It's been a year since lockdown and my job as Dublin Maker Advocate was challenging, mostly because my job is to engage with the community, and many a time in person and also visit where they are based. The moment of helplessness came over me as community engagement, people who are just as at a loss like myself on what to do, postponement of the Dublin Maker festival to this year...

...but it will be a virtual event this summer.

Here's a video of what the annual Dublin Maker festival is like every summer.

And it has not rained in the park since their inception in 2012!

So how do I/we bring Makers and community together during this period? One of the things the team talked about was creating a podcast and chatting with our Dublin Maker community. Let's bring those chats that are normally done in the tents in the park at the festival right to people's ear buds!

First of all, I have to say, transcribing is hard, and due to time of turnarounds of the podcasts, I stopped transcribing, but I have started to do chapter markers via Buzzsprout.

So if there's someone who would like to transcribe the podcasts for us, drop us an email at [email protected], we really appreciate your help as this takes time and effort to do right.

Our podcasts

We have 2 series now, which is amazing! Six episodes so far in each. Topics covered range from

• Craft dioramas/cosplay
• STEAM activities with younger audience
• Overcoming Covid-19's lockdown and running virtual events (including making it accessible to as many people as possible)
• Music (synth and guitar pedals)
• Hacking and doing experiments (webcams, custom controllers, LEGO!)
• Punk Microscopy & jelly fish!
• Working and engaging with the community
• Being a Maker

You get to hear all the ups and downs, tips and tricks. And it was nice to catch up with our Maker friends who normally participate and showcase what they do at Dublin Maker each year.

Production-wise, I get to re-live the chats as I edit them on Garageband and publishing them on Buzzsprout when they are ready.

Most of the 1st series were uploaded to Dublin Maker's Youtube Channel but it wasn't getting as much listens (maybe because it's just a still graphic instead of a video of people chatting or animations, I didn't have time for latter). Could be something to think of if there's more time set aside on creating animations or just straight up recording the video (it's done through zoom anyway) and just upload the podcast video (with some editing, of course, as it's not live).

I really did try to make sound waves move (visualiser) to the audio, it's not as simple as I thought it would be, even tried Motion... it didn't work out the way I wanted. And I don't have After Effects. So I left that experiment behind!

So the upside for me is that I get to chat Makers and friends again, and we get to share our conversations with our wider community.

The downside is I couldn't chat with them in-person.

BUT... we would love to chat more with other Makers, who should we invite next? The only caveat is that the guest will have participated or will be participating in the Dublin Maker festival.

So email us at [email protected] and we will be in touch.

And here's my podcast sign off...

cuts in
"Remember to like and subscribe. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook and Insta. Take care and stay safe, this is Vicky from the Dublin Maker Podcast."
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