THE MAKER MOVEMENT MANIFESTO

RULES FOR INNOVATION IN THE NEW WORLD OF CRAFTERS, HACKERS, AND TINKERERS

McGraw-Hill Education

Contents

CHAPTER 1

Maker Movement Manifesto

In the spirit of making, I strongly suggest you take this manifesto, makechanges to it, and make it your own. That is the point of making.

MAKE

Making is fundamental to what it means to be human.We must make, create, and express ourselves to feelwhole. There is something unique about makingphysical things. Things we make are like little piecesof us and seem to embody portions of our soul.

Make. Just make. This is the key. The world is a better place as a participatorysport. Being creative, the act of creating and making, is actually fundamentalto what it means to be human. Secular philosophers like Georg Wilhelm FriedrichHegel, Carl Jung, and Abraham Maslow all came to the conclusion that creativeacts are fundamental. Physical making is more personally fulfilling than virtualmaking. I think this has to do with its tangibility; you can touch it andsometimes smell and taste it. A great sentence or well-written blog is creativeand makes you feel good about what you have accomplished, but it is not the sameas the satisfaction that comes from the physical labor involved in makingsomething physical.

If you come from a Judeo-Christian religious background, whether Jewish,Protestant, or Catholic, then you know that the first book of the Torah or OldTestament is the book of Genesis. Read Genesis Chapter 1 closely. Whether youbelieve in the literal interpretation of Creation or not, we can probably agreeon two things coming out of this chapter. God is a maker, and he made us in hisimage. It is a very powerful introduction to God and who we are as humans. Whatdo you know about humanity by the end of the chapter? It says, "God made" (or"let," or "created") some 15 times and ends with making people in his image. Atthe end of Genesis 1, we may not know much about God or humans, but we do knowone thing for sure: we were made to make.

There is nothing that can replace making—philosophers, religious scholars, andpersonal experience make that clear. Wars have been fought when the commonpeople thought they were going to lose access to ownership of their ownproductive tools. So the first thing we must do is make. The do-it-yourself(DIY) home improvement industry in the United States is worth over $700 billion.The hobbyist segment is worth over $25 billion. The most valuable segment of the$700 billion DIY is the perpetual remodeler, specifically those who have enoughmoney to let business professionals do the work for them, but don't. You mightknow or even be one of these people. In your heart of hearts, you know you don'treally need to redo the bathroom, or certainly not the way you plan to do it,yourself. But you do it anyway. This is because there is more satisfaction incompleting the remodel yourself.

A makerspace is a center or workspace where like-minded people get together tomake things. Some makerspace members are designers, writers, practitioners ofmedicine or law, architects, and other white-collar types who come in and startmaking things for themselves, their families, and friends. They spend time inmakerspaces because they just love to make things. They don't need to makeChristmas presents; they want to.

Tina Albin-Lax had made a New Year's resolution for 2012. She was going to learnhow to make something. She signed up for TechShop's basic laser cutter class andhas never been the same since. For $60, she learned how to use a laser cutter.Then she booked it for the next day so she could practice what she had justlearned, but she needed a project to practice on. As luck would have it, thatevening Tina's sibling called and invited her to attend her nephew's birthdayparty that weekend. With a flash of brilliance, Tina asked for the names of allthe children who would be at the party.

The next day Tina used her new training to make cupcake toppers for each of theparty attendees. Using the laser cutter, Tina cut out the name of each child andetched in some nice patterns. She finished them with a nice glossy coat and thatweekend put one on each child's cupcake. What child doesn't love to see his orher name emblazoned on something? Particularly something chocolaty and sweet?Not surprisingly, the parents wanted cupcake toppers for the rest of theirchildren and then wanted them for their children's parties. It snowballed.

Soon Tina had an online store (www.etsy.com). Then she began teaching classes onhow to launch a business and had a great mention in Martha Stewart's magazine,Martha Stewart Living. Her phone couldn't make it through the day from all theorder notifications she was getting. Last I heard, she was working on a book.

This all came about from a simple desire to make something for the first timesince sixth grade. An accidental entrepreneur was born. And what was Tina'sbackground? She was a labor organizer.

I grew up playing neighborhood football with a kid named Ben Parks. His dad wasa ceramic artist and had throwing wheels, clay, and amazing glazes around hishouse. One day his dad invited us all to come out and throw a pot. What a greatafternoon. I attempted to make a large vase—and after what seemed like dozens ofattempts and lots of help and encouragement—I ended up with a sad-looking,lopsided, very small coin holder. It will hold a couple of dollars' worth ofquarters. I glazed it beautifully with help from Ben's dad. A couple of dayslater, after it had been fired, I got to take it home.

This thing is an ugly duckling that will never grow up, but guess what ... Istill have it. It's small enough that I've taken it everywhere I have moved. Itsonly value is that I made it and it is some kind of memento from my childhood.Looking back, I realize now that I was not the target of that day of making,though I still appreciate the gift it was. Ben eventually became a ceramicartist himself, following in his father's footsteps. There is somethingfundamental about making.

SHARE

Sharing what you have made and what you knowabout making with others is the method bywhich a maker's feeling of wholenessis achieved. You cannot make and not share.

We make to share. Each of us is wired to show off what we have made. We get alot of satisfaction out of the making, but the real payoff is in sharing. Somepeople are coy about showing their work off. Others are just terrified. One ofthe reasons we may have stopped making is that what we set out to make and whatwe ended up with may not match very well. Or others may have ridiculed us forour attempts. "I'm not good at making anything," need never be said again. Wewere born to make. It may take some practice to get good at some kinds ofmaking, but technology has begun to make creating easy enough that everyone canmake.

My favorite question to ask at any makerspace is, "What are you making?"

People open up like flowers when asked that question and given any kind ofpositive encouragement. In this regard, we are all still five years old.

Interestingly, after six years of working in a creative space, I've been told,"I can't tell you everything, but ..." probably hundreds of times, maybethousands of times, but I've never been told, "I can't tell you."

Why? We want others to see what we have done.

When I worked at Avery Dennison, we used to let the newest junior productmanagers help work on the back panels of our product's packaging. They had towork off templates that had been approved and developed for the line, and theyhad to have all the appropriate approvals; nonetheless, the back panel was"theirs." The young managers would jump into this with gusto, argue over fontchoices, the kerning of apostrophes, the shade of loam green. I repeat, theycared about the kerning of an apostrophe—the space between a letter and anapostrophe. Look at the space they had to work with here:'s. Can you see it? Ona high-resolution computer screen, this is about the distance of two or threepixels, and they removed one! Yet, they would protect their design turf like apit bull protects its bowl of food, growling when someone tried to mess withtheir back panel.

Let me put this into context. To be a junior product manager at any Fortune 500packaged goods company, you have to graduate from a respected MBA program at thetop of your class. You have to work between your bachelor's degree and your MBAat another major company with consumer facing interactions. You are among someof the "best and brightest" our schools and companies produce. You will almostalways make senior director, VP, SVP, or CEO if you choose, or you will go outand start your own company. If you are a junior product manager at this level,you are a very intelligent, type A, hard-charging, competitive professional.

That said, once the aforementioned products were launched into the channel andwe all went to an Office Depot or Staples to see what the final productpackaging and shelf positioning looked like in the stores, the junior productmanagers would rush like little kids to the stacks of "their" products. Theywould stand in front of them, momentarily admiring the way the products lookedon the shelf and then pull a package off the shelf, turn it over, and examinetheir handiwork. A sense of satisfaction visibly rolled over them as they sawthat the typesetters had taken their ideas into final production and the s wasjust a little closer to the apostrophe because it had been manually kerned.Invariably, these talented, impressive, type A young professionals would turnand say something like, "I did this."

"I did this."

"See the space between the apostrophe and that s? I did that."

The glow on their faces was like a new mother's when holding her child for thefirst time. Complete satisfaction. The need to show others one's new, beautifulchild is embedded in the human psyche.

What is going on here? First, while the contributions that these professionalswere excited about might seem insignificant—after all, the difference, distance-wise,between the spacing of an apostrophe that has been automatically kernedand one that has been manually kerned is negligible—but the end product issomething that can be bought, taken home, and shown to a significant other.Second, it is public. Hundreds of thousands of these packages are shipped allover the world. Third, it is often the first tangible and public representationof years, if not a decade, of work. It isn't the size of the impact that issignificant; it is that there was impact and it was made tangible, and tens ofthousands of people would "see" their work. That really is powerfullysatisfying, even if it is only the amount of nothing between an apostrophe andan s.

If you make something and don't share it, was it made? If you make something,even something as small as a one-pixel space modification on the back of apackage, and share it, you have made something, and it must be shared.

Another aspect of sharing is sharing knowledge and knowhow. The best attributeof a well-run makerspace is the sharing of skills and knowledge. It starts withthe formal instruction, but the best learning takes place while one person isbuilding or designing and someone else with just a little (or sometimes a ton)more experience lends a helping hand and the project gets upgraded in theprocess. The sharing philosophy gives a makerspace its magic. People show offtheir creations knowing criticism was left at the front door, and everyone feelscomfortable asking for help, guidance, and input into projects as they gothrough the build process. Sharing makes a maker-space a community.

GIVE

There are few things more selfless and satisfyingthan giving away something you have made. The actof making puts a small piece of you into the object.Giving it to someone else is like giving that person asmall piece of yourself. Such things are oftenthe most cherished items we possess.

One of the most satisfying aspects of making is giving away what you have made.Wonderfully, most people still value gifts made by the giver more than giftsthat were bought off the shelf. If you do nothing else this year, make oneChristmas present to give away. And reflect on the level of satisfaction you getand the recipient receives in that act. It is immeasurable.

If your parents are still alive, they probably are still hanging onto craftprojects you made for them when you were a child. Quilts are often handed downfor generations. A well-made item, meeting a real need, made by and for a lovedone, is among the greatest of gifts.

There is another type of giving, that of your creativity or intellectualproperty. Embrace Global is a wonderful nonprofit that used TechShop for some ofits development work. Naganand Murty was one of the design engineers who came toour space, under Embrace cofounder and CEO Jane Chen's direction, to address theproblem of infant thermoregulation in developing countries. Babies who are borneven a few weeks prematurely are unable to thermo-regulate, or maintain theirbody temperatures on their own, and consequently must be incubated within onehour of birth or risk death or serious permanent disabilities. For the hundredsof thousands of these babies who are born around the world every year withoutquick access to incubators (because they are born in rural areas where thenearest hospital with incubator equipment may be several hours, if not days,away), the problem is especially critical.

The question that Naganand Murty and his team had (you'll meet cofounder JaneChen in Chapter 3) was fairly simple: Would it be possible to design a simple,affordable "blanket" that could maintain a baby's body temperature at a constantlevel for an extended period of time? And that was not dependent upon acontinuous supply of electricity? Well, it turned out the answer was yes. TheEmbrace portable infant warmer, which looks like a mini sleeping bag and costs afraction of the price of other baby warming devices, uses some fancy chemistryand design to make it work.

But here is the most amazing thing. Portions of Embrace's core technology weredonated to the organization through interactions with other members of theTechShop community. These community members gave their ideas away freely. And asa result, General Electric has signed on to help distribute the blanket, andEmbrace is on track to save the lives of 100,000 babies in the next five years.Jane has been recognized by the World Economic Council as one of the top socialentrepreneurs in the world.

LEARN

You must learn to make. You must always seek to learnmore about your making. You may become a journeymanor master artisan, but you will still learn, want to learn,and push yourself to learn new techniques, materials,and processes. Building a lifelong learning pathensures a rich and rewarding making life and,importantly, enables one to share.

Making brings about a natural interest in learning. It brings out the naturalfour-year-old in all of us. "Why is the sky blue?" "Where does milk come from?""How are babies made?" This natural inquisitiveness seems to be beaten out ofmost people in school or at home. I'll let the educators in this community helpfigure out why "project"-based learning seems to fit some learning styles betterthan others, but it certainly feels more natural. I always found the order wedid things in physics class backward. Instead of being taught the formula fordetermining the ratio of the required output force to the input force and thentrekking to the lab to see how a lever works, it makes more sense to firstobserve the lever in action and then learn the formula for it. This is how theprinciple was figured out in the first place, through observation. You observean effect, then build a theory to fit the observation. It may be faster tomemorize facts than to experience them, but then I would argue you don't reallyown that fact. "Hot" is a pretty abstract concept until you've burned yourself.

The world is such a fascinating place. How do you design and build a table? Whatkind of joints can be used to join the legs to the table? Which are the bestones for what I'm trying? What periods in history used different technics? Whatglues should I use, and when do I use a screw or a nail, or a brad, or a staple,or a rivet? What woods have which characteristics? What style do I want? Whattools should I use? The options go on and on. They don't have to; you can jumpin and just do it. Or you can plan and plan and plan. The key takeaway, though,is that you are going to learn something. And no one can take it from you.
(Continues...)Excerpted from THE MAKER MOVEMENT MANIFESTO by MARK HATCH. Copyright © 2014 Mark Hatch. Excerpted by permission of McGraw-Hill Education.
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MARK HATCH is CEO of TechShop, a membership-based, do-it-yourself (DIY) makerspace. It provides the digital and physical tools to make almost anything. TechShop members have made everything from robots and a lunar lander to a successful iPad case and craft businesses.