I got to know Ian through HUG, firstly as a member and later as a fellow Director.  He was a calm, supportive, collaborative colleague with a warm friendly manner.  At the annual Ham Fair he was a fixture on the Makerlabs stall adjacent to the HUG  one and encouraged many, young and old, to engage with the various projects.  I also had many interactions with Ian at Makerlabs where he offered advice and practical assistance on quite a few appliances with problems.  Only recently he repaired my Christmas tree lights so I shall think of Ian every year when I decorate the tree from now on.

The last time I saw him was on a walk round council housing in Ham led by Richard Woolf.  He left early to go and meet a friend for lunch and as we said goodbye I never imagined I would not see him again.  He will be greatly missed by everyone who knew him.

Jill Lamb

I’m still not at the point of accepting that Ian has gone.

In rare moments, where the acceptance strikes, my first thought is that I wish I could let Ian know how much we appreciated him.

But then, I think he knew. Ian accepted us for who we are, everyone respected and appreciated. I’m sure he felt the reciprocation of this in the environment his influence created. Makerlab has for years appealed to a vast range of people with our individual peculiarities, difficulties and personal struggles. Some of us, I think, felt more at home around people at Makerlab than anywhere else. Sharing some odd common values associated with making or fixing things.

Sometimes people turn up, having a miserable time at work or at school and meet people like them and find their tribe amongst accepting geeky people doing fabulous and mind bending projects of all kinds. We were pleased, though not surprised, that a review of maker spaces in London suggested that ours was the most community-orientated (costing only £1 to come along without the usual monthly financial commitment). Over the years friends and neighbours have brought in  their precious but broken things and we’ve set about showing them how to fix them. I always say, ‘when you get there, Ian will help you’. He was usually the person to offer the friendly greeting and help people get settled, though sometimes others would help with the actual repair. Ian was keen for others to step up too.

My son recently took a very old and broken computer monitor to try to fix it. It was clearly not something that made economic sense to repair but we could see he was enthusiastic and so Ian and others helped him take it apart and learn about how it worked. It didn’t get fixed but my son got a lot of respect and absolutely loved going along.

Richmond Makerlabs became a magic place. It wasn’t all about Ian of course. Other big hearted techies came along with shared values and mindset to add to the magic. But I think we all know and fear that Ian was really the biggest heart behind it all and put in the most effort and mostly ran the place, though he never wanted to be credited with that. I don’t think he had much time for ego.

We always put up a stand at Ham Fair and one year decided to showcase a 3D printer. Of course people had heard of 3D printers but to see a home-made printer, actually working under a gazebo in the middle of Ham common helped people wandering past to see the reality of these machines and have a conversation. Of course Ian had worked out we could quickly print shopping trolley tokens that people could take away. We didn’t say anything about the submarine batteries used to power the whole setup (which was quite hard work).

Over the years, there have been hundreds of projects, possibly thousands by now. Ian used to record what we’ve been doing each week (take a look!).

Three projects stick in my mind:

1. The Open Source Router project and the oscilloscope

One night, some computer techies were trying to convert a commercial router into an open source router. They had done the necessary fiddling with switches and whatever but it didn’t work. They spent quite a bit of time on it and they were very clever techies with very high powered jobs in the software industry.

Ian suggested hooking it up to an oscilloscope to see what was happening on the circuit board. Now, all computer software people know that everything eventually comes down to 1s and 0s and electronics but this is a really theoretical understanding, disconnected from reality. So, when Ian hooks the oscilloscope up and, from the voltage waveforms on the circuit board, he starts reading out the binary, jaws dropped. It’s a short hop from binary to ASCII and the software folks were off and running again, now able to read the instructions being sent. I’ve been working in software for more than 30 years and was astonished. Ian was just matter-of-fact about it but he was pleased to have helped the project along I think.

2. The bee wing flapper (for the bee costume)

One of our regulars was a bee campaigner with a very impressive bee costume and some campaigning songs to go with it. Late one Tuesday night she said something like, “I wish I could make my wings flap”. Ian rarely had spare moments on Tuesday nights but he got interested in this wish and got a pencil out. He quickly thought a windscreen wiper motor would be the very thing for this one and started sketching the mechanism. And of course, the flapping bee wings were born. They were fabulous.

3. The PIR light made from scratch

With no fanfare or much discussion Ian made a PIR light for the makerlab, which was always very dark when you first open the door. Of course most people buy things like this. Some people take an old one and repair it. Almost nobody builds the entire thing from scratch but, of course, this is what Ian did. He designed the circuit board and ordered it from China for less than £1. Then he 3D printed the case and assembled the whole thing and installed it. How many people do you know that can make things like that from scratch? I was blown away by this one but Ian was just matter of fact about it (but quite pleased it worked).

Tuesday nights won’t ever be the same. Though having kids has kept me away for quite some years, I’ve always maintained a strong feeling of connection with the place and have turned up when a precious thing was broken, or with a neighbour with a broken thing, or a project idea.

I sometimes wonder: what if everyone was like Ian?  We’d have no wars and we’d have sorted out climate change and we’d all be looking for the next interesting projects to work on.

We’ll miss you Ian.  

I’ll have to try to remember to be kinder without my regular reminder from hanging out with one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. 

I hope we get to call the new building the Ian Bowden Makerlab so we can keep answering the question ‘who’s that Ian Bowden fella?’. (We should apologise for the idea, Ian,  because we’re sure you’d not approve!)

Carl, from Richmond Makerlabs

(I’ve added Ryan’s photo from Twitter but i prefer this one!)

We have been meeting up with Ian at our annual cousin’s gathering for over fifteen years and always enjoyed his lovely nature and his cheerful and entertaining company.

We will all miss him.