It's tough times right now for in-person gathering and collaboration, but as soon as it's safe to do so, you owe it to yourself to see what communities have sprung up locally, and/or start another one.
What's left now as "maker spaces" are either arts and crafts clubs, or educational operations where kids are pushed through tasks to check the "Maker" box on their college resumes.
That sucks, I'm sorry. And if you feel that way, surely plenty of others do as well, which means it'll be even harder for the next comer to win your (plural) attention.
But I assure you, it's not so bleak everywhere. My area has seen the coming and the going of for-profit spaces as well, but the main effect they've had on the nonprofit spaces is that they burn a bunch of money on PR, attract a bunch of attention, then implode and leave their members looking for alternatives. Good for us, we're doubling our space this year!
I dunno, maybe some would dismiss us as an arts-and-crafts club too. Their loss; more CNC time for me...
These tend to be very hit or miss and are strongly dependent upon the quality of the people involved in them.
The basic problem with shared spaces is that the equipment is always broken to a first order approximation. That's simply the nature of shared equipment. So, your space is very dependent upon having people who are very good at fixing equipment.
If you are a non-profit, this basically means that you must have a core of people who are willing to donate their time for free to keep the space maintained and functioning. When those people are disappear (generally due to advanced age), the space degrades to uselessness very quickly.
The primary makerspace problem is assembling that core of people and keeping it refreshed.
For-profit makerspaces, on the other hand, can at least pay people to maintain the equipment. That generally gives them a leg up on the non-profit ones even though the equipment gets broken just as often.
Once you have that, you can _encourage_ turnover to avert burnout, even. That's magical when it works.
The for-profits around here have all gone out of business. TechShop's business model was predicated on people paying for a nearly-endless stream of basic classes for the privilege of using equipment they were already ostensibly paying for access to as part of their membership. I understand this to some degree (broken tools suck, and training helps them break a little bit less), but they extended it even to things you couldn't break if you tried ($79/$99 for the vinyl cutter SBU?!?), and I think people were rightly turned off by that. I'm sad that they're gone (it was nice to be able to send people there when they needed more hand-holding than we're able to provide), but I'm hardly surprised.
Non-profits can pay staff, by the way, they just can't have investors making dividends and stuff. But yeah, we're the kind of volunteer-driven space you imagine.
TechShop's business model was predicated on more investors coming in to fund growth, while the actual operations lost money. This didn't become clear until the financials came out during the bankruptcy lawsuits.[1]
The operating problem was that the "gym model" didn't work. Gyms thrive on members who pay but don't show up too much. Flat-rate maker spaces get customers for whom it's their primary workplace, tying up the equipment all day. This reached its extreme during the Etsy period, when TechShop had 10 laser cutters making stuff all day.
[1] https://blog.adafruit.com/2020/01/31/latest-bankruptcy-court...
To be fair, anybody who has run one of these spaces knows that the lasers and the wood CNC are going to be 100% utilized. You have to set your fees and limits around that.
TechShop was fine as a shop it just always seemed to be somewhat questionable in terms of business. The placement of their shops was a good example. TechShop always seemed to be in kinda expensive real estate while all the decent makerspaces I know are always in some kind of slightly grotty industrial park area.
True. But my assumption about "training classes" at makerspaces is that they are primarily about liability insurance and secondarily about training.
If you have been through the training and it's signed off, the space can say "Look. You went through training where we told you the risks--it's right here on page 2. Sorry that you're injured, but it's not our problem."
If you haven't been through training then they can say: "You weren't authorized for that machine and used it anyway so we aren't liable."
Yes. TechShop, in its prime, managed to almost keep up with maintenance. At least on the bigger machines.
Hacker Dojo has "gone virtual" for now, but they may reopen. $150/month. I might rejoin.
Humanmade in San Francisco is still alive, but their rates are now up to $250.00/month. They're in an expensive area.
The modern maker movement largely sells an illusion that you can sidestep all this thanks to the involvement of computers: just 3D print your thing! Laser cut it! Or CNC router it! And then put an Arduino on it and make it do something!
And you know what? All of those also have a steep learning curve. They have the illusion of accessibility, but if you want a good part off the ShopBot, you need to first be able to very precisely describe what you want to end up with, then understand what's an appropriate cutting tool for the material you want to make it out of, understand chip load, speeds, feeds, and a slew of other stuff. And the laser cutter has all of the same hurdles, but slightly different, and I've heard enough people complain about 3D printers to know the same is true there too. Oh yeah, and there are a million paths to get to g-code, all of them with their own quirks and incompatible file formats.
Most people get stuck at coming up with a sufficiently precise description of the thing they want to make. If it isn't on thingiverse, it's basically impossible. Most people could learn, but they aren't looking for a hobby that requires that much effort before they see an outcome.
So the population that makerspaces are trying to attract is pretty small, at least once folks realize how much effort it is to actually do anything beyond making a canned intro item.
Reality, it turns out, contains a surprising amount of detail. Whether you're altering it with traditional tools or modern "maker" tools, you have to put your time in understanding it if you want to move beyond the basics and reach a level of skill and independence.