The “Zero to Maker” guide for new Makers.

It can be daunting to get into Making. You have an idea in your mind of what you want to make, but you need certain tools. Some of them you might have in your garage. But do you have a laser cutter to cut those wooden pieces precisely? Probably not. That is where a MakeSpace like our very own MakePlace comes in handy. There you can use the tools that you need, but you can also learn from the other Makers how to learn and use the tools and collaborate on projects.

Read the story of David Lang. He spends most of his time working on OpenROV, an open source underwater robot and community of DIY ocean explorers around the world. But on the side he is writing a book about his experiences of losing his office job and applying himself as a Maker in the US maker environment.

Go read his story here: Link to Kickstarter and if you like what you read, pledge some money towards his fabulous project.

Once you have done reading it, send us an email on how to join the MakePlace right here in Napier!

David’s story as an excerpt from the Kickstarter Campaign:

After losing my office job in the summer of 2011, I was forced to rethink my career trajectory. All of a sudden, it seemed that my education and work experience had prepared me for a future that wasn’t coming. The “knowledge” that I thought was my ticket in life was now the source of my insecurity, the reason I felt distanced from work that is meaningful, tangible, and measurable.
Instead of scrambling back into the rat race and praying for a new job that wouldn’t vanish, I decided to focus on building the fundamental skills I had somehow managed to skip over; the skills that would enable me to create, develop or repair something useful or essential. I was looking to create a bridge between foundational knowledge of how things work and what their potential can be with the help of the latest technology.
The first step was to recreate the shop classes my high school never offered. I immersed myself in this new maker movement by spending two months taking every class I could at TechShop in San Francisco: wood working, laser cutting, CNC machining, CAD, welding, and everything in between.