In this chapter I will specifically point out the actionable things that various institutions should do to take advantage of the trends associated with the Maker Movement. These are prescriptive. There are plenty of ways to engage the movement, but there are some very obvious, clear things that certain types of institutions should be doing. I challenge you to choose at least one and go make it happen. We need champions, you can be one. You will not be disappointed by your efforts. You will find people and friends who will want to support you on your quest and many even join you in the effort. Please, do something.

SCHOOLS

Let's start with education, as discussed in the last chapter. If you work in elementary education, please do check out the materials being created by Maker Media and attend both a local and a national Maker Faire. Consider attending a symposium about making in education. More and more resources are being created for classrooms that have a maker focus.

In the summer 2016 we got the school to put up a Lego wall for my wife's classroom. It's been a big hit with the kindergarten kids. Second graders can begin to learn how to solder. Many of the craft projects at the younger ages are already maker related. Integrating the weekly classroom instruction into themes is a great way to create a maker-friendly classroom. Please consider seeking support from the administration for putting a space inside the school library. Don't forget to have someone trained on how to use, maintain, and repair the equipment. A nice hack for this is to have a few upper-grade kids learn how to do this and then have them pass on this knowledge to the next group of kids as they move up. This reinforces the concept that the space is for them, and it is a practical demonstration of teachers being alongside students, rather than always out in front of them.

In the upper grades, making fits easily into the science classes and coursework, but it can also be good for history, English, and other subjects. The University of Hawaii has been working to map the Common Core to a maker-focused educational approach. I'm sure there are others who have done the same. We need participation from the upper grades for makerspaces as these are the grades that will most likely get the most use and support. Also, we need these kids engaged because by the time they graduate from sixth grade, some have already begun to decide what they are good and bad at and may have begun to opt out of career choices. If we have these spaces in schools with your support, perhaps we can keep these kids from making that tragic mistake so early.

Junior high is the perfect place to have full-blown labs. We need to bring back shop class, but give it an advanced design and manufacturing focus with a twenty-first-century spin. We don't, however, need shop teachers—you know, the gruff, mean dictators that ran shop class like it was an honor for students to be abused by them. Yes, it needs to be safe, controlled, clean, and professional. These should be exciting places that students love to visit with staff they like to hang out with. It's even better with students running the show and teaching other kids how to make things. And, it needs to be integrated into the rest of the curriculum, or at least this should be an option. For example, in a history class, students could augment learning by replicating forms of making prevalent during a period in time. Shop should not be an end in itself. We should also have full, modern kitchens with the new sous-vide and molecular gastronomy methods. All this could be integrated into a large makerspace. Imagine learning useful skills, integrated into the classroom in interesting, fun, and exciting ways.

High schools could take it up another level. At least one high-tech school should have multiple large CNC mills and lathes, 3D printers, laser cutters, and a full electronics lab. Classes from various disciplines could be taught simultaneously. Design and fabrication, electronics, physics, chemistry, theater arts—all these could be run out of a large, fully functional space. Better, if it were open to the community at night, you would attract students, artists, and engineers to work side by side on a variety of projects.

There should be space for a full FIRST Robotics practice ring. Multiple teams should launch from the same school. Even 4-H is getting into the Maker Movement, not surprisingly. There are examples of entire schools centered around making, such as Lick-Wilmerding High School in San Francisco. Try creating outreach to the elementary and junior high schools in the area. Get the kids excited about what they might get to do and make when they're older. Encourage them to learn the software, use the machines available to them, and get involved in after-school programs. You might even want to run after-school programs for the younger kids taught by the high school students.

At junior colleges, the opportunities are almost limitless. The mission of the JC is perfectly aligned with creating a very large makerspace. These can be college-prep efforts, getting students ready for the transition to a university or technical school, or developing trade programs that quickly take a high school graduate (or even a high school dropout) and give them the skills they need to land a job right away. This is skills training at its core. California has been leading the way here, having dedicated $17 million to junior-college makerspaces and $600 million to jobs training. Your state and city should do the same thing. Quick shout-out to Oklahoma, which has a well-funded and remarkable junior college system. I still would love for them to open some of their facilities to the broader community during off hours and open a true makerspace in Oklahoma City.

Universities will not be able to compete for engineering, art, or theater students if they don't have substantial maker spaces. Yes, every school has equipment spread around in the basements of various departments. And, yes, if you know who to talk to, where they are, what hours they may be open, you might be able to get in. But if you are not a student, you certainly will not.

It is understandable how hard this kind of thing is. Here is a tale of two universities. University of Texas, Austin, is a great school, a powerhouse. Maker Movement folks met with much of the administration, a couple went to influence some of the design through backdoor communications with one of the largest donors, but in the end . . . so far, it's not open to the public. This was an example of a lack of vision. Even if they did try to open it up now, where would someone park? It's buried on campus. Wichita State, on the other hand, invited and interviewed numerous people who had opened makerspaces. When these people met with senior staff and the administration, they strongly suggested that Wichita design the space so that those in the community could use it. Surely, Wichita State faced similar internal challenges regarding hours of operation, safety and liability concerns, control and access issues, architecture, parking, and increased expense, but guess what. They did it anyway. It will be open to the community. This is about executive vision, tenacity, drive, and most important, mission. Wichita State saw their role in including the community.

The Technical University of Munich helped to open a roughly one-hundred-thousand-square-foot site, right next to campus, via an aligned innovation institute—and, yes, they opened to the public. Washington University supported the development of a community resource about a mile away. Arizona State University opened a forty-thousand-square-foot location open to the public. If all of these organizations can do it, so can you.

One of the brilliant things about starting a university-sponsored open-access lab is that the high-potential students they are trying to attract from their own backyard are more likely to interact with the university for the first time in these kinds of spaces. What is your school doing to make sure it captures the best local students? A major university's head football coach always starts with making sure that the top players in his state know the school is interested and that he feels wanted. If you can't keep your own, how do you expect to pull kids from out of state?

You want to get your alumni and community excited about your next major building and expansion program? Talk about a cross-disciplinary makerspace that drives innovation and creativity, touches almost every department, supports diversity, inclusiveness, and job creation—and becomes a community or even a regional resource. That capital program could be worth $100 million, $500 million, or, if your university is in the top twenty or fifty, maybe $1 billion. BOOM!

CORPORATE RESPONSE

If you are associated with manufacturing in any way, you probably need a makerspace at every major facility including the corporate HQ. General Electric has announced that is what they are doing. Ford has one nearby. The value to an organization can be enormous. But don't just open a space; you need to integrate it into broader objectives. Obviously, I'm partial to innovation, but your objective can be about training, team building, community outreach, corporate citizenship, or even simply marketing. Make the space as open as possible; limiting it to just the engineers in R&D misses the big opportunity to leverage the capabilities and interests of your employees.

You will likely have spaces of different sizes with different objectives. The development and building of these spaces should be someone's primary responsibility. Be sure to send that person out on a wide tour to learn firsthand about current best practices; there is no sense in reinventing what has already been learned.

You may want to consider become a leading sponsor of the movement itself. There are few major firms that have thrown their hats into the ring. For a major partner, it's an easy opportunity to become well known in this community. Sponsoring pays dividends in that these people cross over into many other domains, and funding them within this context predisposes them to consider you and your firm in other contexts. I've seen that happen with Ford, Intel, and others.

Consider contracting with an entity that has done this before. Don't build it by yourself. These are great community resources and you want vested interests from around the community to support it in financial, operational, and tangible ways. Your makerspace will be more successful the more other organizations act and feel like they have been an integral part of the makerspace's successes.

These makerspaces are great platforms to go out and get support and funding from the city government, the school district, other manufacturers, and even competitors (Ford's space was open to everyone). Your space has the potential to provide some of the broadest and deepest impact for job creation, new businesses, and inspiration to the youth to pursue STEM careers in your city. Nonprofit organizations could really use the makerspace to help achieve their goals and objectives. You can help energize the innovation ecosystems, enhance STEM education, provide pathways for disadvantaged youth, and increase diversity. All the while, you'll be building a more robust internal innovation culture, which will drive bottom-line results from the commercialization of ideas, projects, and things that could increase company savings or growth. What other programs are you running that have this many tangible impacts and outcomes?

MILITARY

Let's go in a different direction. I served in the military more than thirty years ago. One of the things we would routinely do was to modify our equipment as soon as we received it to make it work better for us. For example, there is a rifle called an M79 grenade launcher. It is the length of a small rifle, but it has a huge barrel, large enough to get a full round the size of a grenade down it. The problem was that it was a full rifle, so how were you supposed to carry it? We had a lot of equipment already. Sacrificing long-range accuracy for portability, we cut them down—we took off half the barrel and turned the stock into a pistol grip. It became a sidearm. With a sewing machine and material to make holsters, we could now carry a sidearm and a grenade launcher. We had just added another significant degree of lethality to the team. We would then also modify our backpacks to be able to quickly deploy a Claymore mine. These things are very lethal. The idea here was simple. With the mine strapped to your backpack, all you would have to do is drop the “rucksack,” grab the “clacker,” and, since we had the spool of wire prestrung on a post on the ruck, simply run. Pretty simple modifications. A post and a few extra mounting straps, and you had modified your rucksack to become an instant Claymore deployment device. Drop, run, BOOM! Back that up with a dozen grenades from your M79 pistol and your adversary has just been warned what they are up against. And we haven't even started to call in close air support. Its basically a military tradition to take and customize the generic equipment you are provided.

Supply chains are the circulatory system for any army; if you cut the supply chain you'll choke the army. This goes way, way back. The Scythians were able to beat back Darius the Mede by using a “scorched earth” policy. They burned everything in front of Darius's army, forcing him to stretch out his army and supply chain. To feed and clothe his army, he had to create a supply chain that the Scythians could attach and harass. Without a solid supply chain one cannot win a war. But stuff happens. Remember this proverb?

This is the reality of any modern military unit. It's interesting in that this no longer needs to be true. We can forward ship the raw materials and make, on demand, just about anything. Make it work. The United States launched a 3D printer into outer space; it is on the International Space Station. Every forward base should have a variety of these types of tools and more. The military, to their credit, have been doing this forever. Aircraft carriers have machine shops. What is different now is that makerspaces should become normal forward resources. Technicians should be trained on how to turn ideas into solutions, and troops should be trained in how to use those tools. Self-preservation will be an incredible incentive not to screw up protective gear, and, yes, some safety protections should be put into place to prevent a soldier from doing something silly. However, the ability to quickly make a replacement part (even if only a temporary one) or upgrade equipment that was issued will far exceed the costs.

Even if the material is different, it will still be worth it. You can replace plastic parts with aluminum. They might be heavier or bulkier, but it's only one part. And it will probably never break again.

The US Navy ordered a couple of trailers outfitted with 3D printers and laser cutters, which they used for introductory design and digital training. I think it was a good first step. Every post should have an open-access space, and every high school on every post should have a space that could be dual purpose. The day could be reserved for the students and the afternoon could be for the rest of the post. With forward-deployed spaces and the training soldiers pick up in their spare time back on base, the capabilities of the forward units would be enhanced.

We could also use them as part of a strategy to assist with local economic development. Given the damage that a city experiences during a war or natural disaster, and the difficulty of getting replacement parts, the use of a facility like a makerspace could be a substantial impetus to help relaunch an economy. Using supplies in whatever form they are in, damaged, repurposed, refurbished as raw material, with the welding machines, cutters, blowtorches, riveters, and so on to be able to make machines function (even partly), could be huge. These makerspaces should become standard for economic recovery missions.

They are starting to pop up in disaster zones and refugee camps as well. Creating formal programs, funding, training, and safety are the next things that need to be done to help people help themselves. There is plenty of talent, but they just don't have access to the equipment, training, or community.

CITIES

Mayors, economic development heads, and school administrators should be all over this. Many are, but because of the large variance in the facility size, machine selection, and program delivery around what is called a makerspace, they are struggling to figure out the way forward. We need to think about a maker ecosystem, not just a single space. The ecosystem will include the city, library, museums, corporations, schools, and independent makerspaces. There will be after-school programs, fast retraining, job access, art festivals, trade programs, and funding to kick-start makerspaces across the city. These should then be integrated into the junior colleges and universities in the city. Don't let a university build a makerspace and wall it off from the rest of the city. It's too short-sighted. Give them some space to expand into if they will let others use it.

There are many ideas cities can explore. Zone for light industrial areas, or even better, create a maker zone and see who shows up. Work with developers, give them the density they want in exchange for creating permanent light maker zones and light industrial buildings or art zones. Join the Urban Manufacturing Alliance and launch a chapter in your city. Appoint a “Maker Czar.” Create a Maker Faire in your city. Sponsor FIRST Robotics teams. Support maker camps. Recommended reading includes The Maker City—really, required reading for anyone on the mayor's staff. We make our cities; now it's time that we MAKE our cities.

The Brookings Institute has a number of very good resources about creating innovation districts and the Maker Movement's role in those districts. I highly recommend their new workbook, Advancing a New Wave of Urban Competitiveness: The Role of Mayors in the Rise of Innovation Districts.¹ US News and World Reports has launched a Maker Cities ranking. If you want to rank high on that list, you need to begin engaging the Maker Movement.

STATE AND FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

Governors have two primary sources of power: of course, the budget (but that is shared with the legislature), and the power to spotlight. Yes, they have other powers, such as the state militia (one that most people forget), economic trade missions, and more. But when a governor picks up a phone and makes a couple of calls, watch the machine wake up and take action. Over time, makerspaces will become an integral part of every state economy. The questions are how quickly they will do this (there are first-mover advantages) and what is the nature of the spaces being created. Too many closed-platform, intermittent, university-only spaces, and we will hobble the ability of some individual or a corporation to open a space that can truly help drive the economy.

Work with the state university, junior college, and trade school programs to create truly robust spaces. Do not let them bury a space in the middle of their campus open only to the mechanical engineering seniors working on their capstone projects. Accept nothing less than support for a space that will help drive innovation and creativity in the state. Support it by networking them across the state with high schools, trade schools, and junior colleges. Getting cleared on a welding machine at the high school should clear them to run such a machine at the university lab.

These efforts can have a positive impact on economic development. Remember the $12 billion in shareholder value that has been created with three locations in the Bay Area? They support the arts by attracting more artists and making it cheaper and easier for artistry to win and deliver commissions. They are good for after-school programs, diversion programs, and keeping kids engaged and in school. They are good for retraining, basic training, small businesses, and large businesses. They are great anchors for innovation districts, innovation hubs, and even just for entertainment and fun. Other ideas include date nights learning how to weld or making gifts for family and friends.

At the federal level, it's exciting to see that Perkins Grants are now being made available for makers. This is a recent development. Through these grants the feds give away about $1.2 billion a year. HUD grants could be organized in publicized and systematized ways to help create spaces. EB-5 green cards (in a program where people pay upward of $1 million to start a business that employs ten people) should be issued through the support and creation of makerspaces. The technical problem here is that the way we measure jobs created from the EB-5 program by counting jobs created on-site. These spaces can create hundreds of jobs, but they are almost always off-site somewhere else. These places don't have the space to host and maintain on-site all the jobs that are being created. We also need to fix what we measure as a job. You must work for someone else for a job to count. If you work for yourself, you are essentially unemployed as far as the accounting goes. This is simply bizarre and counterproductive. We are living in a time when more people are working for themselves and are 1099 employed; they are working the “gig” economy, and the way we measure employment has not adapted.

Federal grants should come with a stipulation that the equipment purchased with them includes a public access compliance component. Veteran's benefits should be able to be spent on alternate forms of education. Our veterans earned these benefits and should be able to decide how they will be utilized. USAID should open spaces in refugee camps, as education and leadership programs, in countries around the world we are trying to influence. The Department of Education should help fund research on their efficacy. The National Science Foundation is very engaged in some related research already. I would ask that they increase the research into this vital area, and even fund some spaces. Science education and practice can be accelerated using these kinds of spaces to create experiments, use the equipment to make new equipment, and improve learning through deeper experiences at younger ages.

We are probably only touching on the surface here, as there are likely to be a number of departments at the state and federal level that might see the benefit of supporting spaces or even having spaces at their locations. These spaces may have more of an impact than that of libraries, and they have the potential to become a defining characteristic of the twenty-first-century city. We may not call them makerspaces by then, but individual access to tools that can innovate, create, and transform society is a revolutionary idea and it is the new reality. Governments can help accelerate or hinder their development.

CORPORATIONS

We discussed how companies have used these spaces to spur innovation and employee engagement in an earlier chapter, but quickly, here is a recap and a couple more ideas. Any communications or design department should have a go-to space to create quick prototypes for events, gifts, devices, and so forth. Anywhere there is design, manufacturing, packaging, and space design, there should be a space. If you are in manufacturing, you need a complete strategy for how to leverage these new capabilities across the enterprise. They can be great employee perks, places for summer programs for their kids, and, of course, platforms for helping drive innovation and productivity. Please don't just drop one in—think through your objectives, allocate the time to communicate and do it well, appoint a lead, and provide budget for time, materials, and training.

Several architecture firms, including the Los Angeles office of Gensler, have put in spaces both as a showpiece and as a functional shop to help their staff do design work. These firms are being hired to build innovation centers, makerspaces, and labs in all the types of places I've described.

Hospitality companies could potentially put 3D printers in their business centers, or even makerspaces in resort settings, to differentiate themselves from their competitors. Staff would use them for events, repairs, and to create memorable items for special guests.

Hospitals are starting to put in spaces for their staff to solve problems short term or even to create assistive devices on the fly. In long-term care settings, I could see these spaces popping up in nursing care or adult-living situations.

Supporting local makerspaces in the schools is another nice way to help. Your public policy team is probably already engaged in the communities they are in and is allocating dollars to various programs. Makerspaces, maker activities, and Mini Maker Faires are great ways to give back.

FOUNDATIONS

Many foundations have gotten on board with helping people learn how to code. There have been studies done, nonprofits started and funded, case studies developed, and the focus on this has been great. If a kid or an adult has any kind of aptitude for computer programming, networking, maintenance—you name it, they should be encouraged to do it. But there has not been a lot of funding for makerspaces and maker education. There has been some; Chevron gave Fab Lab $10 million. Ford Motor Company has supported children's education. The Kaufman Foundation has shown interest in this space, as has the Lemelson Foundation, since the early days. The Moore Foundation, Infosys Corp., and others have provided different levels of support. But, as I'm sure you can guess, I think more needs to be done. I've seen the faces of excitement and sheer joy from the kids that have come through the Fujitsu trailer experience; we need these trailers all over the place while we wait for the funding for the spaces to be freed up. We need to demonstrate to the administrators through the trailers and other programs that maker education is a worthy way of approaching education. We should be minting PhDs with dissertations around the power of making. It's similar to project-based education, or maybe it's exactly the same, I don't know—someone should do that study too.

Without definitive studies, it will be hard to free up or redirect the tens of billions of dollars that education is already spending in other ways. We need studies that are not just attitudinal before-and-after studies but real longitudinal outcome-tracking studies, done at spaces that are well run and delivering on the promise. Not that I want to wait for results, by the way; I think much of the evidence can be seen in the classrooms and in the eyes of the kids that get to learn this way. But I suspect full institutional support will not come until these types of studies are done. Once we get a few started, state and federal educational support will follow.