I once explained to a friend that I was most proud that Make: magazine and Maker Faire had created a community of makers — how makers found each other through the magazine and events and how an even larger public could now find them. Makers had their own projects that demonstrated their creative and technical talents and what they were capable of doing. Giving makers opportunities to share their work in public became the mission of the magazine and Maker Faire but it also proved the best way to grow the whole community.

Next year in February, we will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the first issue of Make: magazine. In this day and age, it is remarkable to be able to publish a magazine in print. It is possible only because the community values the work we do — some of you have been subscribers since the first issue.  I could not have imagined the impact that Make: combined with Maker Faire would have on so many people but I am grateful for it. 

I am especially happy when I hear from young engineers and creative artists that Make: magazine and Maker Faire were an important influence on their lives. I’d like to think that makers demonstrated that it was possible to do this kind of work and then showed them how to do it themselves. That’s how we all created more makers. Becoming a maker was something anyone can call themselves. The real value of the term maker is not in how it is defined — I’ve said that you should define it any way that includes yourself — but in how it connects you to others, in particular, helping you find other makers.

This community doesn’t belong to anyone, nor is any one person or company at the center of it. Perhaps that is one of reasons, the loose-knit maker community has a chance to endure. Twenty years of work reflects the efforts of one generation and I am now thinking about how to pass this work on to the next generation.

That’s all a way of explaining a new initiative, a community funding round for Make: and Maker Faire. Today I am the sole owner of Make and Maker Faire; I have supported the business when it needed help. I have no interest in selling the business to another entity, who may or may not understand the value of what we do. The people who understand it the best and value it the most are members of the maker community. What I would like to see happen is that over time, the community itself, the community that has grown out of Make: and Maker Faire, will come to own more and more of this organization.

As part of this initiative, we have just launched a community investment round, giving you the opportunity to own a stake in Make: and Maker Faire.  For as little as $100, you can become a part-owner of Make: and participate in our future growth. It is an investment in the next generation of the maker movement. 

Your investment will help us:

1. Continue producing Make: Magazine in print each quarter

2. Bring Maker Faire to more locations nationally and worldwide

3. Develop new online resources and tools for our community

4. Foster grassroots innovation and ingenuity in our local communities

5. Promote the power of play, hands-on learning and the practice of problem-solving in education.

If you’d like to learn more about investing in Make:, please visit:

https://wefunder.com/make

Thank you for being an integral part of what we do and part of the larger maker community. Together, the organization behind Make: and Maker Faire can grow in partnership with its community and help ensure that we inspire generations of makers to come.

What Our Early Investors Are Saying

I am heartened to see the responses of some of the early investors in Make: Community.

Luke Iseman, Climate Hacker, featured in New York Times

I met Luke Iseman years ago through Maker Faire Austin and I found him exuberant and fearless. He wrote an article for Make called Garduino: Geek Gardening with Arduino. He used an Arduino to measure moisture in the soil and air temperature. We have been following his new venture, Make Sunsets, which involves sending up balloons filled with sulfur dioxide, which is released into the atmosphere when the balloon pops.

Luke opens his feature article in Vol:90, “Hack the Climate,” saying: “It’s easy to feel like climate change is too big of a problem for makers to tackle; I certainly felt this way.” Inspired by Neal Stephenson’s Termination Shock, which featured a billionaire building a big gun to shoot sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, he set out researching what he might be able to do on a smaller scale. He wondered why nobody was trying to do this. “Speaking with academics who had researched this for years, the only excuse they had for not having already done this was ‘politics.’”

This week, a New York Times writer looks at what Luke is doing with a bit of snark in an article titled “Silicon Valley Renegades Pollute the Sky to Save the Planet.” The article quotes an academic saying: “They are a couple of tech bros who have no expertise in doing what they’re claiming to do. They are not scientists.” No, they are makers and they are trying something that others aren’t trying. Luke says in the article: “The fact that we’re doing it makes it more likely that others will do it”. More power to him.