We very much appreciate the donations that we’ve already received – without the community, Farset Labs doesn’t exist, so it’s great to see people supporting us. What we’re seeing however are some pretty big-ticket items, which is great, but we also need the small stuff. Grouped together, the items that are listed below are pretty costly, but individually, they’re very cheap. Donating something from this list is a great way to get involved if you can’t afford to donate something bigger. So, without further ado, here are a list of essential, but not immediately obvious items that we need as a matter of urgency:

• Mugs and glasses (the plainer the better and matching stuff would be awesome, but we’ll take what we get as long as it isn’t damaged)
• Plates and bowls (as above)
• Cutlery
• Cleaning products (Fairy, bleach, Dettol, cloths)
• Clean plastic sheeting (for any painting and for workshop use later)
• Bins (both for paper/office stuff and a kitchen bin)
• Handwash (not bars of soap)
• Decent power strips (preferably with individual on/off switches and anti-surge)
• Desk lamps
• Hand tools

We are very pleased to announce the generous support of yet another group, the All Island Software Network, a joint partnership betweenIntertrade Ireland, the Irish Software Association, and Momentum, the Trade Association for IT in Northern Ireland. They supply businesses across the whole island of Ireland with plentiful funding, advice, routes for cross-border relations and training to allow companies to innovate and be competitive in both jurisdictions.

Being representative of a majority of workers in IT in both Northern Ireland and the Republic, The ISA and Momentum respectively provide the AISN with relevant help from industry leaders and feedback from the workforce at large.

The AISN has generously promised to support Farset Labs and its members, and will prove to be an asset for members with ideas for business and entrepreneurship. Together with the other projects that Matt Johnson is involved with, including Digital Circle for tech media & creative enterprise, Farset Labs hopes to create a powerful relationship to help the starved technology sector in Northern Ireland, whilst providing the... ...

Friday 6th April, 1500 – Saturday 7th April 1500

This is our ‘soft launch’ event running with no equipment, no budget, very little furniture, no PR and a case of beer.

Entry will be £5, or Free for members (Sign-up will be available on-site, hint hint), and we’ll try and get some munchies/a few drinks in for everyone.

Repeat: We will have very few toys other than what can be donated, but we finally have a space with power and a network.

We can hack the building together (or apart, within reason) and start bringing the dream alive.

How to prepare

• Facebook Event
• Ideascale: Vote on projects you want to do/see done
• Equipment/Component Donation List: What can you bring to help?

 

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Things have been moving fairly quickly (compared to the normal speed of Northern Irish progress), but it’s about time we made a public update.

Due to the practicalities of developing something like this, a lot of the day-to-day development of Farset Labs has been done with little publicity. This was to maintain clear communication within the launch-community and worked really well in fleshing out the ideas for the space, the community, and the projects involved.

Special thanks must go to the members of Queen’s University Engineering, Science and Technology Society (QUESTS) for letting Farset Labs fly under their wing initially, and to Ben Bland, Eoghan Murray, Matt Campbell, and David Kane, who between them have been instrumental in getting this far.

Even beyond the ‘regular’ group, there’s been a large amount of input from the community at large, through our IdeaScale, where you can vote on and submit ideas for the space, on everything from equipment... ...

Over the years, several attempts have been made at making a Hackerspace/Makerspace  in Belfast, the aims of which were slightly different but centred around creating a shared experimental facility for the NI tech community. Some people have called it a ‘Geek Gym’, or a ‘Tech Playground’, others have called it ‘An Amateur Version of the NITC‘ but finally, Farset Labs is near realising that goal. Whichever goal that is.

A strong community of technical students and professionals has worked on this for many months (in some cases years), and we’re getting near the finish line.

We are going to build a space where people of all technical interests and experiences can come together to work on crazy individual or group projects. A space where people who may not be exposed to the latest and greatest bleeding edge computing technologies, can experiment with them in a near-enterprise server environment without having to piss off the boss. A space where where those ideas... ...