Launch of Amherst Media Makerspace

In mid-September, Don Blair and I got together for coffee and chatted about the idea of setting up a Makerspace in Amherst. We have both been advocates of the potential for technology to enable individuals to create -- Make -- innovative solutions for themselves.

Don and I go way back: he was a BCRC staffmember when I first arrived in the Biology Department. We reconnected a couple of years ago talking about open hardware and software as he worked to launch Pioneer Valley Open Science. Last year, we had a nebulous series of discussions about Makerspaces: we talked about Turners Falls or North Star as places that might be a good fit. When I was interim IT Program Director, I talked to a number of people as well. Tony Maroulis and I chatted about looking for a home downtown for a Makerspace. But when I met with Don in the fall, I'd had a realization. There was already a perfect place for a Makerspace.

Over the summer, I joined the board of Amherst Media. I had wanted to get involved for years, but I was too busy with Esperanto and other interests. My older son and his friends (especially Josh Wolfsun) had used Amherst Media to launch Riverwolf Productions: filming several movies, a news program, and a sketch-comedy program. They recently won the Jean Haggerty Community Engagement and Social Change for their work. When I stepped off the board of Esperanto-USA, I decided I could probably find time to serve on the board of Amherst Media instead. I floated the idea of a Makerspace with the Director who was enthusiastic.

Jim Lescault immediately saw the connection between Maker culture and the roots of the community television work that he's been doing his whole career. Community television grew out of the concern that television was increasing being controlled by corporations and that regular people were being excluded from using it to reach an audience. Jim recognized the potential interactions and synergies that building a technology center or Makerspace focus could do and committed the organization to helping launch the project. That brought Nick Ring, the technology director for Amherst Media, into the project.

Finally, we copied in Charlie Schweik on our first email. Charlie has been studying the collaborations around open source hardware and software for 10 years and has been tirelessly trying to network and organize people to work together around these ideas. His Knowledge Commons project at UMass had brought a number of folks together who ultimately contributed to the volunteer effort and provided the nucleus of the outreach effort.

Our first challenge was to pick a date. I thought Intersession might be a good time, but for the past three years, I've been swamped trying to organize Drupal Camp. As these efforts were happening, however, Kelly Albrecht was pitching the idea of transmogrifying Drupal Camp into the NERD Summit and pushing the date forward (originally to March, but now October 3-5, 2014). That freed up the last weekend before the Spring semester, and by early October, we had begun reaching out to communities we though might be interested. Ultimately, as the project came together, more and more people joined in the organization -- too many for me to remember and thank individually. It was incredibly gratifying to see everyone working together to pull off the event.

Charlie put us in touch with Nick Harrison, a technology teacher at the Middle School, who immediately joined the effort. Don organized a registration system via EventBrite. Charlie put together a flyer. Nick Harrison distributed the flyer and we did a minimal amount of publicity, and the weekend was full -- indeed oversubscribed almost instantly.

What we ultimately did was pretty close to my original plan:

We propose a 1-2 day workshop on building interactive 
devices with Arduino.

On Friday evening: A public presentation, reception/ice-
breaker, and install fest for people to get help 
installing the arduino IDE on a laptop or computer that 
they'd like to use for the workshop.

On Saturday Morning: Intro to arduino programing starting 
with blink (to light up an LED) transitioning to a simulation 
of a six-sided die with LEDs.

lunch (offer a box lunch? or catered lunch?)

On Saturday Afternoon: Students will use a temperature 
sensor and a row of LEDs as a visual indicator.

On Sunday (optional) Open Exploration. Participants can 
work on projects independently with support from workshop 
staff.

Originally, we looked at purchasing the parts and constructing kits that just had the parts we needed. I discovered, however, that there was a pre-built kit that cost only little more than what buying the piece parts would and that included everything we needed — and more: more sensors and parts and wires. So we purchased those kits instead.

On Friday, we weren't sure how many people would ultimately show up for the opening session. We had opened it to the public and told participants that it was optional. We started with seating for around 30, but the room quickly filled up and we started getting out more seats. In the end, we had nearly 70. Parents, middle-school kids, presenters, and Maker enthusiasts turned up to see a series of lightning talks that outlined a vision for what we hope our Maker community could become.

Nick Ring had done yeoman's work to set up a display table with two large screen TVs and a document camera, so presenters could show the screen of a computer at the same time as an Arduino or other small device. In addition, cameras filmed the presentations and a photographer walked through snapping pictures.

The presentations were a compelling vision for a Makerspace at Amherst Media. As people arrived, Justin Leone ran a Makerbot in the lobby that people could watch as they waited to check in. Jim Lescault and Nick Ring welcomed everyone and discussed how the project fit into their vision for Amherst Media. Charlie Schweik provided an overview of Maker culture and I did a quick demo of an Arduino and outlined how the weekend was going to be organized. Don Blair showed a bunch of Arduino based projects and parts focused on various real-world applications. Nick Harrison discussed the challenges of bringing Maker approaches in the public schools and the need for extracurricular opportunities for students. Paula Rees demonstrated lilypad-based e-textile projects and parts that could be the basis of future Maker events. Rui Wang, a UMass computer science professor, described SquareWare SquareWear and Raspberry Pi based projects that he's using as the basis for a local startup. Alex Schreyer showed another Makerbot and demonstrated making a shapefile and sending it to the printer. Scott Payne and some students demoed an Occulus Rift that a Maker group at Amherst College had been hacking to show protein structures.

After the more formal presentations, participants were invited to share their perspectives and ideas for organizing the community. Alex Chan talked about entrepreneurship and the upcoming visit of Alexis Ohanian. Megan Briggs Lyster and Roxy Finn of Hampshire College described efforts to organize a Makerspace via Five Colleges. John Caris from Smith College described a Smith College group that has been working with various kinds of drones and copters for collecting aerial imagery. A few local groups had been able to participate, but were remembered to the audience: the Belchertown Hackerfarm the Geek Group of Springfield, and several other regional groups have complementary goals and we'll want to work with them going forward.

In the end, there was strong support among the participants for some kind of ongoing Maker activities at Amherst Media. The exact form these will take will probably evolve over time, but a few points seem clear: there's a great need for such a space where parents their children, and college students can interact around building things. We hope to organize some form of weekly opportunities for Maker activity with additional presentations by people to demonstrate particular technologies or to direct projects. There was also a consensus to use the group to accomplish specific aims that students work on. Some students will want to work on independent ideas, but others would rather be part of an organized project and the group should support both modalities.

On Saturday, the 35 participants who had registered came in and got to work. Some picked up the kits they're pre-ordered and some were matched up with others. Some borrowed a few of the additional kits we had purchased (of whom a fair number ultimately purchased the kit). People dove in and accomplished "blink" quickly. And then simply charged ahead. Several groups had already accomplished everything before lunch that I had hoped to get through during the whole day. I spent the first several hours constantly circulating, checking in with groups, and helping to solve problems. After lunch, we had a shared session for the kids that wanted to shared what they'd accomplished. Wow! Impressive!

We went into the workshop with a lot of questions. We weren't sure how many people would bring laptops and how many would want/need to use one of Amherst Media computers. It turned out that most people brought a laptop: we ended up using only one computer lab. We weren't sure how many parents would drop their kids off. It turned out that every kid either had a parent, or came with another parent/kid pair. We weren't sure how many people would want a structured versus unstructured curriculum. It turned out that few people wanted a structured curriculum, and those who wanted the structure were happiest working through the book. I wasn't sure whether the parents would get frustrated -- I wasn't as worried about the kids. But everyone seemed very happy. Finally, we weren't sure how many people would come back on Sunday for the day of open exploration.

Sunday was very informal: we just opened up the space and then helped people who asked for help. More than half of the students returned for another morning of hacking. A few were dropped off, but they worked diligently and I spent a fair amount of time writing, in addition to helping people debug wiring and code. One student wanted to play with a Raspberry Pi he'd brought, so I helped him set up a monitor and keyboard. By mid afternoon, the participants had left and we wrapped up with a great far-ranging discussion of where we want the project to go.

It's obvious that this idea has legs and several ideas emerged from the discussion. First, we're hoping to organize weekly drop in sessions after school -- there's a huge need for that. We also see that on a regular schedule, we could run a presentation combined with a workshop on a whole range of topics and get good participation. We also see that there's a need for both open-ended exploration and the opportunity for students to collaborate on larger, authentic projects where their work will have value. We have several ideas already along those directions. It was an incredibly auspicious start and I'm confident we'll be doing more of these in the future.