It's a busy time here at MCQN Ltd HQ. Some interesting projects coming to a close, while others are just kicking off. We'll be writing more about them all in due course, but to keep you going in the meantime we thought it would be nice to share what some other people have been saying about what we've been up to.

Recently we've been investigating how to take some hands-on Internet of Things making into school with fellow residents-at-DoES-Liverpool Imagication. We submitted it to the Digital Maker call and were one of the seven projects chosen. Here's the video we made to pitch the idea, and the press release we're putting out about the project. More to follow as it gets underway.

MCQN Ltd is based in DoES Liverpool, which is part-office, part-workshop in the centre of Liverpool. It's a great place for us because, as well as getting access to a laser-cutter, 3D printers, and all sorts of other equipment that makes building projects easier, we're also surrounded by lots of other interesting people with all sorts of skill-sets.

Below is the press release that DoES Liverpool put out last week. If you come along to the show, be sure to stop by and say hello!

Last week, I was invited by the nice people at CREATE-NET to speak at the First Italian Internet of Things Day event that they held in Trento.

Anyway, here are the slides from my talk, along with my notes of what I intended, at least, to say...

At the end of this week there was a two-day conference here in Liverpool, for student developers, called CodePool13. The second day kicked off with a talk from me, introducing the Internet of Things and providing some pointers to how to get started with it. My slides are below, and I'll include a brief version of my notes, but lots of it was just me talking about lots of nice IoT projects.

Recently we were asked who the good Internet of Things or Arduino people are in the North. The sort of people that we recommend on the occasions when MCQN Ltd is too busy, or don't have quite as good a skillset match with the project's needs. We figured it would be nice to share the details more widely - it's always good for more people to be aware of the great people we work with, and provides a glimpse of one aspect of the "UK maker belt".

Over the first weekend in November we crammed DoES Liverpool with around fifty hackers, artists, geeks and designers and tasked them with coming up with interesting and new ideas for connecting the real world at the Internet of Things Howduino.

Back in June we went along to the Open Internet of Things Assembly down in London. It was a packed weekend of talks and discussions, and we made far more progress on defining what an open Internet of Things would look like than I imagined possible.

However, I came away with a nagging feeling that something was missing. Lots of time had been devoted to data and the people using or encountering the Internet of Things, and rightly so, but...

There was a distinct lack of Things.

Not all of the projects that we build here at MCQN Ltd connect to the Internet, even if it feels that way at times. Occasionally it's useful to be able to connect some simple sensors or physical inputs up to a computer. Doing so with an Arduino and USB is fairly easy, but seems overkill at times, not to mention potentially expensive if you're going to build lots of devices and don't need the extra grunt.

Short notice, I know, but this evening I'll be giving a talk about the Internet of Things as part of FACT's The Stuff of Experience Seminar.