noisebridge

Making Makerspaces: Creating a Business Model

Making Makerspaces: Creating a Business Model

This is the second in a series of posts called Making Makerspaces, a distillation of the information gathered for a series of How to Make a Makerspace workshops produced by Artisan’s Asylum and MAKE. These posts will appear on a more-or-less weekly basis, and will focus on mission-critical topics related to founding and running creative manufacturing space. Today, we’ll be discussing common types of expenses and income that makerspaces around the world experience on a regular basis in order to help you create a business model for a space of your own. In the process of identifying these expenses and income, we’ll review examples from several well-established spaces across the U.S. for reference.

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Is it a Hackerspace, Makerspace, TechShop, or FabLab?

Is it a Hackerspace, Makerspace, TechShop, or FabLab?

The past decade has seen the sudden, dramatic appearance of community spaces offering public, shared access to high-end manufacturing equipment. These spaces are interchangeably referred to as hackerspaces, makerspaces, TechShops, and FabLabs. This can lead the intended audience to become incredibly confused as to why there might be so many names for a single concept. I’d like to take some time to untangle the mess, explain the concepts behind each title, and talk about why I now make significant distinctions between all of these types of spaces.

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Noisebridge’s 3rd Birthday Party Ends in Surprise 30-Hour Trip to Singapore

Noisebridge’s 3rd Birthday Party Ends in Surprise 30-Hour Trip to Singapore

photo courtesy of greenwithevil I wasn’t able to attend the third birthday party for San Francisco hackerspace Noisebridge, but I think that their meeting notes summarize it well: Concept came from Moxie. Everyone brings $10 and the theme of the party is what to do with the money. Visual computing voting system. Ended up choosing […]

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Noisebridge hackers launch balloon to 70K feet

Noisebridge hackers launch balloon to 70K feet

San Francisco hackerspace Noisebridge launched a balloon to the upper atmosphere, capturing numerous excellent photos as well as one super spinny video. Declaring a week’s advance notice of a balloon launch to the edge of space when we hadn’t even bought most of the equipment, let alone built it, was probably an act of pique, […]

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