Hey, Jason from the Fraser Valley Makerspace posting.
At SHHH this past weekend I was #2 for lightning talks and my topic was working towards opening up our tools, books, lessons and facilities to VHS members. As I only had 2 minutes to talk I kept things short, but I’d like to elaborate a bit in the forum as this is a conversation I’d really like to have with all the Makers and Hackers throughout the GVRD and Fraser Valley.
First let me just say that this idea is really new to us at FVMS. It’s mostly in my head, and I still need to run this idea past our full membership. I also have no idea how a partnership like this would actually work yet, so I can’t answer questions regarding logistics or the handling of data with any concrete answers yet.
Please consider this post as either an invitation to start a conversation, or, the ramblings of a crazy person if I’m being unrealistic.
In the short term:
I’ve noticed that VHS is doing quite a bit of house cleaning. You’re in the process of an equipment review, something that we at the FVMS have not done yet as we’re clingy pack-rats and we haven’t quite run out of space! We are actually very close to opening up another facility so our pack rat behavior will probably get worse for a time. But since you’re 6 years ahead of us, watching how you deal with challenges gives us a glimpse of our future.
There are two things we’d like to avoid, a lack of space to work and underutilized equipment. I mention underutilized equipment but the issue is really space utilization, how much “making” room is taken up as “storage” room, and why are those items in storage?
As much as we’d love to keep everything we get our hands on, it’s hard to justify tripping over something that you’ll only uses once a year. So it makes sense to get rid of things, but there’s always that cringe factor when you’re getting rid of a tool. I’m sure everyone has felt the aggravation of letting something go only to need it a couple of weeks later.
For now there’s no easy solution, your space is purging low utilization tools and materials and it looks like you’re cataloging what you’re keeping. I know you have a current tool wiki, I’m not sure if you’re going to continue using that or if you have other plans for how you will track and list what tools you have.
Our space is also doing a cleanup, only for us it’s our website. If you haven’t checked it out in a while don’t worry, you haven’t missed much. Our site hasn’t changed since 2014. A website has always been a “nice to have” for us, but it’s never gotten the attention it deserves as we’re a tightly knit group and the bulk of our conversations are hidden away in e-mails, our forum was dead from day one.
That’s changing as we’re now getting to the point where keeping things organized is becoming quite important. Since we’re starting out with a blank slate we figured that it makes sense to create a foundation that can align with our future goals.
We’d like to catalog and list our tools in a similar way as the VHS so that if we ever share a link within the Wiki it’d be easy and familiar for either membership to find what they’re looking for.
So the short term goal is really simple, we basically just want to do things the same way that you’re doing them so that if we ever move closer as 2 organizations, the exchange of info and such will be much easier to make happen.
The goal long-term goal:
Our long term goal is to create a system that’s similar to the branches of the public library. We’d like to not only catalog our various resources and list them, but utilize a database where we can track physical location, condition of the tool, and utilization. Those 3 are important metrics because of what they’d allow us to know when tools need to go, and they could help free up a lot of space. The idea is to move tools to where they’re needed, warehousing what’s not in use, and getting rid of the unused and the broken.
Our space currently has some really cool stuff. We’ve got a loom, a spinning wheel, an industrial sewing machine, several welders, a small mill, etc, etc. Many of those items are only used once every couple of months, if that. But we’re currently tripping over most of them at our “clean” space. Our new “dirty” space is great for 2 things, it’s good for loud, dirty industrial type projects, but it’s also good for storage. We currently have one storage mezzanine and pallets, and more importantly, a forklift, but we’re looking to build up our storage and set it up so that items are kept clean (soot and sawdust free). The goal is to allow more room for the activities, but to not loose our tools. They’re put away, but they can be requested and delivered with a bit of prior notice. It’s not as convenient as just having everything available 100% of the time, but given our space constraints, it seems like the most logical compromise.
We wouldn’t have to put everything away either. If we’re able to track utilization, we can then easily make decisions on when to put low utilization tools into longterm storage. This would keep the tools under the ownership of the space, and members could request tools when needed, but for 99% of their life they’re not underfoot.
If tools really never get used, then we can do a regular purge, but there’s less of a sense of urgency.
This is only a small part of a bigger plan though. The database idea would allow for the transfer of tools between spaces, as well as the transfer of resources other than just tools.
We’d like to connect lessons, requests for lessons, and lesson materials to a similar database. Currently the only way that a VHS member knows that something is going on at FVMS or vice versa is for them to constantly check blog posts or Facebook. If there was a common calendar then there would be more events that everyone is aware of. We’d also like to see if we could set up classes that are similar to lectures so that they could be Skyped. That way members would be able to attend without traveling out to the remote location.
Another thing that could be connected is member services. Your Wiki page currently has this feature, we’d simply like to bind our membership and any of their services to yours.
The last idea is a way to request volunteer help with activities. A big part of the FVMS is teaching kids classes at various FVRL and Surrey library locations. This helps us with revenue but is also a big part of how we operate. We’re trying to get as many young people hooked on Making and STEM as possible. We currently draw from our pool of members, but if this is an activity that VHS was interested in, say, in partnership with the Vancouver libraries or a local youth group, you could have access to all of our lesson plans, materials lists and presentations. This volunteer help request system could useful for other events as well. Fairs, Festivals, (a new makerfaire???).
That’s the bulk of what we’ve envisioned so far. It’s quite a bit of stuff to think about, and it would be a lot of work. That’s why I’m thinking we’d start small and do it in stages, start with just cataloging the equipment in the same manner so that if we move forward at least linking things together would be easier.
Does this make sense? Is this something our two groups could work towards?