ɔimoɈɒ

Libraries should become more like Hackerspaces, converging centers of creation, dialogue, expression. Not the quiet reading room #civicmedia

— Renata Avila (@avilarenata) June 23, 2014

English by birth.
British by nationality.
Scots prod from my Dad.
Irish farmer from my Mum.
Irish in my heart.
Northern Irish in my head.

I have multiple names. I’m Matt. I’m Matthew. And I’m also known as Mr Johnston and, to my favourite humans, as Daddy.
I grew up in Lisburn and I live in Bangor.
I went to a Catholic Primary School and Grammar School.
I’m a humanist, my own strict interpretation. I think humans are great. I think anyone who tries to attribute this greatness to mythology is a charlatan.
At University, when I left home, I stopped going to Church and joined the TA.
I feel some kinship with the Catholics of Northern Ireland from family ties but that’s about as far as it goes.
I’ve been on the Internet for longer than I’ve been off it. I have an identity there. My partner also uses my internet name as much as my given name.
I feel allegiance to the Union flag. I have too much respect for it to let it hang in rags. I’m more interested in an independent Northern Ireland as an option on the constitutional question than abandoning our responsibilities to London or Dublin.
I’m from a mixed marriage. I had one male parent and one female parent.
I’ve been married twice – both times to women from the “other” culture.
I’ve lived here for fifty of my forty one years but I feel like an outsider. According to a guy on the radio, this means I’m not a local.

I try to define myself and others by what I or they do rather than what I “have been” or what they “are”. I’m more interested in tomorrow than today or yesterday.

Northern Ireland has one of the best infrastructures in the world for those daring individuals who have decided to forego burning liquefied dinosaur innards in an internal combustion engine.

The Electric Vehicle (EV) is possibly the next step in automotive design. They’re cleaner,  more efficient and quieter than normal fossil fuel cars. While the majority of electricity in Northern Ireland is still produced via burning fossil fuels, the efficiency is much higher in a power plant than would be possible in a small, self – contained engine.

So we have the infrastructure but where are the cars?

Part of the problem is the battery issue. These things are heavy and expensive and if someone wants to change the world,  solving battery output would be the most amazing leap.

The other part of the problem is the cost of commercial EVs. They’re not made in sufficient quantities to drive the price down.

So the idea is to host design challenges to bring the production price of an EV to below £5000. To develop new battery technology. To create new power generation that might reduce reliance on large batteries.

From Honeycomb:

The ‘Honeycomb Creative Buzz Award’ is a prestigious competition to find the digital creators of tomorrow. The top twenty graduates from the Class-of-2014 will be chosen from courses across Northern Ireland and the border counties of the Republic of Ireland to receive the Honeycomb Buzz Award.

This project is the start of what I think is needed to take final year students to the apex of their ability. Imagine if we could take these talented individuals and give them a six month residency at an institution of their choosing. Something similar to AVTIT where their aim is to perhaps take the learning from their final year project and turn it into something great?