Welcome to Makespace - Archive

Makespace is open for making!

March 30th, 2013 | Posted by Laura in Events | Space | Updates - (0 Comments)

Thursday night was our Grand Opening – we are now officially open, and posters are available to help you spread the word!

The space is looking excellent:

We had a super crowd of people joining us to celebrate the fact that Makespace is open and full of people and kit to help you make things.

We have a beautiful new sign!

We unveiled our Founder Sponsors too. Ideaspace and the Institute for Manufacturing have supported us for a long time and we are incredibly grateful for their belief in us from the start, as well as excellent advice and support. We are delighted to welcome ARM, The Technology Partnership and Microsoft Research Cambridge on board and look forward to working with them in the coming months. Cambridge Science Centre have also been long-standing collaborators of Makespace and we’re looking forward to many future outreach and engagement collaborations with them.

Many thanks to all our Founder Members and Founder Sponsors – here’s our commemorative plaque, which will glow forever in gratitude:

About Makespace

March 16th, 2013 | Posted by Laura in Space | Updates - (0 Comments)

Now Makespace is accepting sign ups for new members, it’s a great time to find out how we work. We’ve got lots of new information up:

FAQ: http://makespace.org/faq/

Membership information: http://makespace.org/membership/

How Makespace works and what Makespace is: http://makespace.org/space/principles/

There will be more events coming up soon (and all listed on Meetup) where you can come and see the space and also where you can sign up to become a member.

We’re also going to be having a big Grand Opening in a couple of weeks – numbers will be very limited because we need to fit in our supporters, sponsors and founders – but there will be some tickets available for the wider community – watch this space!

Space fit out update

January 26th, 2013 | Posted by Laura in Space | Updates - (0 Comments)

There’s been lots of progress recently in fitting out the space.

Myford 7 lathe from 1969 – now up and working nicely! Many thanks to Martin for the donation:

Laser-etched sign:

Members’s storage boxes in the corridor:

Beautiful corridor cupboards:

Custom coat-rack:

There’s still lots more to come before we’re ready to open though! Watch this space.

We’ve also had some great making progress:

The laser cutter is seeing loads of use. Here’s one of the smallest scale projects:

The very first part from the Myford7 :

Also this week, Roger hand-filed a chuck to incredible accuracy (to help with the lathe setup), proving a great illustration that sometimes fancy computer tools are no match for solid skills

Open Evening

January 16th, 2013 | Posted by Laura in Events | Space | Updates - (0 Comments)

On January 15th, we held an Open Evening to tell everyone about what’s coming and to give Cambridge area makers a preview of Makespace, before we open in February. It was a great excuse to tidy up the space and get some little jobs finished, like painting the cupboard doors, laser cutting signs, and so on.

The attendance was amazing – Meetup.com showed 123 people due to visit.

We had taped out areas on the floor and signs to show where pieces of kit that aren’t installed yet would be appearing. We gave several tours of the space, and Laura, Simon and Jonny presented briefly about what Makespace will be like.

There’s photos on Meetup and also on our Flickr group. Here are some of the highlights:

Merry Christmas from Makespace!

December 23rd, 2012 | Posted by Laura in Space | Updates - (0 Comments)

We’ve now got 59 paid up Founder Members, almost all of whom have been dropping in and using (or building!) the space in recent weeks.

If you’ve not seen the space recently there’s been lots of activity – check out the pictures below.

January is going to be incredibly busy as we get ready to open! Even though we expect the opening in February to be a soft launch, with Makespace continuing to grow and evolve through the year, there’s still plenty of things to do before February…

On the admin side, the Directors need to finalise the fire risk assessment; we’ve already booked in fire extinguishers and fire detection to be fitted in January. We also need to write the first aid policy and arrange first aid training for some members. The induction materials for new members need to be created, and we need to work out the details of how events in Makespace work so that they are safe and enjoyable.

The start of 2013 marks a shift in dynamic for Makespace too. 2012 was dominated by the legal and administrative details of securing the space and getting a framework in place so the community could own and run it. This work is nearly finished and so the Directors (especially Laura James who has devoted significant time to Makespace in 2012 in an executive role) will be acting as much more conventional non-exec directors, looking after the legal and financial sides to enable the community to really organise and run the space. (Of course, all three directors are also community members and will remain active in that capacity!) So the holidays mark the pivot to a member-run space and community – yay!

The community are also going to be busy. Before we open we need to have systems around equipment tracking and maintenance in place; a team of people to look after event organisation and space booking; another team to think about sponsorship; and processes around how new members will join us. We’ve got more fit-out to do (ideally the kitchen needs to be completed; there’s painting to do and carpet tiles to fit and sorting out of the kit we already have). There’s also more purchases to make; to be up to a basic level where we feel able to open, we need at least a few more bits and ideally quite a bit more. The Directors feel the absolute minimum acceptable kit we need on top of what we had at the start of December will be:

* 2x proper solder stations
* laser cutter
* milling machine
* good consumables bank (everything from pens to resistors)
* workbench with vices

But of course we’d love to (and expect to!) see more kit and furniture and bits, and so a drive for Founder Sponsors is underway. Founder Sponsors are organisations who believe Makespace is vital for the continuing and growing success of the Cambridge region in engineering, design and manufacturing, and that community engagement with technology is an essential part of this. Founder Sponsors will contribute significant financial support to Makespace to support and enable our opening and first months. If your company would like to get involved with Makespace in this way, contact management @ makespace.org

Founder members will be dropping in to the space over the holidays, to map out the electrical circuits more, to paint, to play with Lego and to 3D print things and more. Have a Merry Christmas everyone, get excited and make things, and hope to see you in Makespace in 2013!

Christmas lights, a sofa and a sound system:

A working, plumbed-in sink (thanks Dan and Roger and others!):

The room formerly known as the Library is now the Store Room (the former Store Room is now called the Office, and remains restricted access):

Lots more tools and lamps and bits of all kinds:

Coming soon – November Maker Night (&update)

November 4th, 2012 | Posted by Laura in Events | Meetups | Space | Updates - (0 Comments)

Summary:

Maker Night open to all, November 20th (please RSVP)
Social nights continue, open to all: next up, 8pm, Thursday November 8th, Arts Picturehouse bar
We’re tidying and fitting out the space now
We are probably looking at early 2013 for a grand opening – but we won’t commit to a date yet!

The next Maker Night is now being planned for November 20th – an evening to bring your own projects and tools and work on them in Makespace and with others! This will be a great chance to finish old projects and start new ones – we’ll also be preparing projects for our upcoming Show and Tell (date TBC) where we’ll be showcasing all kinds of Makespace community projects to demonstrate to potential sponsors why they should support Makespace. Makespace will be open and we may have some basic tools available, but mostly this is about bringing your own things along, just like used to happen at SuperHappyDevClub. If there’s something specific you’d like to use but can’t bring yourself, ask on the Google group mailing list and see if someone else can bring one along. Please note we won’t be ready to support serious power tools, but soldering, sewing etc will be fine. If in doubt please check on the mailing list – we will endeavour to support as many activities as we can, but as we won’t be fully open there may be some limitations. It’s likely that there will be pizza at some point, too. We also, as ever, welcome donations of cake, especially from people who’ve not been to Makespace maker night before! (Please RSVP on the meetup group so we can get some idea of numbers.)

Fortnightly social meetings continue on Thursdays, with the next on November 8th, from 8pm at the Arts Picturehouse cafe. We’ve moved to an earlier time in response to feedback, but please note the Founder members who’ve been at the planning meeting that night won’t be along until 9:30. These are always great opportunities to natter about making and makespace and more – here’s a pic from the last one:

The space is looking a lot better already, and it will soon be even nicer – the Founder Members will be painting the space this week, after much effort to patch up damaged sections of wall and remove rawlplugs and so on. We have quite a few bits of kit and a collection of tables and chairs, almost all of which have been donated or found. Founders are meeting twice weekly to work on their own projects, improve the space, and plan things. If you’d like to stay in touch with this activity, the Google group is the best place, and you can also see some of the plans emerging on the wiki.

We are still waiting on the University for the Licence to Alter sadly – we’ve agreed the specification of works, which I expected to be the tough part, but the process for sign off at the University end is dragging out. I’d hoped we’d have informal permissions in place before now and we haven’t even managed to get those, although our solicitor is holding all the signed papers now. However, I am optimistic that we’ll have this sorted within two weeks, and we plan to fit access control in the week of the 19th. Fingers crossed!

We have our insurers coming around on Wednesday 7th November to see how things are looking. Fire exit signage, first aid kit and accident book, and a first (temporary) version of health and safety, fire and first aid policies, alongside some risk assessments, are all in place, and there will be much work in the coming weeks to enhance these. There will be new versions for once we have access control in place, and wholly new versions before we open fully. The University’s insurers unfortunately failed to make our scheduled inspection time, so that will be happening now towards the end of November. We’re also starting work to get Founding Sponsors in place – these will be corporate supporters of Makespace.

We also had a great day helping the Cambridge Science Centre‘s Science Xchange again this year, with the MakeZone workshop. We helped families and visitors build the second Cambridge Chain Reaction (following a very successful one last year – watch the video!) and the Guildhall was packed in the afternoon to watch Julian Huppert set off the 2012 reaction. We’ll be able to share a video of this soon… Thanks to all the Makespace volunteers who helped prepare sections of the Chain Reaction in advance, and on the day!

Building Makespace

October 17th, 2012 | Posted by Laura in Meetups | Space | Updates - (0 Comments)

Succinct version: you can still be a Founder Member! And there’s lots of ways to get involved, Founder or not…

What’s happening now?

We’re now in the “Building Makespace” phase, when the space is fitted out, equipment bought, sponsors selected, and the community starts to come together to figure out how it should all work. You can see this on our Timeline.

The main activity at the moment is Founder member meetings. These take place on Tuesdays and Thursdays and each week we have a planning meeting (sitting down planning stuff, such as rules and policies – not as dull as that might sound!) and a making/designing meeting, which is more freeform and has people working on Makespace projects (eg patching holes in walls, or planning automated storage robots) and their own projects. For both these meetings, we think it’s great to follow the old SuperHappyDevClub principle, that you should come with an idea of what you want to work on, even if you abandon that and do something else the moment you walk through the door. For the planning meetings, we’ll work out what topics need discussion (on the wiki) and perhaps vote for what should be on each week’s agenda there too. (For the first weeks, the making that can be done in the space may be limited whilst insurance and health and safety details are worked out and put in place, and the space will only be able to be open when someone with the key is available.) These meetings are open to paid-up Founders only – it’s a perk of having supported Makespace financially up front. (Meeting calendar: Makespace on Google Calendar)

We’re also aiming to have open Maker Night type events each month. There will be a couple of bigger events too once we have a few key bits and piece in place (like fire detection), which will help us raise our profile and secure sponsorship and so on. When we’ve got all the necessary parts in place, we’ll have a Grand Opening, at which point the bootstrapping period ends, normal members can join, and Makespace will be making things.

As well as events, we are working on getting the fitout permissions we need from the University and hope to start fitting out the space with access control very soon!

About Founder Membership

Originally we planned to stop accepting new Founders once we began this phase – having a deadline was helpful because we could see roughly how many people we had and could budget accordingly. There’s been a lot of interest in becoming a Founder though, and some great people have approached us and are keen, and we don’t want to exclude them. So we are open to more Founder applications! We ask that potential founders tell us a bit about themselves and in most cases meet us before we go ahead with the membership, because Founder Membership entails shared responsibility for the space, kit and community. If you would like to become a founder, fill in our simple form: http://bit.ly/MakespaceFounderDetails and we’ll arrange to meet you if we don’t know you, or if we do, we’ll send you payment information.

Being a Founder Member of Makespace means that you are supporting Makespace up front financially, and also helping create the space. Founders will be most actively involved in the coming weeks designing, planning, building and collaborating on space layout, features, kit, rules, community and more, both online and in person at Makespace. The £250 payment gives you 6 months of membership starting now, including our building-Makespace phase and once we are fully open. Founders will also get RFID access to the space as soon as we can offer this, sothey can help create the space and work within it even before we are open to the public, so we all share some of the responsibility for Makespace, and so if we haven’t met you in person yet, we’d very much like to before we take any payment from you.

Note that once we are ready to open properly, we will stop taking new Founders!

Join in!

Plans for Makespace (the space, the community, the kit and more) are now being actively discussed on our mailing list: do sign up and get involved: Google Group for CamMakespace

Our wiki is also now becoming more active with ideas, lists of potential kit, potential donations and more: Makespace wiki. If you want to learn more about how Makespace will work, I’d recommend:

If you want to leap in and get involved, there’s a page listing what’s being actively worked on at the moment. If you aren’t sure about wikis, try our Wiki HOWTO thread on the mailing list.

You can also join the community in IRC: we are #makespace on freenode (and if you aren’t familiar with IRC, there’s help. You can also join #makespace via the web)

Madespace – First Founder Members event

October 3rd, 2012 | Posted by Laura in Events | Space - (0 Comments)

Last night was Madespace, an event to bring together Founder Members to start planning Makespace.

Thirty Founder Members attended, even though it was “Bring a chair” – because the space is still pretty much empty!

Some nice chairs in Makespace colours:

This event marks the start of building Makespace now we have the space. There’s notes below, but you’re probably wondering what happens next…

If you want to be involved in the discussions around Makespace plans, join the discussion list (this is not the meetup group – it’s a separate, higher volume list for Makespace planning, and anyone can join)
Come to the next Maker Night in around a month
Founder Members will be having more planning meetings and also meetups to design things for the space – if you’re a Founder you’ll hear more about these shortly. They will likely be on Tuesdays and Thursdays and some might involve adjourning to a nearby pub where others are welcome to join (perhaps this could mix with the existing fortnightly pubmeets?)
Join our IRC channel to keep in touch with other Makespace supporters – we’re at #makespace on freenode (and if you aren’t familiar with IRC, there’s help. You can also join #makespace via the web)
Dive into the Makespace wiki, which is where information will be collected and discussed around making Makespace. There are some specific pages you might want to check out:
- Kit wishlist (should expand soon to include space features and storage needs, etc)
- People and skills (we’d like to flesh this out to be a place to find out what skills we all have to offer – whether that’s for Makespace building (can you build cabinets, advise on workshop safety, paint walls?) or for projects). There’s also a People page.
- Donations. A lot of people have kit or furniture to offer, but we don’t want to commit to take everything and get over-crowded or end up with lots of junk which might be costly to dispose of. If you have something you could donate, post here (ideally with photo!) and we can work out what to take.
- What is Makespace? Where should we fit into the world of makerspaces, FabLabs, hackspaces, TechShops and more?

Notes from the meeting

Simon, Jonny and Laura gave a short presentation on how Makespace came to be – going all the way back to SuperHappyDevClub in 2007 for Simon, BodgeSoc in 2008 for Jonny, and Make-a-Makespace in 2010 for Laura. (The presentation is online as an SVG – which should open in Firefox, but it’s a pretty big file!) All 3 of us have two hats: as Directors of Makespace Cambridge Limited, and as community members, and we’ll do our best to make sure you know which we are wearing; it’s important for us to remember that the company exists solely so we can have the space, and that the space is really run by the community. Then we had discussion on a range of topics around planning Makespace – the space, the community, the kit, the projects, and more.

We still need to get access control and fire detection in before we can really start using the space properly – because we need our insurance to be in full effect before real making of things, even just by founders using their own tools, can begin. Please be patient – we are working on this as fast as we can, and we’re all keen to get started.

Most of the things we talked about will start to be Wiki pages where ideas can be fleshed out. Specific topics we raised included:

Storage: what storage do we need? Secure? size?
Rules: what rules should we have or not have?
Community: how does this form into a committee/group which can make decisions? Is it a Society?
Priorities: what’s important first? chairs, internet, kit??
Spatial design: how should we lay out the space we have?
Features: what features should the space have? Presentation podiums, storage robots, ??
Where are we on the shiny / less shiny spectrum? (this affects how potential sponsors might view the space, as well as people’s attitudes to the space, whether they feel involved/responsible and so on)
Donations: what do we take? What do we not take?
Kit: what are the priorities?
What have we forgotten? What else should we be talking about?

We also talked about guest membership, how people can bring guests into the space, how events work, and how groups/clubs can work with us. These are big topics all themselves and one for a future planning meeting; because there’s so many possible options and it does tie into legal/financial questions, Simon, Laura and Jonny will try to think of some concrete options/strawmen that we can discuss. So that’s something to come back to in a future week.
There’s lots of interest in storage, both for projects, for large items, and secure storage for personal tools. We made an initial decision that founders with large projects needing storage could bring them in for a couple of weeks, and that at some point we might need to charge a bit of money for longer term storage, or change this decision if the space gets overfull. If you have a big project you need to store in the coming days/weeks, get in touch with Laura.

There was enthusiasm for whiteboards on the walls, for sofas in the mezzanine breakout space, and for the space to be available for hanging out even when not actively making. If you’re interested in running events, that’s super and it would be great to know what sort of thing – maybe a wiki page for potential events will be created

We’d like to be able to put names to faces, and so we agreed that founders should bring a (paper!) photo of themselves; we’ll start to put up founder and later member photos on the walls along the corridor.

There was general interest in Founder members having badges (perhaps interim ones, and then proper ones made on our own printers/cutters later!). T shirts are also of interest. We already have T shirt designs and high res graphics, so get in touch with Jonny / Laura for these and we’ll get them online soon too.

Emails will go out to Founder Members this week to confirm their interest and then we’ll be doing online payments. Because being a Founder involves some responsibility (especially once we are able to give out RFIDs for access!) we want to make sure we’ve met all the paying founders and that we know a bit about how they would like to be involved.

We will split future Founder meetings into two types: one for designing things for the space (such as the storage robot!) and talking about personal making projects, and one for planning Makespace details. These will alternate on Tuesdays and Thursdays, with the first “designing” meeting next Tuesday (9th October) and the first “planning” meeting Thursday 11th October. The week after that, it’ll be planning on the Tuesday and designing on the Thursday. For both these meetings, we think it’s great to follow the old SuperHappyDevClub principle, that you should come with an idea of what you want to work on, even if you abandon that and do something else the moment you walk through the door For the planning meetings, we’ll work out what topics need discussion (on the wiki!) and perhaps vote for what should be on each week’s agenda there too.

Thanks to everyone for all your support! We’re all looking forward to more Makespace events – it looks so wonderful already when there are people making things there:

First Maker Night

September 28th, 2012 | Posted by Laura in Events | Space - (0 Comments)

Thursday 27th September was a milestone for Makespace – our first event in the space! This was Maker Night, a chance for people to show off their existing projects and share plans and ideas for new ones. For a lot of people this was also their first time in the space, with a frequent comment: “It’s so big!”

We had 80 people over the evening and it was great to see so much enthusiasm and energy.

There’s more photos on our Flickr pool.

If you couldn’t make it, don’t worry – we’ll be running some sort of Maker Night once a month or so until we open.

Press release: Premises secured

September 12th, 2012 | Posted by Laura in Space | Updates - (0 Comments)

Makespace Cambridge Limited today completed on the lease for premises at 16 Mill Lane, Cambridge.

To mark this significant step, we are issuing a press release, which says: Makespace is extremely grateful for the patience of our advisors and our enthusiastic future members, without whom we couldn’t have got this far. Many thanks are also due to the University of Cambridge for supporting us with the lease of such a perfect workshop space for a peppercorn rent. We can’t wait to fit the workshop out, build our community and start making things!

The sharp-eyed amongst you will notice that today isn’t Monday – there were some last minute delays as the University needed to secure other parts of the building before we could take possession. The final door was secured this lunchtime and the lease completed this afternoon. Yay!

We are still working on the licence to alter but with final quotes meeting the new university requirements for security coming in this shouldn’t take much longer.

It’s still possible to sign up as a Founder Member if you would like to be involved in the fitout phase and can contribute £250 up front for 6 months of membership. However, this opportunity will end on October 2nd which will be our kickoff Madespace event for Founders (see What happens next).