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OT question: how do you like TechShop? Still waiting for one here in LA. Although wish they'd pick a location further west, like culver city.
by fezz 11y ago
OT question: how do you like TechShop? Still waiting for one here in LA. Although wish they'd pick a location further west, like culver city.
- gregschlom 11y agoI was an active TechShop member in July / August 2015 to build an art project for Burning Man [1]. My friend and I were there Monday through Friday, it felt like it was our office. Overall, the experience was very good, we learned a ton of things, met interesting people, such as a guy who explained in details how to use that magnet printer, and some mechanical engineers building a cool sandwich-making robot which later turned out to be a YC company. We had a lot of fun. However, as soon as our project was completed, we discontinued our membership. TechShop's pricing is weird: it's either insanely cheap if you're working on a project full time (I would have paid 2 times the amount no problem), or it's prohibitively expensive if you're just there 2-3 times a month. [1] http://flowandwonder.com http://flowandwonder.com
- bigiain 11y agoNice project and write up! (I didn't make it there last year, so I didn't see it...) Curious, was this a first BM project? (It's certainly up at the level of complexity that very often completely misses the deadline and either gots take out to the desert half-done, taken out a year later than planned, or abandoned altogether.)
- gregschlom 11y agoHi! Thanks for the kind words. Yes, this was a first BM project - a first hardware project, really. I had never played with microcontrollers or CNC machines before. The fact that everything worked on first try, on schedule, came as a major surprise to everybody, myself included. I think the key is to choose your complexity. Some things may look complex, but they are actually just the juxtaposition of some simple, repeated elements. Ironically (speaking as a software engineer), the one thing that we didn't finish on time was the software. We ended up running some simple code to power the colors, as opposed to the fancy fluid simulation that I had originally envisioned (http://gregschlom.com/flow-and-wonder/ http://gregschlom.com/flow-and-wonder/)
- Animats 11y agoI've been a member since the days of the original Menlo Park TechShop. It was once a fun place. Then they moved to a temporary location next to the garbage transfer station in San Carlos, and membership went down. Then they moved to a third location in Redwood City, and, a year after the move, some of the walls are still just plastic sheets, some of the machines still aren't connected, and they lack facilities they used to have, such as an area for spray painting. Many members quit.
- voltagex_ 11y agoSo basically like every hackerspace. I think municipalities need to really get behind hackerspaces as a concept if they're to survive the next few years.
- wiml 11y agoI think hackerspaces simply have a turnover, a lifecycle. In the last few years both of my favorite local hackerspaces have closed or become moribund, but others have appeared, and maybe I'll like them.