My Influencers – Maker38 UK

There’s a few reasons that I’m taking a stab at this maker malarky.
In no particular order…

I’ve always been a creative person and am great at being practical and solving problems (and puzzles).
My Dad was very hands on and keen to build things due to being from the ‘make do and mend’ generation and my Mum has the artistic flair.
My wife (also very creative) and family have been very encouraging and supportive of me doing this.
The maker community is simply awesome.

I’ve never known there to be such an open and friendly community. I’ve been a gamer for a long time (you don’t want to know how long), and the community there is great, but it also suffers from a fairly toxic element. Also, the view of the gaming community by the press is less than ideal as it’s quite misunderstood. Sometimes escapism is the goal and I’d argue that jumping into a virtual world is better than having a drink to ‘take the edge off’. As I get older I’m finding myself being more selective with what games I might spend any time on as I really want to be more productive with my time.

The maker community seems to be the obvious choice and the amount of information readily available has made this very easy. I wasn’t sure about making this official, but having watched, listened, and read material from a number of makers, I didn’t see why I shouldn’t jump in and say hello with my projects.

There are a number of online influencers whose projects have inspired me to do this, so it would be silly if I didn’t list a few of them below. This isn’t a definitive list, and I’ll probably post about them more in the future (maybe even profile them), but for now, they are… (again in no particular order and with links to their YouTube channels)

I don’t intend to build every project I watch, but I love to watch all of them and understand the various different ways in which people work and solve their own maker challenges.