nti Leeds Leia Bassett gives us a report on the first day of thinking digital, attending the 'Show & Tell: Gadget DIY' session at Thinking Digital University, sponsored by the Institute of Digital Innovation, hosted by Ian Forrester from BBC Backstage and featuring Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino from Tinker.it, Adrian McEwan from MCQN, Richard Garside, Stuart Childs and Dave Lynch from the Jamjar Collective (Friispray), Andy Huntingdon from Extraversion Interaction & Sound, Ken Banks from FrontlineSMS, Ant Miller from BBC Micro and Johnny Chung Lee - author of the Wiimote Whiteboard Software amongst other things and now working for Microsoft.

The session showcased some of the latest gadgets, open source software and platforms, funky design ideas and generally cool technology DIY projects, including digital graffiti project Friispray, Bubblino - the groovy robot that blows bubbles everytime someone tweets #TDU or #TDC on Twitter, tapTap - the modular rhythm construction toy and a raft of Arduino applications.

Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino provided some fantastic one-liners such as 'Make magazine is like geek porn'. She continued that there are probably solutions out there to problems you didn't even know you had, but things like Maker Faire and Thinking Digital bring people together, and help develop ideas to take on broader applications.

Open Source, Open Standards and sharing ideas, designs and information was a key theme across all speakers. When asked how it feels to share information and see other people develop products from your ideas, Stuart Childs from the Friispray team told delegates that it was really nice to see people get excited about what you've done and see them develop projects of their own. Johnny Chung Lee also added that it was also the geek way of being slightly narcissistic in that it was great to have so many people want your ideas!

Fantastic workshop and some really cool ideas, technologies and DIY gadgets on show. Great start to the Thinking Digital Conference!

by Leia Bassett