Our panel are:

• Chris Dymond – Director of Business Innovation (TechnoPhobia)
• Lucy Wurstlin – Digital Commissioning Manager (4iP)
• Dougald Hine – accidental entrepreneur (School of Everything, Signpostr )

The panel introduce themselves, and we begin.

James Methley introduced the first idea – an Arduino Club, based on Richard Rixham’s demonstrations of the hardware hacking technology. James wants to start a group in Sheffield to learn and collaborate using the technology and is looking for advice on how to run the group.

Chris thinks that James needs to think about how to structure the enthusiasm in the club for longevity and helping to manage the expectations of the members.

Lucy says that keeping the membership up over time is a challenge for any club to tackle. She refers to a previous Maker Faire event in Sheffield supported by 4iP that had a real cross-fertilization between hardcore hackers and arts and crafts people, working together to produce innovative solutions. She was seriously impressed by that event.

Dougald builds on Lucy’s comments by suggesting that that cross-fertilisation might help to keep the club going. He also suggests that James should look perhaps to organisations like Access Space to provide a meeting venue, perhaps even looking for empty and unused spaces.

The floor is opened for the participants, and Emma Persky suggests using software to help run a democratic club for all decisions to do with organisation.

Ian Forrester says that James should start as soon as he can, to avoid losing momentum – the big problem is starting, then you can grow. Just do it!

Jag Gill suggests using an online presence for members and non members of the club – it could be later used in future to promote any products that the club produced, and that wrapped up the first presentation.

Steve Brett then began presenting ‘Electronic Cobblers’. They want to use the old fashioned idea of a cobbler – because you could get your shoes repaired so you didn’t throw them away and buy new ones as often. They’d like to set up a system by which people with the skills to repair and repurpose electronic equipment can be made available to people with old or broken equipment.

Richard King then talked about creating a brand, and extended the idea to other skills, not just electronics repair. Could craftspeople and artisans be involved in the same way?

Chris says that this kind of model has worked in other industries – in Europe there was a guy who started taking old Land Rovers and breaking them up for parts – building new Land Rovers out of the recovered parts. It’s taken off and produced a hugely successful company, and that just came from one guy with an idea. He also remembers that not so long ago there were electronics shops that could repair equipment, and there are not many around anymore. It would be a good idea to find out why that happened before committing.

Lucy was recently in Cuba and there are Electronic Cobblers everywhere there. It’s an economic necessity. Richard highlights that he is proposing re-purposing and reinventing equipment not just repairing it, which could give the products value over and above new products. Dougald thinks there are similarities to reinventing old clothes and the like, and poses the question: is this idea for a business, or a social movement?

Chris asks what will prompt people to bring their devices to Electronic Cobblers? Dougald mentions Access Space and its Redundant Technology initiative. He thinks the problem wasn’t finding enough old computers – it was finding enough creativity to find something to do with a warehouse full of old computers.

The panel suggests focussing on a single product with ‘Wow Factor’. It may be a good idea to work with Helen Milner’s Swap Shop project as they seem to have similar goals.

Lucy wraps up with the thought that it would be great if there was a policy change that made it much more difficult for people to throw equipment away – they would really have think about what happens to their old kit. Hannah York suggests some initiatives that could be useful for the project. Chris Warburton suggests looking at the inkjet cartridge refilling scheme for ideas as to how to get the knowledge that this kind of old-to-new transformation is even possible! That wrapped up the second session.

Joe Chacko, on ratemydriving.com. He talks about a conversation over breakfast where the idea emerged to take photographs of cars and their number plates, which can then be linked up to drivers via DVLA licensing information. Drivers could upload their photographs to an online service with information about where the photograph was taken and a description of the behaviour that prompted the photograph.

This information could be aggregated and analysed to prompt drivers about negative feedback, and perhaps even made available to the public.

Joe mentions that the time-saving idea of going straight to vigilante.com was rejected! It would be important to ensure that driver’s information was safe.

Dougald kicks off the feedback by warning about the need to research the legal questions involved around making this information available. He thinks the idea is interesting, crowdsourcing this information on driver quality. He thinks that Joe should think about how the system could feed into the legal system instead.

Chris asks what the idea is going to achieve? Is it to improve the quality of driving in the country or intimidate individual drivers. This idea prompted several responses about different ways to use the gathered information.

Dougald thinks there is a risk that the idea could lead to a new kind of road rage, and Lucy also suggests that it might encourage people to take photographs and send text messages whilst driving themselves. Dougald also thinks that the system might have a place working alongside the police, providing publicly generated content as evidence. Steve points out how cyclists can have helmet mounted cameras which can provide evidence.

The discussion then focussed to some degree on the reliability of photographic evidence. Jag wraps up with the point that we don’t need to focus on the photographic evidence – pedestrians and cyclists are also able to produce content and it might just be text based or verbal.

Time for the sessions was up, so Joe wrapped up the Inspired Ideas Surgery.

Jag wrapped up unsheffield 2009 with some feedback on the event, thanks to the sponsors, volunteers, organisers – and of course thanks to the participants.

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