I worked for them as an instructor, course developer, and general staff mentor for a while at one location. My opinion is that this isn't a failure of the model as much as it is a failure of strategy, management, and opportunity exploitation.
They flat out saw the tools as their only asset which was an almost criminal mistake. 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.
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?
>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?
Briefly, the problem I saw was that classes were entirely of the mindset of enabling people to use the tools. It assumed they were already members, already bought into the Makerspace/Techshop mindset, and already knew which tools they needed to use. That isn't an absolute but it was common. Everyone knew about that 3D printers were cool, but nothing empowered them on projects...just on tools. The education was not used to extend the value of Techshop to members, it just served as an impediment to them using certain tools.
>What would you of done differently if you were in charge of TechShop?
I'm honestly hesitant to Monday morning quarterback them and regret my original (somewhat emotional) post a bit. A lot of good friends became unemployed yesterday and I reacted. What would I have done differently? grow differently, grow with a different mindset, understand my users better.
>We all love our makerspaces and are sad to see a behemoth like TechShop go under. It doesn't bode well for other makerspaces.
I had an interesting conversation with someone at another makerspace about techshop one time. I think they serve two different markets, and I think the Techshop problem was that it found itself stuck between them...one is the hardcore makers the other are more of the general public. Noisebridge is and will always be Noisebridge. I don't think you are gonna get people in off the street to stay all that often. Techshop wasn't trying to be that, but they didn't have the mindset that really let them be something else.
I think a major portion of their revenue model was based on classes. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does box out members who have a lot of skills in a particular area from sharing that knowledge in some sort of structured way. For example, it might have been more engaging to members to set up a recurring event such as "machining monday" or something where people interested in a topic could gather and either share experience and knowledge or at least help each other figure things out. Instead, they focused on classes that were $40 - $600 a pop. They also had a hard time retaining instructors that had professional experience. When the shop I was a member of first opened, they had a lot of instructors that were working part time at the shop and worked full time in a related field (machining, woodworking, etc.). Over time those instructors slowly drifted away and were replaced with younger and less experienced staff. It is a little difficult to learn a complex skill like welding from someone who has only been doing it for a few months and cant really offer any knowledge outside of the packet provided with the class.
I recognize that there needs to be some sort of minimum knowledge needed to operate a machine safely and think that the class model isn't a bad method for that goal. However, I think the problem is when your revenue model depends on people continuing to take more advanced classes which is difficult to sustain.
The "birds of a feather" type meetings would be one way to further member engagement, get people interested and gain the confidence to use the tools, and wouldn't have cost much if anything for the shop to implement.
I think another issue that TechShop had that I am not sure other makerspaces have to deal with is the conflict between people that ran businesses out of the location vs. casual or hobby members. There were a lot of occasions where a small (3-4) member company would reserve a particular tool for an entire day (sometimes multiple days) and box out the casual users. I don't know the best method to combat that, perhaps you can limit the number of reservations an individual or group of individuals can make in a month, or shorten the reservation times in the evenings. Maybe it would have made sense to structure the memberships differently and charge less for a nights and weekends membership than a daytime membership or something. I can say that it was frustrating as a user who showed up a few times a month to see people that camped out on a particular table or area of the shop and not being able to find space to work on my projects or get time on the machines.
They flat out saw the tools as their only asset which was an almost criminal mistake. 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.