Held in the conference room with me present. Helen seemed to be charing the meeting. Not sure who gets to be chair or why and what it implies about Heather's position in TQ.
This has everyone acting in a much more businesslike manner. Darren is quite quiet.
Seems that the Hub has been finalised with 6 exhibits. I certainly didn't gather that from the meeting yesterday which was much more chaotic than this. The theme is "how electricity enters the home" plus "lightning." This is not what I understood from yesterday's meeting or relistening to the Overview: afterwards.
The six exhibits were described by Dawn as:
What's in the wire
See the light (an old one)
Split transformer
Conductivity
Crank Power - generating electricty
Jacob's Ladder - high voltage.
JL gets a lot of discussion because it is apparently very dramatic. I think it's one of those Frankenstein's monster type of twin poles in which the electric sparks move upwards.
There's then a long discussion of "Fat Cat Racing" which seems to have morphed into the Scalectrix.
Darren reports that there is a problem with getting a solar panel exhibit set up because "TQ is a charity" which means that there are issues over funding them. He seems to think that it may be possible but that it would take time.
DS goes on to explain that as well as the 6 hub exhibits there is a "Magnetic Island" which is likely to go downstairs with 4 (presumably) magnetic exhibits. Separate but related.
I am interested by the dynamic between Darren and Anna here. Darren seems a little diffident and Anna is a strong presence. Her main focus seems to be on who is writing the texts for the exhibits. It seems to be important to her. Perhaps the education department gets more into the exhibits through the texts on them.
There is quite a long session of playing with the Scalectrix which is handcranked. Bought from Toys R Us. Darren starts it and gets the cars moving quickly. Others also try with varying degress of success. Darren is being a boy with a toy again.
Darren focuses on how the racing aspect will create social competition. This seems to be important to him. He does state that the crank would need to ruggedised and that they make their own rather than buying it in. Seem to think that the exhibit may need a lot of maintenance.
At one point, as Darren is driving a car it spins out of control off the track and just misses the charter mark. Later Anna said, when talking about this, "Christopher would have killed you" (if the car had hit the charter mark.)
When discussion moves on to marketing Darren gets upset about "bus backs" (advertising on the back of bus tickets). Apparently they have "general" adverts not specific ones for IE. Last year they did general ones and Darren was promised that this year they would be specific.
There's a long discussion about publicity photos. There is a suggestion that a plasma sphere is used as part of it until Darren says that they are Christopher's least favourite exhibit - although he doesn't give a reason why. They talk around Tesla Coils and the Jacob's Ladder but finally settle on a flashing "Q".
The discussion moves on to "busking" which is I think simply going out and about to advertise the show. They discuss doing a TQ science show at Cardiff Festival but don't reach a conclusion.
Heather reveals a battery battery-less torch that she has bought from Innovations and which has to be shaken to work. This is passed around the table and after a couple of failures is made to work. Darren seems quite taken by this, I think he sees this as a case of interactivity demonstrated through physical action. I took a photo of him playing with it and that seems to have started him playing to the camera again.
siobhan is apparently quite new at this and I get the impression that she is under a lot of pressure to learn the ropes. Darren constantly uses historical precedents - especially in the "bus back" case.
The meeting breaks up with more playing of the Scalectrix and the next meeting is set for a month's time.