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Favourite Talks and Running a Workshop at Wuthering Bytes

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Throughout the whole of the Wuthering Bytes festival and OSHCamp 2014 there were many varied talks aimed at a wide range of abilities and expertise. There are far too many to cover in one blog post and so I’ll just include those which caught my attention the most!

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Reframing Web Design: The Process of Theatre Design

Luke Murphy-Wearmouth

Luke talked about how similar web design is to theatre design and explained in terms of the effect of using things such as colour, font and lighting. This was an incredibly interesting talk for me, as from a young age having a passion for both the arts and sciences the connection made perfect sense.

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It's only Rocket Science.

James Macfarlane & Ed Moore – Airborne Engineering

I think most would agree with me that this session was by far the most fun! James and Ed started by giving a great presentation about what they do at Airborne Engineering, including projects they have already completed and ones which are in development.

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Everything was explained in some detail, from fundamental technical equations, to why diamond shapes sometimes form in the flame generated by a rocket engine.

Without a doubt the most exciting part was the demonstration. This had to be moved outside as the fire alarms in the Waterfront Hall were not only sensitive to smoke but also heat. This got everyone on the edge of their seats in anticipation of what we were about to see, and many of the audience stood up in order to gain a better view of the demonstration table.

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Giving a Clock The time it Needed

Dan Morrison – Blottworks

Blottworks is described as a company that makes hand-engineered functional sculptures. The talk was about an elegant piece of engineering in the form of a clock that took two years to build.

Dan spoke about how from the initial design the clock was all about the aesthetics — it had to have just the right look. The talk gave us an insight to how the clock was built, and the time-scale for building it changed, along with parts of the design so that all the different materials they used worked well together to achieve the finished product.

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Dont Spy on Us

Ruth Coustick-Deal - Open Rights Group

Ruth told us how data that we share via the Internet is frequently saved to colossal databases by GCHQ and the NSA. Open Rights Group campaign against this data being collected and believe that we should have the right for it to remain private, suggesting that there should be no surveillance without suspicion.

This talk proved quite controversial amongst the audience and at the end of the presentation when it came to questions, there was a lot of debate and some people became very passionate on the matter!

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Steam-Powered Techno

Sarah Angliss

This talk linked together music and technology. Sarah started by looking at recording devices and which was the very first. She then proceeded to explain how this was actually a bird that could mimic a tune played by an instrument, and which was used to provide entertainmentmany centuries ago.

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Sarah then goes on to explain how machine-inspired dance music arguably did not originate in Detroit, and instead originated in the cotton mills of Lancashire where workers devised their own dances to imitate the machines around them. She then showed a video of a woman doing a machine clog dance, and showed a recording of what the machines in the cotton mills sounded like so you that you could hear the close similarities. I found this particularly fascinating and really enjoyed listening to Sarah's talk!

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SLightning Talks

The lightning talks gave the audience an opportunity to give a five minute talk on a subject of their choice. These talks came from novices to experienced speakers, talking about anything ranging from sport to technology.

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I spontaneously decided that I would give a talk on the Nutclough amplifier kit, which was being given out at OSHCamp, and which I had previously built a sample of and blogged about. As nerve-racking it was, it was a brilliant experience getting up and publicly speaking about my work, and left me with a feeling of great satisfaction!

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Workshops

I ran the Assembling the Nutclough Amplifier Kit (soldering) workshop and found this to be great fun. Many took an interest in the workshop, from the young to the old. To start with I had a group of four children assembling the kit, ranging from 10 to 14 years old, with parents accompanying them. I guided them so they were able to complete the build and some needed a little extra help, but there were no serious problems.

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I could see that some of the children were becoming a little bored in the middle of assembly as they were losing patience (with them having no/very little soldering experience it took that bit longer). However, once they all saw the working result in the end they were impressed and seemed to come away with a sense of achievement.

Looking forward to next year!

Trainee Electronics Engineer, currently studying towards my degree in Electronic Engineering at the University of Hudderfsield. Completed my HND in Electrical & Electronic Engineering from Bradford College 2017. Love to try new things and build interesting projects!
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