I spent most of this glorious day inside in a meeting… And believe it or not it was pretty fun. My friends Chris, Doreen, ken and Mike had organized a meeting of the Vermont makers to discuss possible places for a community maker space. They had invited this great guy, Gui C. FrommSomerville Massachusetts who has created a very successful maker space called artist asylum. Gui is A very talented maker who at age 26 has managed to create one of the largest maker spaces in the United States.

He's also about to star in a discovery channel show called big brain theory. It's an elimination style reality competition show about making stuff. Its going to be on right after MythBusters starting this Wednesday night. My friend Gadget A … the science advisor for the Colony.. was also the science advisor on this show. I have been hearing from him for months about the cool stuff on this show. Dynamite, missles , fire.. . it will be well worth watching !

Today guis mission was more tame. He was here to tell us about the economics and logistics of setting up his maker space….. Something that we would like to duplicate here in the Queen city. We spent several hours , including a very nice catered lunch, discussing the similarities and differences between Burlington and Somerville. We heard how they have grown from 1000 sq foot all volunteer operation to 40,000 sq feet with 4 Full-time employees in only two years. We heard about the tools that they used and how they handle their insurance, how they manage classes , how the politics worked and how it all work with community relations etc. etc. etc. it was a very thorough and helpful explanation of the path ahead of us. I was pretty inspired by it .

 

 

After the talk in a long question-and-answer session we set often cars to look at three potential maker spaces. First we started at the most ambitious. The Moran plan. Readers in Vermont will know the Moran plant as the big electric generation facility that is on the shore of Lake Champlain. For the past 30 years people have been trying to figure out what to do with the giant building. I had Never been inside and was very excited to take a look.
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To say it's a fixer upper is a bit of an understatement. The first Building has several feet of rusty water in it. The next floor is more promising but with huge voids in the floor still the space was impressive and light. With a little imagination… Okay… Make it a lot of imagination… You could imagine the place humming with machinery and people.

 

 

 

 

Like I said you'll need a lot of imagination. Still it's not completely out of the realm of possible… It is probably out of the realm of soon. Still it is really interesting to think about this building as a hub for all things maker in the state of Vermont. It would need it holdable rebuild… But the space is intense and wonderful. It will be interesting to see what happens here.

Our next Stop was a more practical starting place. The home of Pines Street metal studio. It's where my friend yoke does his iron pour.

The potential maker space here is a small attached building it's currently not being used. It has a leaky roof. Still with a little bit of money we could probably rebuild the shell of the building and have a space with about 2500 ft.², perfect for a starter maker space. I think it would be great because the nearby Pine Street metal studio great asset for would-be metalworkers and bicycle workers.

Our final stop was a newish steel building Near Champlain's Miller Center. It was very plain space also about 2500 ft.² and in move-in condition. That alone made it tempting.

 

At that point we were all pretty beat. Our heads were full of ideas of things we could do… And things we need to do before we start the tools and people into buildings.

We closed the day with a nice gathering at luenigs just to reflect and relax.

Again… The day was pretty grueling and there are so many things to consider.Even so, I came away feeling very certain that something is going to happen here… And it will be very good for the community. I think it will be a great complement to the other maker things that we've got going on including the maker spaces at uvm and essex, the maker fair, the maker meet ups etc. It's a very exciting time for me to see so many people wanting to make things with their hands.

Okay so now the week begins… More tomorrow
Night all, night Sam
– Me