Make: PDX, first meeting in Portland

4 thoughts on “Make: PDX, first meeting in Portland”

1. DorkbotPDX says:

   April 2nd, 2009 at 9:21 am

   Or to escape the O’Reilly branding machine, try Dorkbot PDX every other Monday at Lucky Lab in NW. Or PARTS. Or the many other existing meetings…

1. Gareth Branwyn says:

   April 2nd, 2009 at 4:44 pm

   @DorkbotPDX
   Your swipe at O’Reilly and MAKE is entirely off base. We don’t have anything to do with the Make: City groups, except to give these enthusiastic makers our blessing and to allow them to use “MAKE” in their name and say “inspired by” on their flyers. It’s not part of any grand branding “machinery.” We don’t create these groups. They come to us.

   Actually, I shouldn’t say we don’t have anything to do with them. We help them however we can, on an informal basis. We offer support, advice in promoting their group (and frequent announcements here on the site), free merch whenever we can, etc. Sure we get some promo and community good will out of it, but I can assure you, the outgo is greater than the inflow. We do it because we want to encourage anyone, ANY group that’s about getting together, making things and building maker/DIY/hacker communities. We provide the EXACT SAME informal support and cheerleading to Dorkbot, FIRST, Science Olympiad, hackerspaces, and a bunch of other amateur science and tech and educational organizations.

   Does all of this likely help us in the long run? Probably. But it also helps ALL of these groups, anyone looking to grow this community and market. And after a full day’s work, when I’m sitting here at my desk at 1am, writing an email treatise on organizing a non-profit or offering promotional ideas to one of these groups, believe it or not, that’s what I’m thinking about, not MAKE/O’Reilly’s bottom line.

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