American Makers Quantifying the Maker Movement in 2014 by Caleb Sheehan

1. Makerspace (noun): “A community-owned physical space where people come together to
collaborate, sharing ideas, knowledge and tools. They might host talks or have workshops, be
open 24/7, provide access to machinery or some combination of many other possible facilities.” —
FizzPOP Hackspace, Birmingham, England
Makerspaces are also known as Hackerspaces, Hackspaces, or Hackerlabs.Quantifying the Maker Movement in 2014
Introduction
Makerspaces have been expanding
throughout America since 2007 when the
Maker Movement* crossed over from
Europe. Since then, the Maker Movement
has gone mainstream, with the White
House hosting a Makerfaire (a sort of
large-scale electronics/crafts workshop)
this past summer (2014). There are 200-
300 makerspaces currently running in the
US today. Makerspaces have been
lauded as a new form of education and as
organic startup accelerators. However, as
much as people have been talking about
hackerspaces, we have yet to measure
them. Beside the limited and oft-outdated
data at hackerspaces.org (the Wikipedia of
hackerspaces), there are no available
metrics on the organizations that exist in
America. Creating new knowledge about
today's hackerspaces was the purpose of
this study.
*Techopedia.com describes the Maker Movement as so:
“The maker movement is primarily the name given to the increasing number of people employing do-it-yourself (DIY) and do-it-with-others ( DIWO) techniques and
processes to develop unique technology products. Generally, DIY and DIWO enables individuals to create sophisticated devices and gadgets, such as printers, robotics
and electronic devices, using diagrammed, textual and or video demonstration. With all the resources now available over the Internet, virtually anyone can create
simple devices, which in some cases are widely adopted by users. […] Most of the products created under the maker movement are open source, as anyone can
access and create them using available documentation and manuals. However, the maker movement also incorporates creations and inventions that never existed
before and were developed by individuals in their homes, garages or a place with limited manufacturing resources.”
The Trip
In order to collect accurate data on
America’s makerspaces, I travelled over
6,000 miles over a period of two months. I
visited and administered a survey at 25
different makerspaces in 9 states across
the West Coast, Southwest, and Midwest.
The overall aim of the survey sought to
answer three questions: What does the
makerspace do, how it is run, and who
goes to it. This data can be used to
determine best practices for running a
makerspace, the economic/educational
impact of makerspaces, and the
inclusiveness of the maker movement.
Results
The quantitative data collected has yet to
be formally analyzed. However, more
general observations can be made without
detailed analysis of the data. Some of
these observations are listed below:
• Largest group of members in
Information Technology/Engineering
fields (not necessarily majority).
• Underrepresentation of females and
non-whites (though maybe not given
industries members are pulled from).
• Range of member ages is large (18-80),
but concentrated around 25-30.
• Focus is more on education than
entrepreneurialism.
• Most organizations are 501c3 non-
profits, led by an elected board of
directors and run by unelected officers.
• Membership and building size is closely
correlated (whether one or both
variables are independent is
undetermined).
Special thanks to: Dr. Cindy Harnett, Dr. Karen Christopher,
Andrew Grubb, and the following organizations:
ATX Hackerspace, Austin, TXTXRX, Houston, TX
Courtesy of www.roadtrippers.com
Quelab, Albuquerque, NM