Day 4 (6/22) Reflections:

On the fourth day we went on a few more interview trips to see why makers do what they do.  On this Saturday morning we started off by traveling to historic Eastern Market.  This place is traditionally known for wholesale food vendors and Saturday markets.  It is one of the largest outdoor markets during the warm months and seems to be expanding every year.  Although the market and food is still the main feature, over the last few years many artists and makers have been moving into Eastern Market because there is a surplus of warehouse buildings that are inexpensive to buy or rent and extremely valuable for space.

The team visited three spaces in and around eastern market.  Signal Return a letter press company, Omnicorp Detroit a maker/hacker space, and Mt. Elliott Makerspace a community focused maker space (a little outside of Eastern Market)

My smaller group visited Omnicorp and Mt. Elliott before we all headed to TechShop.

Omnicorp was an awesome space.  We met Radu there who is a member of Omnicorp and clearly a very passionate person when it comes to making things.  The space was huge and simple.  Every corner was being used for something, whether it was for metal work, bike storage, moped storage, film work, textile work etc. it was just filled with awesome stuff.

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Here are some of the notes I took:

  • Membership is not an automatic thing, but tends to be a natural process.  Must attend hacker nights, show dedication, and then be voted on by the current members
    • All members have equal vote no matter time of membership
    • Radu was a really casual guy with clearly passionate about his work on motors and design
    • Likes to “shake things up a bit”
    • “Can’t be right or wrong with art” but can be right or wrong with airplane design and engine functionality
      • He loves hacking engines and making flying planes and rockets
      • Likes his fingers in a little of everything
      • Knows coding and App design (has actually designed a few major apps)
      • He feels you can’t push limits in certain design fields (ie he said he knew many people that made awesome car designs, but when the safety protocols and other functionality had to be adopted due to driving standards, the design ultimately was no longer functional. Hackers and makers do not have this issue as much)
      • He has a job more for the connections
        • Helps build his sphere of influence

 

Afterward, we traveled to Mt. Elliott Makerspace.  This space was not located in Eastern Market, and was actually located in the basement of a church.  The space was still pretty big and had seven focuses to be exact (see pic).

 

For a basement, they had a number of resources, bike shop, computer lab, electronics lab, 3-D modeling lab, woodshop and more. Unlike the other hacker spaces I have seen, this one was more focused on the young community, with the major demographic being kids between ages 10 and 15.

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Here are my notes:

  • Community focus is to help promote a sense of empowerment and entrepreneurship for the youth in the community
    • Rely heavily on donations, volunteers and foundations (not super sustainable, unless 1 or 2 of these things continue in perpetuity)
    • They have three tiers of shop time
      • Open shop—uninstructed work time
      • Awesome shop—series of workshops to develop deep maker knowledge
      • Sprint shop—quick 1-3 hour workshop to introduce a skill or topic
      • The space is meant to be fluid, stuff is always changing
        • This can be a bit overwhelming at times, but it makes the space constantly usable
        • Short term goals: develop more structured curriculums and help point people towards materials rather than let them go on their own
          • Long-term goals are a little more problematic because of the ever-changing space and resources
          • Want to try and get people to think about the issues without just having the answers presented to them
            • Use Google often “Google it”

 

After lunch, we headed to Allen Park (a close suburb of Detroit) to check out TechShop.  TechShop is a membership based educational maker space.  You can take classes, use equipment and meet tons of new people all at this place.  Their tools range from classic to state of the art and they have a huge facility capable of handling almost any task.  It was a pretty cool site, but very different from Omnicorp and Mt. Elliott Makerspace.

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Here are my notes:

  • Meant to be a social space, DIY space and education space
  • Tools range from basic to cutting edge
  • The space is supposed foster innovation by working with others which help maintain and promote drive for others to create great work
  • They are just here to provide space

Talked with a man working there

  • Been making things since he was 4
  • Loves working with his hands
  • Invents things for a living
  • Made do before TechShop was open
  • Patenting is very important and the ease of getting a patent all depends on how well you write your patent application
    • He is worried about people stealing his ideas, and because he does this for a living he does not talk about his ideas until he has received a patent