Makerspaces and trust

Some things which I think are critical to successful makerspaces (but probably also other community hobby groups)

• A cohort of five to seven people minimum who are able to work together effectively and spend at least a couple hours every week on fostering the space’s success (as distinct from working on their own projects there). They may be on a Board of Directors in a larger space, or a person in this group may be a working group/Special Interest Group/committee lead, or someone who isn’t in a formal position of trust but is generally somewhat vetted and able to contribute.
• A formal Code of Conduct which is clear, easily accessible, acceptable to members, and enforceable in a standard manner
• A not-necessarily-formal group of core cultural stewards. This can overlap with CoC enforcement in some cases, but I see this as something distinct – more of a protective layer, to get people who are newer onboarded onto/in alignment with the cultural norms, to enable people to talk things out before they escalate to the point that filing conduct reports is the only option.
• Some non-white-male people in leadership positions, to signal that marginalized people are welcome and willing to stay and contribute there (sorry, I know it’s reductive to state it this way, but I think that this is a place where “actions speak louder than words”)

Compare and contrast between the makerspaces I’ve been a member of

When I was on the Board of Directors of denhac, we did not have all of these things all of the time, partially due to differences in culture and alignment between where I wanted us to be and where others wanted us to be, but partially just by accident. I feel that denhac suffered as a result. The space I am currently a member of, Kwartzlab, has more of these things more of the time than denhac did. When we moved here I was amazed by how drama-free and well-run it seemed to be, compared to what I was used to. Of course, it is also true that it takes months to years to become part of a community enough that you are trusted with the drama in the inner workings – ask me again in another year.

I also think, for what it is worth, that I didn’t have enough of these to be successful at MergeSort. I am grateful for the faith that was placed in me by attendees and supporters when I co-founded that group, and for the people I met through it. As I have grown in the years since, I have realized that I probably was not the right person to build what a successful MergeSort would have looked like in 2015. I regret that I was not able to be that person then. We live, & learn, I guess - and I’m a different person, ten years later.

It’s about trust

Every decision that I can think of that is different between Kwartzlab and denhac is enabled by the fact that Kwartzlab operates with high trust between members and denhac operates with low trust.

Kwartzlab vets their members - you need to come on open house nights often enough to have five people +1 your membership before you are invited. You go through about a 20 minute interview with three current members asking you what you’re like and what you want to get out of membership as a part of the vetting. At denhac, you sign up online, and your first interaction might be when we check your ID and give you the 24/7 access card.

denhac doesn’t allow commercial work in the space (on paper; informally, if you weren’t causing a problem or monopolizing a shared resource without giving back, we wouldn’t stop you). Kwartzlab does, with the reasoning that nothing will motivate someone to fix a tool more than needing it for their job – but, with the understanding that you are trusted to share use of tools responsibly.

Kwartzlab requires face masks at public events in the space, for the foreseeable future. The reasoning here is that if you can’t follow this one low-effort rule to keep us all safe, how can we know that you’ll follow other higher-effort rules the space has that keep everyone safe? It was more often the norm in 2023-2024 that I would be the only one masked at denhac than it was that I would see even one other person masking (with the exception of the locksport night, I think. Is it that locksport is done by security-minded people who do threat analysis more often? Is it that that event happened to be run by a person who cared about wearing masks for COVID safety, and their cultural influence there spread? Unclear to me, I didn’t go to locksport much.)

denhac has a SawStop. Kwartzlab doesn’t and trusts that you operate the tool with best practices. (tbf, they are 1.4x as expensive in CAD than USD, and I only ever saw them trigger for false alarms at denhac)