Meetings/FamilyMakers05-09-2013

Minutes from Meeting September 5, 2013

We met for one final time before our first official Family Makers meeting April 14th.

Attendees

• Brian Corteil
• Anne Harrison
• Steve Upton
• Rod Williams
• Nigel Westbury

Minutes

• Ideas

We considered some ideas for future projects:

• • Bags from jeans
    • Would give an introduction to crafts and sewing
    • Could support multiple age groups with younger members being guided and older ones working on their own designs
    • Could support multiple interests with some building bags and others adding flashing lights etc.
  • Planes and helicopters
    • Easily constructed models using elastic band power
    • Rod to organise a session

• • Line following robot
    • Could be used in Chain reaction

• • Potato Projects
    • Using electricity to power things

• • String Racer
    • Build a vehicle to travel along a string
    • More complex requirement could be for it to return back along the string once it reaches the far end

• Chain Reaction

We brainstormed some ideas for what we could do:

• • Repeatable - they want to be a ble to re-run ours as a demo for others
  • Durable - if it is to be reused it needs to be durable. Also it could be on long term display in Makespace after the event
  • Theme - Circus theme is still popular and includes a number of elements we could use.
  • Skeleton - we need to get one together soon so that we have a frame to work to (Discussed in subsequent session on Sunday 8th Sept 2013)
  • Bold - we want to stand out and be seen
  • Family Makers banner - To be displayed in the hall
  • Music - we could have a theme running throughout the operation of our device, along the circus theme
  • Possible elements Clown car
    • High diver
    • Trapeze
    • Carousel
  • We could get the kids playing with components from last year, the ones that CSC provided to construct components for the chain reaction, to see what they come up with
  • Marble rollercoaster
  • Next Action: - Discuss what we're going to do on Sunday

• Publicity

At Chain Reaction we are likely to get a lot of visibility and publicity, how do we handle that?

• • Currently we are only open to Makespace members and their friends
  • We could look to start one Sunday a month as an open session for anyone to come along
  • With Christmas we could do one session in December and based on take up decide what we want to do in the new year
  • We'll need posters/flyers
  • Before the session we may want to do a tidy up of the space
  • We should update the Makespace Website
  • We should set up a FamilyMakers email group
  • We would only do a maximum of a 4 hour session
  • We would need to decide on pricing but it could be comparable to a half day at summer school
  • What age ranges would we cater to?

AoB

• • Cambridge Science Centre have asked if we could make an earthquake table for them
  • Brian would like to organise a summer school for kids next year