This is the first in a series of posts documenting how to start a makerspace of your own in your local community. This post is focused on the one question almost everyone asks when starting a space – how do you get insurance for your makerspace? We’ll start with a quick introduction to the series, and then jump into the meat of the question.
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.
I visited the Citizen Astronaut and Space Hacker Workshop in Silicon Valley this weekend, hosted by Hacker Dojo, to see what’s new and exciting in DIY space stuff. This much is clear after just the first day: If you haven’t explored it before, now is the time to start looking in to sending your experiments into the mesosphere (and beyond).
Five years ago, hackerspaces in the U.S. were few and far between. HacDC (“the capital hackerspace”) celebrates and reflects on five years of our space and what we’ve accomplished. Here are some of the things we’ve done in our half decade of existence: Held classes and workshops on robotics, AVR microcontrollers, bicycle maintenance, electron tubes, […]
Minneapolis lost a great maker’s resource yesterday when The Mill‘s Brian Boyle announced its closure: Since opening February 1, 2012, The Mill has been host to 90 members and 306 participants in classes ranging from soap making and sewing to Arduino microcontrollers and build your own 3D printer. Amazingly talented people have given their time […]
Makerspaces are becoming more and more popular. If you are not familiar, a makerspace or hackerspace is a place for people to gather and make stuff. Each is pretty much unique, but they all share a sense of community and a joy for making things and sharing knowledge. However, even if you are lucky enough to live close to one, it may not be particularly kid-friendly. So, where should you take your young makers when they want a place to turn their ideas into reality with their own hands?
That’s an excellent question. So I did some research and here are five great places you can go with you kids to make things.
Last June, the LVL1 hackerspace in Louisville, KY, held a 24-hour hackathon, where several teams stayed up all night, competing with each other to use an Arduino, a breadboard, as well as any components they could harvest from LVL1’s junkpile, to build the coolest project possible. Joe Pugh and his fellow members Aaron Verdow, Tim […]
