#37 Jul 22 2021

Welcome to the world of Dominic Wilcox's ingenious imagination where stained glass cars, GPS shoes and an art exhibition for dogs are perfectly normal. This is a talk to help inspire your creative thinking and break through creative blocks. Dominic will take us on a whirlwind creative journey showing his playful and thought provoking ideas.

He'll also speak about his organisation Little Inventors that challenges children to think up and draw their invention ideas, then asks expert makers to bring to life the most interesting or brilliantly bonkers ideas for exhibitions, including one in the International Space Station.

About Dominic

Sunderland born Dominic Wilcox works across the worlds of art, design, craft and technology to create innovative, thought-provoking objects and ideas that inspire, surprise and delight. His diverse work includes miniature sculptures on watches, golden skimming stones and a stained glass car of the future recently shown at London's Science Museum. He is also on a mission to inspire children to become the creative thinkers and inventors of the future with his Little Inventors organisation that turns children’s ideas into reality. Designer Thomas Heatherwick described Dominic's work as 'serious challenges to the real world to keep looking at itself with innocent eyes, wondering what else is possible'.

After over a year coping with Covid, working from home and beginning to emerge from restrictions how will this have an effect on your social skills, ability to relate to your work colleagues and to attend in person events?

What we can all do to support each other more especially in an industry that was fast paced before and has increased exponentially during Covid?

Explain more about Girls Code MK and how you can help reap the benefits of a more diverse workforce.

About Georgina

Georgina Hodgkinson has been coding since 7 years old thanks to an electrical engineer dad and gadget geek. She is a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer, has a degree in computing from the Open University, is a qualified ICT teacher and holds numerous technology qualifications to keep her skills up to date or to satisfy her life long learner habits. She has over 30 years in various roles in the tech industry and is currently a technology consultant and founder of her own business.

She has an interest for new technologies including RPA, AI, robotics, AR, and IoT which helps her mission to help women of today learn the skills of tomorrow. Her motto of live, love, learn - help others as you climb, comes to life with her projects of Girls Code MK, Code For Her, and her various other voluntary roles.

Girls Code MK started in 2017 at Bletchley Park and has transitioned to online during covid with an aspiration of moving forward to hybrid where new coders are supported, mentored and encouraged to learn the skills to get a job in technology.

Code for Her is an online event that started in 2021 to bring together various skills, and talents to encourage and inspire more women to code, break down barriers to entry and present software development as a creative, fun and diverse career.

Some producers and DJs make hundreds of thousands of pounds a year or more, have teams of marketing people, brand principles, and even ghost writers. Most don't.

Dave started programming music on the Commodore 64 back in the 1980s, and in a few minutes he'll try and cover 30 years of Doing-It-Yourself in the electronic music industry, where it's going, and how you can now make it - all using your laptop.

About Dave

By day, Dave works in computer software development. By night, he is Dave Skywalker, music producer, international DJ, and record label operator. Playing at major festivals and helping to curate others, he writes the music and manages the label from his home here in Milton Keynes.

In this quick-fire talk, Jess will talk to us about the benefit of playing role-playing games like DnD and how the skills involved are related to UX design work. Roll for initiative!

About Jessica

Jess is a self taught UX designer trying to help make the world a better place through user experience design. She’s worked at Booking.Com and Barclays and is co-founder of MK Hackathon. Her interests are Magic and Cardistry, Fitness and food, and of course, Role playing games.

Mr Bingo will be talking about creating art during the Pandemic of 2020/21 and how it influenced and changed his output over this period.

About Mr Bingo

Mr Bingo was a freelance illustrator for 14 years. Off the back of a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund a book in 2015 he decided to stop working for clients and become a (self titled) ‘artist’. Mr Bingo now makes a living from selling prints and other bits on his online shop to his ever growing fanbase.