Coding and Electronics

There are conferences, and then there is OggCamp. For two days in Manchester I sat in rooms full of people considerably cleverer than me, had conversations that will fuel months of work, joined the Open Rights Group, gave away a few Heltecs to strangers, and came home with an alarming number of new Raspberry Pi projects. This is the story of my third pilgrimage to this awesome gathering, but more importantly, my first real gathering of high order geeks since the infamous year of 2020.

We've been running MigiDigi Geeks Retreat sessions at the Lighthouse Project in Middleton for a while now — and week after week, the results make the case better than any course ever could. A retired Ferranti engineer with 51,000 views on his Arduino projects. A self-organising maker group that nobody asked anyone to start. This is what happens when you bring the kit, step back, and let curiosity do the work. Read about what we're building at the Lighthouse — and come and join us on a Thursday afternoon.

A blog post about Paulo Freire, the banking model of education, and why No Worries IT does things differently. 

Finland came to Rochdale and said "we'll have that."

Then our funding quietly disappeared.

I designed a digital inclusion programme with no curriculum, no classroom, and no lesson plans. Just a kettle, some toast, and boxes full of Raspberry Pis. People who wouldn't answer the phone ended up running maker workshops in Manchester.

Here's what happened — and why it's time to bring it back.

There's a particular kind of person who walks into a Heritage Hackers dropin session for the first time. They've usually been talked into it by someone. They're not sure it's really for them. They sit down quietly, watch what everyone else is doing, and say something like "I'm not very technical."

That was Paul Owen, not so very long ago.

Digital inclusion is important. But are we really empowering people — or just plugging them into the matrix and calling it a win? Paul Woodhead makes the case for genuine adult retraining, and asks whether Rochdale could be the next Silicon Roundabout.