Wikipedia has a pretty interesting entry on Community of Practice (CoP), based on the 1998 book of that title by Etienne Wegner. It defines a community of practice “as a group of people who share a passion or a set of problems for what they do and interact regularly to learn how to do it better.” They foster collaboration and innovation outside of more formal institutions such as corporations or universities.

Makerspaces are more than a physical place with tools and other equipment. It can become a community of practice, specifically when it “creates common ground, inspires participation, guides learning, and gives meaning to the actions of the individuals and community.” A makerspace can be so valuable as a creative catalyst for a community. Yet finding funding for them has been a problem. So, it’s good news to see a new makerspace open, the East Bay Makers Club, with the financial support of its co-founders.

In this newsletter, we look briefly at a new makerspace opening in Berkeley and a different kind of community of practice, a historical society for people fascinated by radios. The California Historical Radio Society organizes Radio by the Bay in July.

The East Bay Makers Club will hold its grand opening from noon to midnight on Friday, July 3rd. Located on San Pablo Ave in Berkeley, the nonprofit makerspace was co-founded by Joe Taylor and John Boiles, Bay Area tech workers who are profiled in this article below. The idea for a community makerspace grew out of build nights that they organized in Boiles’ basement after the kids went to bed. They began dreaming of expanding the build nights into a makerspace that could involve more people in the community. The Open AI IPO provided Taylor, who works there, an opportunity to start the makerspace. Their mission is to build "a hyper-local community space focused on making." It’s pretty great to see them organizes these tools and resources for the local community.

I am looking forward to meeting everyone on July 3rd and seeing the space for myself. I hope to see you there.

By Make: Books Editor Kevin Toyama

When I was a kid and occasionally (read: often) got in trouble, I’d get sent to my room and not be allowed to watch TV. Back in ye olden days before on-demand streaming and even cable, if you missed an episode of The A-Team, you’d never know if their plan came together unless the episode randomly aired as a rerun. I’ve never admitted this before, but it actually wasn’t much of a punishment because I cheated: I had a radio whose dial went low enough to pick up TV audio.

While I’m not old enough to have huddled around a radio listening to The Jack Benny Program, I do have memories of laying in the dark listening to a young Michael J. Fox crack wise on Family Ties, picturing him in a coat and tie and hopping up on the kitchen counter. And later when I was in high school, I’d listen to San Francisco radio stations on my old Jensen stereo. I lived 90 miles away in Sacramento so the signals were weak, but that was the only way I could experience dance mixes on KMEL and modern rock on Live 105. Radio connected me to pop culture beyond my hometown.

So imagine my delight when I recently stumbled upon a hidden gem in the SF Bay Area suburb of Alameda: The California Historical Radio Society (CHRS). Part museum, part broadcasting hall of fame, and part workshop, the CHRS is the caretaker of an amazing collection of technological artifacts and social history.

Executive Director Rachel Lee and Project Manager Steve Kushman showed me around their facility and its amazing collection of vintage electronics. Lee said that people are surprised by the sheer number of radio artifacts housed in their building, and I certainly was. Walk through the front door, and you’re greeted by pieces from the early days of consumer radio:

“Our mission is two-pronged: It’s preservation and it’s also education,” explained CHRS Executive Director Rachel Lee. “We want to preserve everything that we have here, but we also want to educate everyone on the history of [contemporary] tech. I believe that the more we know about our foundations, the more creatively we can think about the future.”

Part of the preservation aspect is repairing vintage radios — and better yet, teaching how to repair them. “The two things that bring people here is to teach and to learn,” said Lee. “People either have really specialized knowledge and want to share it, or conversely they see people here that have this really specialized knowledge and they’d like to learn it.”

That’s certainly on display down the hall, where their workshop is filled with repair projects. A team of 25 volunteers lend their electronics expertise to repair and recondition radios, bringing new life to vintage equipment and preserving its craftsmanship.

They also offer radio-repair and restoration classes throughout the year, for both adults and kids. “Most of the tech we use in everyday life is not easily deconstructed and put back together, and it runs on a chip that just does ‘magic’ for you,” says Lee. “Radios were designed to be repaired — you can really dig into a five-tube radio and see a capacitor and understand what it does, or point to the switch and the line cord and replace them. For the tinkerer side of our youth, it’s very engaging and eye-opening to be able to actually work on this stuff.”

CHRS is also the home of the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame, which honors the personalities and stations that made the Bay Area a cultural influence across the country. (BTW, I will be nominating legendary KMEL DJ Cameron Paul next year. Who’s with me?)

Next door is their broadcasting booth, where they teach both on-air and production skills in broadcasting and podcasting. They host school field trips where students write radio plays and public service announcements and record them through vintage microphones. They can record to tape, and digitize the audio to edit at home or at school. They even teach podcast marketing, to help grow an audience.

With all the historic radios, bustling workshop, broadcast booth, and all the beautiful signs and decorations adorning the walls, I thought my tour was over, but then Lee motioned toward a stairwell I missed. Moving downstairs, I was shocked to find areas dedicated to specialized areas of radio.

If you have an interest in electronics or just fond memories of turning the radio up for that sweet sound, come out to CHRS’s Radio Day by the Bay free event on July 18. This all-day celebration will be hosted by KCBS reporter Holly Quan and longtime radio personality and actor Terry McGovern, and have it all: Performances including live music and the radio play The Adventures of the Thin Man: The Case of the Goofy Groom; museum tours with a closer look at all the cool stuff above; the Bay Area Hall of Fame 2026 inductees; a vintage-radio auction and a surplus electronics sale; and kids activities, like making morse-code keychains. Most of all, it’s a chance to rediscover a cultural phenomenon and celebrate the way radio emotionally connects people through sound.

Make Things is a weekly newsletter for the Maker community from Make:. This newsletter lives on the web at makethings.make.co

I’d love to hear from you if you have ideas, projects or news items about the maker community. Email me - [email protected].