Welcome to the next big thing, the Maker Movement and its revolution. We are still riding out the waves of the last big things, the computer revolution and the explosion of the Internet. But because the maker revolution is physical, it is destined to be bigger. We can’t live in a computer or on the Internet, but we do live in houses, drive cars, wear clothes, use medical devices, play with toys, eat, grow, and live in the real world. I love the virtual world, but even its next big foray—the Internet of Things (where we connect physical objects up to sensors attached to the Internet)—will leverage and reside in its very physicalness. For the Internet of Things to work, there must be “things” to be attached to. What is happening and helping to drive the Maker Movement is that the nature of making things is changing. That is primarily what this book is about: the changing nature of making things and its tremendous impact on your life.
I’m the CEO of TechShop, a membership-based, do-it-yourself (DIY), open access, fabrication workspace. From my unique perch in the Maker community, I have had the opportunity over the last six years to see the emergence of a movement, the Maker Movement. TechShop is an integral player in that movement. Started in October 2006 by Jim Newton and a group of diehard maker enthusiasts in Menlo Park, California, TechShop was the first open-access shop of its kind. With six locations open across the United States at the time of this writing, and many more in the works and aspirations to go international, TechShop is now the largest and most influential makerspace in the world.
Shop locations average 16,000 to 20,000 square feet in size, with every tool and piece of equipment needed to make just about anything . . . like the world’s fastest motorcycle, the world’s first desktop diamond-manufacturing device, the world’s cheapest drip irrigation system, and award-winning start-ups, one of which is currently worth billions of dollars. It is the most creative hub of activity in every city where it opens. People move to be near one; others take extended vacations in them; and a number of venture-backed start-ups have temporarily relocated their engineering teams to work out of the space. TechShop is changing the nature of making things, who gets to make them, and how they are made. The platform is allowing anyone over 16 years old to make almost anything, in a space designed for them, with access to the world’s most powerful and easy-to-use machines the world has ever seen.
Through my work at Avery Dennison in the 1990s as corporate director of global technology and business development, I developed an understanding of the importance of and barriers to manufacturing. As director of computer services at Kinko’s at the beginning the 2000s, where I managed a $200-million product line of publically available, open access, computers systems (10,000+) along with powerful software tied to large expensive high production machines, I saw firsthand the transformative power of open access to tools. We launched more design firms every year out of Kinko’s than any school ever did.
As the former owner/operator of an auto body shop, I understand the importance of pride and craftsmanship, the local aversion to manufacturing, and the sometimes stifling effects of regulation. And now, as the CEO of TechShop, I have a unique opportunity to arm a Maker Movement army with the tools it needs to change itself and the world.
Along the way, I also picked up an MBA at the feet of the grandfather of management, Peter Drucker, and I am a trained revolutionary, thanks to the Special Forces training I received on my way to becoming a Green Beret. I use the dialectic of movements, manifestos, and revolutions explicitly.
A number of trends are coming together to push the Maker Movement forward. Cheap, powerful, and easy-to-use tools play an important role. Easier access to knowledge, capital, and markets also help to push the revolution. A renewed focus on community and local resources and a desire for more authentic and quality things, along with a renewed interest in how to make things, also contribute to the movement. I’ll cover each in its own way, but with a multiplicity of trends pushing along the Maker Movement, we have only begun to see an outline of its eventual power to remake the United States and the world.
The founders of this movement launched Make Magazine, the bible of the Maker Movement, in January 2005. Dale Dougherty, Sherry Huss, and Dan Woods, along with the support and encouragement from Tim O’Reilly, launched the magazine and then the Maker Faire, an annual gathering of 50,000 to 125,000 in three major cities around the country,
Modeled after the old Popular Mechanics format, with a heavy emphasis on describing projects that could be made by the home enthusiast, Make Magazine has become the touch-stone of the movement. The arrival of each magazine is like getting a new Christmas catalog of things you want . . . to make.
When the group launched the first Maker Faire in San Mateo, California, in April 2006, 25,000 people showed up, many from out of state, wanting to connect with other people like themselves. And just like that, with an eclectic mix of people, projects, and things, the twenty-first-century version of the state fair was born. Eight years later, with expansions to hundreds of Mini Maker Faires in other cities and states around the country, the San Mateo Maker Faire will likely top 125,000 visitors and participants in 2013. With its annual draw of tens of thousands of acolytes joining together to celebrate making things, Maker Faire is like Mecca to the Maker Movement.
At the first Faire, future TechShop founder Jim Newton sat with a table, a sign, and an idea. By October 2006, he, his partner, and a bunch of volunteers had opened the first full-blown makerspace.
Since then, the movement has begun, and TechShop has been joined by many other companies. We have partnered with Autodesk, the software company that owns AutoCAD, Inventor, 3ds Max, and Maya. Autodesk has jumped into the Maker Movement with both feet, releasing a slew of free software, making it possible for anyone eight to eighty to design and make. The company has also increased its pace of acquisitions with purchases like Instructables.com, an online free instructional website where one can learn and share how to make almost anything.
Ford Motor Company, DARPA, the Veterans Administration, General Electric, Lowe’s Home Improvement, National Instruments, and a growing number of other large and small companies have recently joined with us and others in helping to drive the message, platforms, and impact of this movement.
New companies have emerged as a result of the Maker Movement. AdaFruit, Sparkfun, Inventibles, Quirky, and MakerBot Industries all come to mind. One of the keys to this movement is the democratizing impact of access to the tools one needs to make things.
I met Jim Newton, founder and now chairman of TechShop, at a software party in Palo Alto, California, in 2007. I overheard him describe the workshop as being “kind of like Kinko’s for geeks.” Since, at one point in my career, I had run the geekiest part of Kinko’s (the computer services area across the United States), I was intrigued. I thought to myself, “I am Kinko’s for geeks. What is this guy talking about?” Eventually, Jim got me to come and take a look at the first TechShop location in Menlo Park, and he introduced me to the beginning of the movement.
At one point on that first visit, I went from table to table in the store asking, “What are you making?” Three times in a row I talked to entrepreneurs who told me that they had saved 95–98 percent of their development costs by using TechShop to make their initial products and sometimes their first couple of production runs.
I had done plenty of business development, product development, new product, or service launches along with research and development in my career. A 98 percent reduction in the cost of launching a product or company means, for example, that what used to cost $100,000 now costs just $2,000. This is stunning. It moves something from being hard or impossible to easily doable by anyone in the middle class. This platform democratizes hardware innovation in one fell swoop.
Jim showed me the class infrastructure and educational track that could be taken by anyone and that would move each person from not knowing how to make anything to helping him or her become a confident maker. And then I met the TechShop members. This was the most amazing group of artists, scientists, entrepreneurs, students, crafters, investors, and engineers I had ever encountered in one location. Some of them were already on a path to change the world. I was instantly hooked—and you will be too. You will meet many of these people in the following pages.
These have been six of the most amazing years of my life. I’ve met the most interesting, innovative, optimistic, energetic, and engaging men, women, and kids one can imagine. Many of my heroes have become friends, and many of my new friends have become heroes of the movement.
When I first started this journey, I believed that if this Maker Movement could scale up, it could actually impact the world in a positive manner. Six years later, I don’t just believe this anymore . . . I know it. I have proof. Our members have changed the world in significant ways. Important companies have launched out of our space and the movement at large.
You will have to read the book to learn more, but what I know now is that we are at just the beginning of the largest explosion of creativity and innovation the world has ever seen. I know that these platforms revolutionize innovation in a way the world has never before seen. I know that the Maker way, thought, and movement will become a defining characteristic of at least the first half of this century, if not most of it. I know this because I see it play out every day in my role as the CEO of TechShop. I get to see people pursue their dreams of changing the world . . . and then watch them and others do it again and again and again. I get to interact with our staff members, who tell me they have a hard time believing all the amazing things our members are doing and making. They tell me that being a part of this makerspace is the most interesting, fun, and meaningful work they have ever had.
I get to host dignitaries, futurists, consultants, and exploratory committees that come to the Silicon Valley to see the next big thing and try to understand how they might be able to take some of the great ideas home.
Please forgive me for talking about TechShop throughout the book. I use the generic “makerspace” wherever I can, where it makes sense, and where it doesn’t detract from the facts. But we have the leading makerspace in the market with six locations spread across the United States today. We have become one of the leading brands in this emerging market. The point of this book is not to shill for TechShop. Rather, it is to shine a light on what will become one of the most important movements of a generation, and then to invite you to participate in it.
I became a Green Beret years ago and adopted the motto, “De Oppresso Liber.” This translates as “to liberate the oppressed.” Little did I know at the time that the real opportunity for me to help “liberate the oppressed” would come through helping TechShop achieve its goal of democratizing access to the tools of the next industrial revolution. It has been an amazing ride so far and promises to become even more amazing as the movement grows in the United States and then around the world. This movement will not stop at the U.S. borders. It is too fundamental. It will eventually wash over the entire world.
I was thrilled recently when Chris Anderson, formerly of Wired magazine (the preeminent chronicler of all things web-related), told an audience filled with his peers that, “If you thought the web was big, I think this is going to be bigger.”
The real power of this revolution is its democratizing effects. Now, almost anyone can innovate. Now, almost anyone can make. Now, with the tools available at a makerspace, anyone can change the world.
Every revolution needs an army. That is the real purpose of this book. To use revolutionary language, my objective with this book is to radicalize you and get you to become a soldier in this army. Not so that we can destroy some nation, political party, or social movement, but so that we can collectively use our creativity to attack the world’s greatest problems and meet people’s most urgent needs. So that we can reduce the size of the dead-zone at the end of the Mississippi River, like one team has begun to do; or so that we can reduce the size of the carbon footprint of all the computer servers running the Internet, as another team did; or so that we can create the world’s least expensive drip irrigation system and help with the global water crisis; or open up the merchant banking systems or literally save tens of thousands of babies’ lives, like other teams have done. We need you to add your creativity, enthusiasm, experience, knowledge, and skill to the mix. We need millions of people to join this movement.
So please read on. You can’t help but be inspired by the stories you will read. If you do take on the challenge of making, it will change you in exciting and surprising ways—and you might just change the world.