In a recent article (September 2016), Parker Thomas asked, “Is the Maker Movement Really a ‘Movement’?”
Parker’s conclusion, “We have to MAKE a movement, just like countless others have done before us. Otherwise, we’re just a fad.”, indicates that he thinks we don’t have a movement — but we could if we work to make it happen.
While I disagree with the assertion that we are not a movement, I love Parker’s call to action — that WE have to make the movement what we want it to be. To me, this is a critical point — There is no individual, no corporation, no government entity that can define a movement — it must be done by a large group of people with a common belief system working together for a shared set of goals.
A Nation of Makers
This is why I’m excited by the launch of the new Nation of Makers non-profit. Nation of Makers “is a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping makers by supporting maker organizations; through advocacy, the sharing of resources and the building of community within the maker movement and beyond.”
While the organization carries on work started as part of The President’s Nation of Makers initiative, the organization is now being guided by a group of 8 community members (disclosure: I’m one of the eight) in collaboration with hundreds of community leaders, and will soon be transitioned over to the organization’s board of directors. The Nation of Makers board of directors will have a number of community-elected board seats to ensure community representation, and a board of advisors is being structured to provide the (future) executive director day-to-day guidance that includes the perspective of the community.
The Nation of Makers organization is only possible due to a large number of people working together — and we’ve already received over 300 letters of support from diverse organizations located all over the country.
The Third Wave of The Maker Movement
The formation of the Nation of Makers organization signals a shift in the Maker Movement — a third wave of progress in which a diverse, distributed set of organizers work together to create long-term sustainability for the movement.
Before we discuss the third wave, let’s take a (highly simplified) look at the first and second waves of the Maker Movement.
Wave 1: The Hackers — Hackerspaces started in the 90’s in Germany, then spread to the U.S. after a number of U.S. hackers attended the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) in Germany. These spaces connected groups of people interested in exploring how things work, taking them apart, making them better, writing code, and much more in the spirit of the original MIT use of the word hacker. This wave demonstrated the viability of peer-to-peer learning in community-operated spaces and led to some of the earliest open-source hardware and open-source hardware companies.
Wave 2: The Makers — While the hackerspaces were showing us a glimpse of the future, Dale Dougherty, a visionary who started the first commercial website and coined the term “Web 2.0”, started Make: Magazine, Maker Faire, and MakerEd. Dale and his team made the future accessible to the masses by popularizing the concepts and driving significant awareness for what would later became known as “The Maker Movement”. Hundreds (thousands?) of makerspaces run were started by community groups, libraries, schools, science centers, museums, and more. Many of these groups now produce hundreds of independently-organized Maker Faire events in cities around the world — and even a White House Maker Faire. This wave included maker pros and the growth of maker businesses enabled by open-source hardware and software, and the availability of crowd-sourced funding through platforms like Kickstarter.
Wave 3 is about the Organizers — the thousands of individual leaders that create and organize makerspaces, produce maker events, and work in maker-focused institutions, non-profits, or corporations. We make a difference in our local communities every day — and we have a shared set of challenges that include topics such as fundraising, volunteer management, burnout, interfacing with government, and more. By working together in our cities, states, and at a national level, we will have a much broader impact while also reducing the hurdles we all face.
Nation of Makers creates a community of practice for maker organizers and their organizations to share knowledge and work together to drive long-term sustainability of the Maker Movement. It is up to us to get involved, and stay involved in order to help drive the Maker Movement towards our long-term goals, including long-term sustainability of our makerspaces, our maker programs, our maker events, and our maker businesses.
Defining the future of The Maker Movement
In “Is the Maker Movement Really a ‘Movement’?”, Parker Thomas outlined several traits to as a test of a movement in response to Tom Kalil’s article “Building a Nation of Makers” — I think they function well as a guide to the future of The Maker Movement.
- A Movement Needs A Clearly Defined Goal
The vision of Nation of Makers can serve as the beginning of this goal; “to build a society where everyone has access to the tools, technologies, experiences and knowledge to make anything…where collaboration fosters a culture of abundance.” This is a bold vision, but why settle for anything less? - Successful Movements Need a Clear Strategy
Even the best strategies need to change. More than a strategy, we need a strategic process — one where the community can work together to develop an inclusive strategy (or set of strategies) for the right problems. This strategic process must also be able to help us create action at the local level, and to receive community feedback so that the strategy can adapt as conditions change. The Nation of Makers organization, and its community of practice must include a mechanism for strategic planning, communication, and feedback. - A Great Movement Requires Great Leaders
“Great Leaders” for the Maker Movement doesn’t mean only one or two key people. We have an amazing set of leaders at the local level which will have the opportunity to serve in roles as part of the Nation of Makers organization — representing their state, their type of space, event, or organization, or perhaps serving in a role as an advisor on a specific topic area. A movement benefits from a few highly visible people that can help drive the message, but the real work happens every day at the local level.
Participating in a movement requires a certain amount of belief — belief that if we work together, we can change the world. We believe when we act locally — opening makerspaces, producing first maker events, creating maker programs within our institutions, and starting maker businesses. Now we need to believe that working together at a national level will create an organization that will help support those same makerspaces, events, institutions, and businesses. It will not be easy, and the path will not always be clear, but achieving the vision is well worth the effort.
If you care about the Maker Movement, you should head to the Nation of Makers website to learn more about the org, its mission, vision, history (coming soon) and more. You should also subscribe to the mailing list to stay informed — and then start to get engaged as we take the Maker Movement to the next level — together.
