[hackerspaces] Fwd: Fwd: Hackerspaces panel at Maker Faire

[Bryan Bishop]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jim Newton <jim at techshop.ws>
Date: Thu, May 27, 2010 at 1:37 PM
Subject: Re: [hackerspaces] Fwd: Hackerspaces panel at Maker Faire
To: bay-area-reprap at googlegroups.com



Ben, I agree with you completely.  Hacker spaces are all about
community.  At first I thought it was odd when I observed the same
thing at HackerDoJo (everyone nose-down in their PowerBooks with the
small CNC mill and the electronics bench sitting idle).  But then I
understood it was because humans want community.

In the case of TechShop, we are about community (with 700 members, and
about 75 people using the shop each day), but it is also about giving
our community members access to close to $750,000 worth of
professional machines, tools, software, and equipment.  All new
TechShop locations starting with TechShop San Francisco (926 Howard
St., opening Summer 2010) and TechShop San Jose (300 S. 2nd St.,
opening Fall 2010) will offer all BRAND NEW equipment.  We offer our
members access to no fewer than 10 different CNC machines at each
TechShop location (laser cutters, a Tormach CNC mill and Tormach CNC
lathe, ShopBot 4' x 8' wood router, ShopBot Buddy wood router, ShopBot
Tyro (soon), Stratasys 3D printer, CNC vinyl cutter, CNC embroidery
machine, CNC weaving loom (soon), a TorchMate 4' x 8' CNC plasma
cutter that can edge cut 1" steel, and more.  Plus, we offer our
members all the support equipment like sheet metal, woodworking,
plastics, refrigerated dry shop compressed air, welding, textiles,
paper craft, automotive, electronics, painting and finishing, grinding
and sandblasting, manual machining, free high-speed WiFi, free coffee
and fresh-popped kettle corn, and lots more.  We add new equipment all
the time, including the recent addition of an injection molding
system, a large-format high-resolution flat-bad scanner and
large-format archival photo printer, 3D laser scanner, metal spinning
lathe, and personal silkscreening equipment.  It is hard to replicate
this kind of access in your garage for $100 a month!

Ray, I'm surprised by your statements.  I personally don't understand
what you find appealing of deliberately limiting yourself to using a
single home-built CNC machine and a small handful of other mall
machines, and working alone in your garage...in order to save $100 a
month.  You're missing out on participating in the tremendous
creativity of the other 700 members at TechShop Menlo Park, and you
are artificially limiting the enormous potential of what you can do
with such a smaller tool selection.

Ray, I think your TechShop membership actually expired about 4 months
ago, so it has already lapsed, but of course we'd love to have you
back as a current TechShop member (especially with our special Maker
Faire prices that are good through June 19...see our web site or come
to one of our upcoming Open House events June 5 and June 19).  Also,
if I recall correctly, you only live about 10 minutes from TechShop
Menlo Park...I know that a lot of people across the United States can
only DREAM that they lived that close to a TechShop!  6 people that I
personally know about have literally moved to the San Francisco Bay
Area in order to be near TechShop.  One of our members actually flies
once a month from Brooklyn to use TechShop for 2 days, and we have
LOTS of members who live more than an hour away!

But TechShop is not for everyone.  If you prefer to limited yourself
to a small set of tools and work alone, then there's not much that
TechShop or any other hacker space has to offer you.  ;)

Jim Newton
Founder, TechShop
Build Your Dreams HERE!
jim at techshop.ws
Main: 1-(800)-640-1975
Cell: 1-(650)-766-6306
http://www.techshop.ws/

On May 27, 2010, at 4:22 AM, ben lipkowitz wrote:

> On Wed, 26 May 2010, Ray Dillinger wrote:
>> Hackerspaces are great for learning from and talking to each other,
>> but mostly promote (and charge for) sharing or common ownership of
>> tools and shops, which is sort of unfortunate as far as I'm concerned.
>>
>> Also?  I'm noticing that for technical activities whose tools have
>> become ubiquitous, like programming, and the design of whose tools
>> has ceased to have significant innovations (like computers,
>> programming tools, and operating systems) there are effectively
>> no communities other than online anymore.  The "money for access
>> to tools" model doesn't work when the tools are a computer
>
> I totally disagree about "to each his own 40 acres and a CNC mill" but whatever. If you go to Hacker Dojo you will see an unused CNC and fifteen people typing away furiously on laptops. Why are they there? I think you might be missing something...
>
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