imran*

Category: Manchester

  • DIYBio UK Summit

    DIYbio SummitThis weekend sees the UK's first DIYbio summit take place at Manchester's Madlab, founded my good friends – Hwa Young and Asa Calow.

    The DIYbio movement intends to democratise biology and enable "citizen scientists, amateur biologists and biological engineers who value openness and safety" and the summit is part of Manchester's Science festival and includes speakers from Genspace, Hackteria and Transit Lab.

    I've been following the work of synthetic biologists like Drew Endy and the Open Wetware Lab for many years, but it was back in Spring 2009, when Asa and I attended the Real Hackers Program RNA workshop at ETech in San Diego, that I saw that Asa had the bio bug too. Over the course of a couple of hours, we were taught how to hack E.Coli into various bio applications, by Ginkgo BioWorks' Reshma Shetty.

    Through Hwa's been running various DIYbio meetups recently – includng an octopus dissection workshop! – it's great to see high impact work like the summit being concieved and delivered by the Madlab crew. Indeed, as Monica starts to formulate the 2012 edition of LSxJunior, Asa and I are keen to run a workshop on 'genetics and DNA sequencing for kids'.

    Find out more about the DIYbio Summit at the Madlab site.

    —

    I wonder if any of the outputs from the DIYbio summit will find their way across town to ian Forrester's Last Weekend Dining Club…

  • Exporting the FUTR to fix the present…

    Last September, at a meeting of the National Media Museum's Internet Gallery advisory board, Drew Hemment asked me to develop the 2011 conference programme for FutureEverything.

    I played hard to get, but in honesty, I was flattered that Drew appreciated my work. Just last week we finalised this year's programme, a programme that without Greg Povey's immense intellect and Kevin Moore's tireless tenacity, just could not have come together.

    Futr11
    Kevin asked me to reflect on my experience with FutureEverything for the festival catalogue, so I thought I'd have a little fun with my introduction… 

    He keeps sending us into the past.

    2122? 2047?

    I don’t even know when it is anymore…

    All we know are the rules; we can’t go further back then the day we’re born, or forwards, past the day we’re destined to die.

    He found that the very fabric of space-time itself appeared to store information about every event that had ever occurred in the past.

    We use this knowledge to find the prophets – the ones whose ideas upon which the world turns.

    He sends others back to shadow them and understand the impact of their works right up to the end of their lives. My job is to travel further back, intervene early and influence them to share what they know at the point they can have the greatest impact.

    He tells me to gather together the strongest, but only during the temporal shifts of Springtime and only near the place he calls Mamucium.

    We can’t tell them why. Once an individual space-time pathway has been used, we can’t use it again.

    So, that springtime synod of prophecy has to change their present, steering it away from the terrible future from which we come, saving humanity from fates unimagined.

    Thing is, travelling back through time can unhinge a guy, even if it is to save the world.

    We don’t last long in this job – most end their days in the temporal asylums, skipping and skittering through time, hooked to an outboard hippocampus.

    But while we can export the future to fix the present, we’ll serve Him and You.

     Imran Ali (Conference Director, 2011)

    My experience over the last six months has stretched me to breaking point – temporally, physically and intellectually – but I've been sustained by knowing that the FUTR team is one of the most idealistic, ambitious and fun bunch of people I've had the privilege to work with.

    I hope you'll join us in Mamucium next month 🙂

    #FUTR