The World Needs More Makers
Our rapidly changing world requires job skills that meet the changing needs of a workforce increasingly driven by information and analytics.
By Tim Bajarin
This month, the granddaddy of Maker Faires was held in San Mateo, CA. It attracted close to 100,000 people, who went to check out all types of maker projects.
When Dale Dougherty, the founder of Make magazine, started his publication in 2005, the focus was on STEM and technology. In the early days of the magazine, you would find a wide variety of projects for making your own PCs, robots, and 3D-printed designs. It reminded me a bit of my childhood, where we had erector sets, tinker toys, and Lincoln Logs — educational but fun.
Over time, the maker movement has evolved to include just about any do-it-yourself project you could dream up. At this year’s Maker Faire, I saw quilting demos, a bee-keeping booth, and an area teaching you how to ferment foods—alongside stalls showing laser cutters, 3D printers, wood lathes, robotic kits, and a lot of other STEAM-based items and ideas.
What I love most about Maker Faire is watching the excited faces of the boys and girls who attend. Seeing them go from booth to booth, picking up ideas for projects of their own, is truly rewarding.
The maker movement comes at one of the most critical times in our history. When I was in school in the 1960s, we were not prepared for a tech-focused world. My elective classes were auto shop, drafting, and metal shop; I even took a home economics class. These courses were designed to prepare us for blue-collar jobs. Of course, these jobs still exist today. But in the information age, most jobs now incorporate at least some technology.
The maker movement and these Faires help kids get interested in STEM and STEAM (which throws in art and design) and introduce them to the idea that anyone can be a “maker.”
STEM and work
This year’s event in the Bay Area included a college and career day on Friday morning, its first such event. I had the privilege of moderating a panel about career journeys with five panelists who shared details about their own experiences.
Of the speakers, two stood out to me. One was Sarah Boisvert, founder of the Fab Lab Hub. She noted that when President Trump asked IBM CEO Ginni Rometty about her thoughts on the future jobs in America, she told him we do not need more coal workers; we need “new collar workers,” referring to the demand for a technically skilled labor force to meet the needs of America’s job market.
Boisvert wrote a book about this (The New Collar Workforce: An Insider’s Guide to Making Impactful Changes to Manufacturing and Training). And at Maker Faire, she told students that when she hires people, the first thing she looks for is solid problem-solving skills, which she sees as fundamental to “new collar” jobs.
The other speaker who caught my attention was Janelle Wellons. After graduating from MIT, she landed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where she works as mission operations engineer on the Cassini, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), and Multi-Angle Imager for Aerosols (MAIA) missions. Kids in the audience were spellbound listening to her tell them that anyone can achieve their goals if they put their minds to it.
The maker movement and Maker Faires are critical to our future. Our rapidly changing world requires job skills that meet the changing needs of a workforce increasingly driven by information and analytics. If you get a chance to go to a Maker Faire in your area, I highly recommend you do. You might even become a maker yourself.
Read more: “Google’s AIY Maker Kits Now Contain Everything You Need”
Originally published at www.pcmag.com.
