the Trobriand Islanders interesting insights into what people require, how they build their status and work within a community. This is an old text but interesting read.

Secrecy, Trust, and Dangerous Leisure: Generating Group Cohesion in Voluntary Organizations
Gary Alan Fine this is a good piece of work about the trust in a group, how people create a hierarchy, how people develop this group, how the dynamics work, well worth a read.

Talking to
Many, many people at the Artefact cafe. If things come of those conversations I will let you know.