mattman9

Can you expand on your thoughts on the following? "They utterly undervalued the potential of their educational group and bled them dry out of a misguided attempt to focus on a core competency that was already not working. It left new people with limited ability to develop new projects and the use of new tools as they learned new competencies. They provided a service that too few people new how to make value of. They waited for the world to come to them, and it never did in sufficient numbers.".

How were they undervaluing their potential educational groups? How were they bled dry? Were classes just too expensive? Why was it misguided to focus on core competency? Why wasn't that working? How else would new and/or novice members get 'checked out' to use use a dangerous tool safely?

I'm genuinely curious and hoping that you/anyone have some better insights. I've worked with makerspaces in the past and I've seen a lot of these same arguments and problems but I haven't seen many sustainable solutions the would allow a makerspace to run, grow and keep members safe and happy.

What would you of done differently if you were in charge of TechShop? That is a question for everyone. We all love our makerspaces and are sad to see a behemoth like TechShop go under. It doesn't bode well for other makerspaces.

How do you make a makerspace not only sustainable, but profitable enough to add new tools and the instructors to go along with it?