How My Involvement with the Makerspace Paved My Path to Empowerment and Entrepreneurship
By Sebastian Romanet
A year or so after high school, I started taking mechatronics classes because going to college seemed like the normal thing to do. But after a couple of semesters, I wasn’t really feeling like anything was happening, and I didn’t see it going anywhere. The basis of what I was learning excited me, but I felt that the path I saw ahead of me was a waste of this education. I was missing the connection between my classes and making money while being happy.
On the other hand, my dad drove big rigs for about 15 years. I liked the travel lifestyle and most importantly, I knew he was making good money, so I went to talk to a truck driving school in Sacramento. I decided to switch over to driving to make some money. My justification was that I’d drive and carve out time on the road to learn programming and work on software. I was still interested in it, but this way I could learn it on my own, on my free time, not having to depend on it for money.
Then, one day, I was at Hacker Lab working on a simulator for a trainer that we use in a mechatronics class, and that’s when Steve Hunter (a retired CTE professor and mechatronics consultant who works at Hacker Lab) saw my project. He got Carol Pepper-Kittredge, the statewide program manager for CCC Maker, who also happened to be there. I hadn’t met either of them yet, and I just thought they were teachers who were personally interested in what I was doing.
Right away, Carol was mentioning that the simulator could be on a resume or presented to a prospective employer to show what I’m capable of. They were so enthusiastic. To see this passion from these individuals and how seriously they took my project changed my perspective. I saw value in what I was doing at school. I saw that I could do stuff with more my head than my hands, and if I could use my head to actually earn the money, I think that’s a lot more fun. There wasn’t really much of a plan for the future, but there were now options.
Soon after, my software was made available to Sierra College. They use it in class to train students. When you load up the software on your laptop, you actually see a three-dimensional rendition of the trainer on your screen, and you can interact with it, click on parts, and write your own code to operate it.
The Beginning of My VR Journey
As soon as I had signed up f or Sierra College, I discovered Hacker Lab. I had no idea it was tied to Sierra College, but it sounded cool, so I started reading about how they offered 24/7 access to tools, and my mind was just blown. Then I saw that students at Sierra College pay $25 a month instead of $100, so I skipped a day of work to go to the opening day at the lab.
Eric Ullrich, the Hacker Lab co-founder, signed me up. When I had first walked in as a newbie, I had seen everyone working on projects, so I felt like I had to have something to work on, otherwise I’d look like I was wasting time. There was a social anxiety that kept me out at first. And then I just started going there and working on web development. I was building websites for small businesses for extra money at the time.
One night at the Hacker Lab, I saw a drawing of a girl wearing a VR headset on the calendar of events advertising a VR meetup. I’d been researching VR and watching videos of people trying it but I had never tried it before because I had no way of accessing the tools. I ended up coming to the meetup, and that’s where I got introduced to the equipment. Several students got together and decided this is something that we want to work on and be involved in.
I got a brief introduction to the development environment by one of the people there, who actually ended up being my mentor for a while. This guy was so cool. After two weeks of knowing me, he let me borrow his VR prototype kit that you can only get sent directly from Oculus. He let me borrow it for five or six months to develop on it and learn. I eventually started teaching others.
One day Eric asked me about what I was working on, seeing the VR equipment out. I put the headset on his face, and someone snapped a picture for social media. That’s when things took off because that image made it across a bunch of different platforms and people started getting excited. This was the first people were hearing of development happening in Sacramento, so to bring the development side of VR rather than just the entertainment side of it actually gained a lot of attention here.
I ended up doing my very first instructional class on how to develop VR just by chance. I was at an event called Code for Hood in downtown Sacramento. There was a class that got cancelled, and enough kids wanted to learn VR that they ended up talking me into creating a class for them, just impromptu, to fill it. The original plan was for me to just do my VR presentation, but they put me in the lunch room with a big projector while the kids were eating. As soon as I got my screen up and started running things, all the kids just stopped eating and were staring at the screen. I ended up with 30 or 40 kids in line wanting to learn more.
The organizers handed me a microphone, and from that point forward, they had me doing presentations and talking to people. So next thing I knew, I had an impromptu class with 13 to 15 students, introducing them to the development environment of VR. The kids were really engaged, and that sparked the interest in VR classes I kept getting.
I repeatedly got bombarded by messages from people asking if I was teaching VR. Or I’d walk into the lab and the person at the front desk would say five people came in looking for VR classes and saying they thought I was teaching. Sierra College ended up supporting me by investing $5,000 for me to get all the VR equipment, and we did VR camps that were six meetings for three hours each. I would have people who had never programmed, and by the end of the camp they were able to start any VR project they wanted to from scratch. It was very satisfying.
A Culture of Empowering Students
For me, all of this was really cool, but there was kind of an anxiety at first. I was 22 years old and people twice my age were looking to me for the answers. As a student, you’re usually told how things are and to suck it up if you don’t like. Here it’s different. When I’m meeting with people at Sierra College, it doesn’t matter that you’re “just” a student. In fact, it’s almost the opposite. When you’re a student, it’s like you’re the most important person here. It took a very long time to get used to the fact that when people are asking your opinion, they actually mean to get a response of your real opinion back, not what they might want to hear. They trusted my opinion to be able to take the program further.
The official name of my current position in the makerspace is student ambassador. What I’ve been tasked with doing is promoting the space across campus and trying to help figure out the sustainability inside of the makerspace. It’s very broad. One thing I do is talk with other makerspaces to see what their issues are. I also present about the makerspace during classes, which is a good way to bring students in. I tell them about everything they have access to, the price, and how to get there. I can bring in about 10 students a day by presenting in classrooms.
All of this shift in my career trajectory happened because I got involved with Hacker Lab and Sierra College directly. I was shown that what I can do with my mind actually has worth. I followed my interests and ended up teaching VR. I even ended up organizing a couple of large-scale events on campus, and that has all ultimately led me to now: I just recently started my own small prototyping business. I’m very excited about this path and offer services like custom PCBs, microcontroller integration, and 3D printing.
This article first appeared in the CCC Maker publication titled “Makerspace Impact: Implementation Strategies & Stories of Transformation” (2019).
