Pop-up digital newsroom

Knitting is not one of my greatest skills. I learned as a child and return to it on and off over the years. I've never knitted more than a strip, but my latest strip made history, sort of.

On Saturday, September 8, Knit the Map was launched at the Mini Maker Faire in Brighton.

All the wool is locally sourced and spun and coloured using natural dyes. Utilising natural urea, of course.

The map is the Terrier Map of Brighton. Sue, who coordinates the whole thing, is looking for a sympathetic landlord as she'd like to take over one of the city's many empty shops.

There I am. Quite obviously not a confident knitter but I did a pretty good job in the end. It was quite neat. It was strip 51 of the East Laine.

Brighton's pre-enclosure fields were known as laines. 

The group meets on Friday afternoons at The Green Centre in Manor Road.

I've just walked into the Brighton Mini Maker Faire and following my nose stumbled across the Cube Cola stand where I met Kate from Bristol's Cube Cinema.

It smells like Coca-Cola but it can't be…surely.

'I guess you've found the secret recipe then?' I query.

'It isn't actually a secret' Kate beams;

'We at The Cube wanted to make our own version, so we started looking around. That's when we found a recipe through open source published on the internet in 2008.' 

I'm fascinated. I thought the Coca-Cola guarded their recipe like it was gold-dust.

Yet again I am baffled by the delights of open source.

…apparently all you need are 10 simple ingredients.

The Seattle hotel, based in the Brighton Marina, were nice enough to get one of their charming representatives to give me a few words. "Particularly in the marina, it's [the hotel] not in the centre of town, so we want to bring people down to the marina and show then what we're about", and you may be wondering what it is that they are all about at the Seattle Hotel, well put simply it's; "lots of homemade, authentic, British food". The folks at the Seattle also seem to understand the importance of sourcing their produce locally; "[The Seattle source] as much food as is reasonably possible. Obviously with some things that's not going to be the case, but as much stuff as we can source locally, our chefs are dedicated to [finding local sources]."

I also managed to interview a charming couple from Mayflower Events who were selling cakes on a small stall, they were kind enough to tell me what their set-up was all about! "we're a catering company, specialising in vintage tea parties, wedding catering and birthday parties as well. "We've been visiting the food festival for the last five or six years, but this is the first time we've actually had a stall here." The couple, Antony and Robin, also feel it is important to take their food to the public; "we've got a website and all that but people can't taste the food so it's always nice for people to come out and see, rather than look at a photo.

"We have a cappuccino cupcake, a strawberry and vanilla, lemon and poppyseed, that's [pointing to a cake] actually an apple and black forest fruit and custard crumble. And then we do our peanut butter brownies and moist apple flapjack.

"The cupcakes always go great at these events, people seem to really love the flapjacks though"

Clearly for the Seattle Hotel and for Mayflower events it is important to advertise their businesses and bring their food to the public. I guess it just shows how important food is to the people of Sussex and how fond the local are of the idea of taking food to the streets.

Build Brighton are responsible for two of the most popular exhibits at the Maker's Fair of this year's Brighton Digital Festival: Robo-Xylo and Scalexercise.

Matt Edwards put "around 100 hours" of knowledge and effort into each of the two xylophones, above, which use midi data to play songs from a nearby laptop, before taking them on tour to other maker's faires in Manchester, Derby and Dublin before coming to Brighton.

For the more health-minded attendees, Build Brighton have also put together a scalextrix track powered by an exercise bike and cross-trainer. Behold, Scalexercise!

Masterminded by Mike Pountney, the contraption was actually "extremely straightforward" to build, whereas the construction of the track itself was started in June before being brought to the Maker's Faire in Brighton.

Conductable is amazing! Electrifying sound compacted in a box that is totally interactive.  One user said, "I can feel the sound as well as hear it"

Great noise comes from the foyer bar area at the Brighton Dome as Conductable, Mike Challis's  multiplayer interface attracts young and old at the Mini Maker Faire.

The instrument was inspired by the landscape surrounding Snape Maltings Concert Hall.

Out of the many stalls and projects around the Mini Maker’s Fair at this year’s Brighton Digital Festival, the most ambitious must be the 3D printing of Alan Turing’s head.

“It’s something we hope to have finished by the end of the day,” said Ian Stratford of Thames Valley Rep Rap,”although I feel we may be pushed for time.”

Stratford helped found the group around a year ago as a community for other aspiring 3D printers to share ideas and know-how. Since then they have gained more experience and are printing parts for new printers from the printers they had already built and as well as hoping to turn the group into a profit-making business.

“The buzz phrase for this is a “crowd source manufacturing process’,” continued Stratford,”Many of the initial patents are expiring so it is becoming much simpler and more accessible.”

When asked where the technology will be in five years’ time, Stratford said that products for retail are currently limited to shoes and jewellery but the open source nature of the technology means more people will be involved.

What is the pop-up digital newsroom happening at Mini Maker faire in the Brighton Dome today? A brief explanation is probably required here.

The best way to describe it, is by looking at the photo above. What it isn't is staff only, journalists versus the world. It's about sharing the digital skills we have with anyone who wants to make news, in as practical a way as possible.