Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “MakerCon Bay Area, May 2014: Mark Hatch, CEO, TechShop”.
Thank you very much, so i tried to get charlie rose to come out and do an interview style, but he didn’t know who i was what my book was, or i don’t know that he’s even heard of the maker movement yet but someday that will change so Mark hatch, ceo of techshop, you may or may not know, i’m actually a former green beret as well, and what that means is. I was technically trained by the united states government how to start and run revolutions or participate in them, and so, as everybody knows, if you have a revolution or a movement, it needs a manifesto of some kind and i discovered we didn’t have one yet. So i pulled one together. We also know when you’re trying to radicalize somebody – and i am actually trying to radicalize people – i it is a manifesto – we are part of a movement and we need more people to participate, and so a step in the radicalization process. Is you have to do something new, something that you haven’t done before, and so i’m going to end with a challenge and it’s going to be easy for this group, but i would recommend you do this with other folks. When you have an opportunity to speak, you need to radicalize them. You need to get them to engage in the movement and there are some very simple ways of doing that. So, first of all, you can download the short version of this off the tech shop website. As well as the first, the first page so making is fundamental to what it means to be human, we must make create and express ourselves to feel whole there’s something unique about making physical things. These things are like little pieces of us and seem to embody portions of our soul.
Really read hegel read marx, read maslow, read carl young. They all talk about the physicality of making something as being fundamental to what it means to be human. It is something different than writing code.
It is not like writing great prows. It is not like a lot of the other types of activities. When you make something physical, you are.
It feels like you’re imbuing that with a piece of your soul, and so i encourage you to make because it is a different kind of of experience. If you make you have to share david, are you in the room he’s probably off talking in some some other group, david is a is a penultimate example recently of sharing he come. He came into tech shop after talking to dale, saying i don’t know how to make anything. The best thing i’ve ever made is a really good email and i want to become a master at it. So i’m going to get a membership, a tech shop, i’m going to take a bunch of classes.
I think last count he had taken like 30. and i’m going to write about it. I’M going to talk about it and it transformed his life in that process. It wasn’t just the taking of the class that did it.
It was the sharing of the experience of what it was like that did it and that’s the kind of the first step in helping your family and friends to begin understanding. Your relationship with the maker movement is you’ve got to share what your experience is. You can’t expect them to understand what you’re going through and what you’re doing, if you don’t share. So this is a phenomenal example. He wrote a fabulous book if you haven’t read it. I highly recommend it zero to maker. Then you have to give – and actually i agree with you kevin, because this isn’t really making, but it worked for me, so i bought a 3d printer for the house because it felt like i should it’s like we’re at the beginning of a new computer type. Industrial revolution, whatever i should have one of these for my kid, so i set it up and then i needed a test print, and so i go on thingiverse and i’m rooting around and i find a a rose design.
And so i download it and i start printing it out now. The reason i downloaded i started printing it out is because my wife had developed an allergy to roses about five years ago and i had not been able to give her her rose unless i was mad at her right because she would break out in hives and So i hadn’t, given her a rose in five years now for a guy, that’s a problem, because you can’t hit the grocery store on the way home. You now actually have to think about what it is that you’re buying trust me tiffany’s is way more expensive than buying roses. So what i did was i printed out the rose and um i’ve got.
I’Ve got a copy of it. She still has the original and cleaned it up and and gave it to her hero. It was a big deal now.
It wasn’t a big deal to me because i know what i just done. I had downloaded the silly thing off the internet. I needed a test print, so i gave my wife my first test print and i turned into the hero. Now it was the thought right. It was a thought that count. It was that i did the activity i made it. I don’t know it worked for me. It’S still on our headboard, so giving turns out to be a critical piece both for the person who receives it as well as as for yourself. It’S it’s imbued.
It’S part of the nature of the the movement itself, learning you’re never done. We know that you’ve got to learn new tools. Oh sorry, i’m getting off track here. Sorry, you must learn to make. You must always seek to learn more about making. You may become a journeyman or a master craftsman. Many of you are, but you may still learn you want to learn.
You need to push yourself to learn new techniques, new materials, new processes, building, a lifelong learning path ensures a rich and rewarding making life and importantly enables one to share. So this is brett. She’S got a phenomenal company. She’S been recently recognized as this kind of the silicon valley’s version of martha stewart she’d come out of the google heritage, hadn’t made things came in, took some classes, and now she has a phenomenal business and is enabling other women to sell things on her website and She’S continuing to learn and she teaches other people to learn as well tool up, i mean just kevin kelly. Just talked about that tooling is important.
Getting access to tooling learning how to use the tools is critical. The great news is, the tools are easier to use cheaper and more powerful than they have ever been in all of human history, and it’s worth making that kind of investment. It’S worth finding the local maker space and if there isn’t one start one you must have access. Let me go back.
You must have access to the right tools, for the project at hand, invest in develop local access to the tools you need to do, making to make the things that you want to make the tools of making have never been cheaper, easier or more powerful. In all of human history play, you’ve got to have fun with this stuff. You can’t always just come in with a deadline and go i’m going to go from a to b to c to d and be done with it. You need to play with it. That’S where the actual? That’S, where the you get deeper knowledge, one of the things we love about the artists that come into our space and hate about the artists that come into our space. Is they come at the tools kind of orthogonally? You know to generalize an engineer comes in and they have a really good idea of what it is they’re going to make and which tools they’re going to use to make it an artist, comes into our space and goes i wonder what that tool will do, and You know you’re in a thriving maker space when you walk into the tool into the cnc room, and you hear the tormach playing happy birthday as the guy’s cutting a little aluminum gift out for his kid. I mean talk about layers here, he’s actually recording the sound of the machine playing the song while it’s cutting out the little toy. So you know you’re in a maker space, when the artists are breaking your toys or breaking your tools play is critical. Participate join the maker movement reach out to those around you who are discovering the joy of making hold seminars, parties, events maker days fairs, expos classes and dinners with and for those in the maker community support is critical, and everybody here knows that we’ve we’re still a Long ways from having the the types of support that we need, but here are just the folks that are supporting us at tech, shop, autodesk, intel, ford, lowe’s, ge, bmw, asu, darpa, the va and many others reach out to those who have the financial resources. The econom. The political resources and continue to educate them about the maker movement, i’m going to come back to this one here in just a minute change embrace the change that will naturally occur as you go through your maker journey, since making is fundamental to what it means to Be human you’ll become a more complete version of you as you make so this is mark roth he’s a member in san francisco. He literally went from being homeless to owning his own business.
He completely transformed his life by in fully engaging the maker movement. He saw a he saw a little trifold about our location at a uh at the shelter that he was at came in the next day bought a. We had a special forty nine dollars in one class, so he spent his forty. Nine dollars became a member for a month took the laser cutter class, which we call our gateway drug, easy to use very powerful, extremely addictive all the things you need in a gateway drug.
He became an expert at it within weeks because he spent eight hours a day there. He spent as much time as he possibly could anytime. He could jump on a machine. He did, he didn’t buy any materials he went into. A trash can pulled out excess materials in order to create things within weeks. He was good enough that our members were starting to hire him to finish their projects within a month, or so he was so good. We hired him as an instructor soon, though after he convinced one of the other members to help fund his laser cutter studio, which he put inside of our space, and he was off and running, and my favorite thing about marth mark is he’s now trying to create A shelter for homeless folks to be able to go through that personal journey as well. It’S literally a maker space designed for the homeless, so in the spirit of making.
I also strongly suggest that you change and modify and make the manifesto yourself. So here are the nine basic principles that are driving the maker movement, but i said i wanted to come back, participate, support and change for those of you who can you know we need to continue to reach out to community organizations, to educational institutions, to the government, To major employers and to others that have the economic resources to be able to help drive it, they need to participate, support and change, and what happens? Every single one of those companies has come in, they started by participating, autodesk came in and joined the fair and did a couple of things, and then they got the religion and carl is an amazing, ceo and you know dove in and bought instructables and tinkercad, and I o circuits and launched an entire division and as a result of their participation and their support, it changed their culture. Their culture is now innovative. Their culture is more interested in the projects that they’re that their people are making and i can go through every single one of these intel is one of the more recent ones you know they’ve launched galileo and edison, and when i speak to the uh to the Edison the intel employees kind of on the ground in the various locations around the us. They are thrilled with the trajectory that intel is taking because it is helping to change the culture in in internally and so here’s my challenge, and i again i would encourage you to challenge other people in the same way. First of all, you got to participate support and it will change you and you need to embrace that change. It will change companies and organizations. So this christmas.
What i want you to do is i want you to make something yourself and give it away. I want you to give it to somebody else, and most people here probably do that already. I know that, but from a kind of meta tag perspective, remember this and tell other people. This is what they need to do, because, when they do that, when they even just download something off the internet and hand it to the person that they love the difference between this cheap ugly piece of plastic and the tiffany’s brooch that i gave her is huge.
It’S huge and it will be for you and those that you challenge to do the same thing. Thank you very much. .