Rebel Makers Camp: what to expect

It’s just over a week to go until Rebel Makers Camp — our inaugural celebration of digital skills and digital making — WOO YEEAAAHH!! Sorry, just had to let that out!

We can’t wait to welcome Rebels from Birmingham and across the UK — as well as some special friends flying in from Spain ❤ — for a day of building, learning and total fun revolving around technology and the digital world.

We’re really excited to have released our final wave of tickets, and wanted to give you a little bit more information about Rebel Makers Camp so you can be sure it is the not-to-be-missed event we know it is. We’ve answered some top-line questions below which we hope will give you that final push to grab your free ticket.

What is Rebel Makers Camp again?

Rebel Makers Camp is a one day festival of digital skills and digital making taking place on Saturday 29th October in Birmingham. It is the annual celebration of the Rebel Makers community from around the UK, with the aim of giving as many people as possible an insight into the wonderful things that happen at our monthly peer-to-peer skills sharing Clubs.

Why might you come along to Rebel Makers Camp?

I think you mean why wouldn’t you?! Rebel Makers Camp will have something for people of all ages — and all skill levels. The main requirement is that you have an interest in some aspect of technology or digital life*. You might come along if:

• You want to start your own digital skills club in your community, so want to get a feel for our process and see our results
• You need to improve your digital skills for work, but don’t know where to start — or want the support of a community to learn alongside
• You have built or created something super cool with hardware or software and you’d love to show it to a group of interested people
• You love the idea of tinkering with tech alongside like-minded people
• Your kids love digital but you don’t know where to start
• Your parents love digital but you don’t know where to start
• You’re the only person at your school or work that likes technology, so you’re looking to meet some cool people like you
• Young or old, you’re feeling a bit left behind with this whole digital thing and what to get a bit more savvy
• You have a good grasp of digital, but you want to learn how to push it further, and make it do more
• You love the gang at Rebel Labs and want to find out more about what we’re doing, or how we might help you, your community or your organisation embrace the power of digital

The most important thing to remember is that Rebel Makers Camp is for EVERYONE! regardless of age, skill level, background, interest area and so on.

*because everyone is looking for that little bit of clarity in their lives, here’s what we think of when we use the word “digital”: development (coding), graphic design, service design, electronics, film and media production, music production, photography, social media, robotics and any online services/apps you want to explore.

What does the festival look like?

To add a bit of suspense to proceedings, we’ll be releasing the final content schedule on Monday. For now, here’s what you need to know:

The main focus of the day will be on our super-sized Rebel Makers Club. This will run for the entirety of the day, and will work just like one of our small, regional monthly Clubs. You’ll have the chance to meet people, showcase and/or get help with your existing ideas or projects, brainstorm new projects to work on or simply get started with learning and sharing the digital skills that are important to you.

During the day, breakout spaces will house special workshops and terrific talks on a variety of crazy interesting subjects including electronics, communication, Internet of Things (IoT), film and media production, skills exchange, open data and much more. You’ll be able to dip in and out of these sessions as you please to create a festival experience that if perfect for you.

Don’t forget, we are teaming up with the wondrous student souls at BrumHack 5. This means you’ll also have the chance to meet computer science students from universities across the country, and get an insight into what happens at a full-blooded student hackathon. Don’t worry if you don’t know what a hackathon is, we’ve put together a pretty nifty explanation:

Hackathon (noun): a hackathon can also be described as a 24 hour invention marathon (sounds much more fancy like that, right?!) Over the course of a 24 hour period, participants team up to conceive and build a prototype digital application to answer a specific challenge or theme. At the end of the 24 hours, teams present their prototypes to the rest of the hackathon.

And there you have it! Rebel Makers Camp in a nutshell. Tune back in on Monday for full schedule details, and until then tweet us @_rebellabs with ideas, feedback and funny gifs for our Friday afternoon.

Grab your free ticket here. Oh and it would be super nice if you could tell your friends and let them know you’re going by sharing our Facebook event.