The Intentional Makerspace: Operations

Using time-tested tools from businesses as big as Toyota and as small as the corner deli, you can improve the safety, efficiency, and culture of your makerspace. Frustrated by people getting hurt, tools lost or broken, workspaces cluttered? It doesn't have to be that way. Here are the tools and the framework to create a more sustainable space, fully aligned with your mission and guiding principles.

• Using recipes (SOPs) for safe, efficient operation
• Organizing workspaces (5S)
• Creating your mission, vision, and bottom lines
• Defining your guiding principles
• How to instruct
• Giving great service to your members
• Onboarding members and staff
• Using open-book management

and more..

Here's what Gareth Branwyn (former editorial director MAKE Magazine, contributor to Wired, Esquire, and author of several technology books) had to say:

"Anyone who’s been involved in creating and maintaining a makerspace can tell you that there’s a staggering number of moving parts involved. And we’re not talking about the machines! So many challenges in getting, finding, and maintaining a physical space, recruiting and keeping members, teaching members how to use the tools, safety issues, organizing spaces that work well and encourage members to clean up and put their tools back, and on and on. This book thoughfully and methodically covers a lot of this (on both a meta and practical level). ... The Intentional Makerspace: Operations is largely a cookbook for operating a makerspace. Any makerspace/hackerspace/communal shop, large or small, will find lots of enticing and inspiring recipes in this book."

Dale Dougherty (founder of Make Magazine and Maker Faire, President of Make Community) discussed The Intentional Makerspace: Operations in depth with co-author Tom Root on the Make:cast podcast "Recipes for Operating a Makerspace" on 10/21/2020.

Maker Works is a 14,000 sq. ft. makerspace located in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Tom Root and Dale Grover opened the doors in 2011, and in 2014 held the first Makerspace Operations Bootcamp, a 1-week intensive course in using concepts from Lean manufacturing, Training Within Industry, and other powerful tools to operate makerspaces safely and efficiently. After more than a dozen bootcamps, they've taken the course contents and put it into book form in the hopes of reaching even more makerspace operators.