fizzPOP

fizzPOP is a group of people with a wide range of skills and interests, bound by a common interest in tinkering with stuff to make something new. It’s a hackerspace.

For some people hacking means writing computer code, for others it means soldering up some electronics. Others may be working more with cardboard and gaffa tape. What materials you work with and your abilities are less important than the sort of mentality you have. We’re looking for people who want to play with stuff and learn new skills in a social, collaborative environment.

fizzPOP provides regular meet-ups for groups of like-minded people to get together and work on whatever projects take their fancy. If you don’t have a particular project in mind, don’t worry! Just come along and say “hi” - we’re confident you’ll have something new to think about by the end of the session!

Ultimately we’d like to have our own premises, enabling us to put on workshops and have a place to store larger pieces of kit, but for the time being, we’re meeting at a variety of different locations whilst we find out more about who wants to get involved and what sort of projects they want to work on.

Temporary spaces so far include pubs, people’s homes and offices. Since these places are comparatively small, we often have to put a limit on how many people can attend each session, so keep an eye out for the sign-up pages for each session. We meet on at least a fortnightly basis though, so there are plenty of opportunities to come along.

If you’d like to get involved we’d love to hear from you. Our various contact details are on the contact page.

What’s with the name?

Joseph Priestley lived in Birmingham in the late 18th Century. He was a regular attendee of the city’s Lunar Society: a monthly meeting of industrialists, inventors, natural philosophers and intellectuals. Committed to promoting the open flow of ideas and using every available information network of the day to share his discoveries and insights Priestley effectively Open Sourced his work to “attract the attentions of the ingenious” who would then go on to improve his original ideas. You can read from his book Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air, (vol. 1) how he was inspired by a neighbouring brewery to conduct experiments with the gases being produced and how he subsequently invented soda water.

So, in honour of an archetypal Brum-based tinkerer (and also in honour of making things go POP!), we’re naming this hack space fizzPOP.