Saturday 10th October 2009
Old Broadcasting House, Leeds, LS2 9EN

Leeds Hack Space brings you a day of challenges, workshops, talks and tomfoolery for hackers, makers and coders in Leeds.

Junk Heap Challenge

Bring in your old electronics, toys and hardware for everyone to mess about with. We’ll be setting a Scrapheap-style challenge for teams to create a mad contraption out of your old kit over the course of the event. This contest is open to anyone – we’ll be organising teams on the day.

Micro-controller Workshop

We’ll dedicate a room to the hardware hackers amongst you. There’ll be everything you need to play about with embedded devices such as the Arduino.

OpenLeeds Code-athon

To give the ambitious and excellent OpenLeeds project a kick start we’ll be hosting a day of collaboration for anyone to chip in with their skills. We’re looking for coders, designers and anyone with an interest to help construct a truly open resource for Leeds’ historical and geographical information.

Lightning Talks

If you think you can talk for 10 minutes on a subject you want everyone to know about then you’re more than welcome to take part! We’ll be providing space and a captive audience to give you the chance to shout about awesome and interesting things. We’ll be organising the talks for the morning, ‘unconference’ style so just turn up prepared.

Registration

The event will be free to attend and will kick off at 10am on Saturday 10th October, running until about 6pm. We will provide a buffet lunch and (non-alcoholic) drinks.

Go to the Eventbrite registration page to confirm your ticket – http://lhshackday.eventbrite.com/

We’re keeping the running costs low thanks to the venue from NTI Leeds, but any donations toward the running costs would be welcome on the day, or by visiting the Leeds Hack Space donations page.

For further discussion around the HS HackDay visit the Leeds Hack Space mailing list, or check out the wiki for up-to-date information.

NOTE: Unfortunately this event has had to be canceled due to venue problems. However, there are plans for a HackSpace hacking day which we will have more information on soon and will post accordingly, so keep tuning in.

Registration is open for the biggest hack even in the North!

Hack North will span the weekend of the 3rd and 4th of October, taking place in a newly renovated building in central Leeds. There will be power, wifi, collaborators and enthusiasm. As with any other hack day, the projects are decided by the attendees.

At the time of writing there were over 100 tickets remaining. It’s a totally free event, so I’d advise anyone that can make it to sign up ASAP! Similar hack days in the UK have been fully subscribed and incredibly good fun.

Check out http://hacknorth.com/ for more info and registration details.

There’s also the Leeds Hack Space wiki for sharing ideas and organising teams etc. – http://leeds.hackspace.org.uk/wiki/index.php/HackNorth

See you there!

Come along and do stuff tonight at Old Broadcasting House!

As usual there will be the range of hardware and software tomfoolery from faffing with LEDs to mash-ups of Leeds’ historical data. Also robots.

Tonight we shall incorporate Leeds Hack Space as a company and take stock of how much cash we’ve raised so far through the raffle… and then see where this puts us on the quest to get that permanent space.

:D

Wow. 2 weeks have rolled around quite fast, haven’t they? Last meet was immensely productive and wonderfully sociable (we should totally do another curry outing again sometime).

Last month saw the start of a software project to build a geotagged index of Leeds’ social history. We hope to continue this tonight and anyone is welcome to contribute in their skills and opinions. If you don’t fancy that, you’re just as welcome to pair up with someone and learn stuff.

Tonight we hope to do what we need to set up Leeds Hack Space as a non-profit entity so we can take some responsibility off the Hackspace Foundation for handling our cash.

Finally we’ll be doing the planning for the Hack Space fund raiser at tomorrow’s GeekUp, including deciding on the beards some of us will be growing in exchange for another round of pledges – a “Leeds Hack Face”, if you will.

Personally I’m turning up to find out if anyone has managed to build something more awesome than Nigel’s LED cube…

:D

This is a reminder for the bi-weekly hack party at OBH tomorrow!
(Tomorrow is Tuesday 30th June, 6pm-8:30pm).

I hope to see you all there. We have a lot to talk about…

- Fund raising! After the success of the pledges 2 weeks ago we need to
chase up any outstanding monies, and plot our next money-making
scheme.

- Hack spaces! This week there have been three potential spaces
investigated. Two city centre office-type environments and one soon-to-
be-renovated garage in Holbeck. We shall feed back information, photos
and maths to all who want to listen.

- Software projects! An exciting plan of action has come out of the
recent discussions around a local social history resource and making
greater use of community resources (e.g. Leodis.net). I have invited a
few people along to try drum up some enthusiasm, and to get cracking
on the first of many exciting web-based projects.

- Hardware hacking! MORE ROBOTS. Robots are cool.

- Curry! There’s a few of us heading out for curry afterwards. Fancy
joining us?

See you tomorrow.

:D