Welcome Former Techshop Members
Hello, former TechShop members.
The sudden closure of TechShop is a great blow to the maker community.
We hope that you will be able to find and develop new places to continue making and creating. While you explore where next to work on your projects, you are invited to come work and create at Noisebridge...
...but, though there's lots of overlap, we'd like to note that we're significantly different from TechShop:
We are a hackerspace:
- nonprofit,
- community run
- do-ocratic
instead of a makerspace:
- for profit
- employee maintained
- members only
In short, Noisebridge is a community whose purpose is to share knowledge and tools with as many people as possible. We look out for each other and often help each other's projects succeed. While we work together to gather and provide as much infrastructure and and as many tools as we can, we are not a production facility.
Here are some more specific differences:
- At Noisebridge, there are no employees. We are all responsible for upkeep of the space and the tools within it.
- We operate on Do-ocracy, which is similar to a real-life wiki.
- Noisebridge is donation supported.
- There aren't dues or monthly fees, but it's considered excellent to donate a bit when we use the space to cover our expenses.
- All our tools are donated. We do not have the same variety, quality, or reliability of tools as TechShop.
- We work to keep our tools in safe working order, but accept that when people are learning sometimes things get broken.
- We have one rule: "Be excellent to each other". We also have a strict Anti-Harassment_Policy
- Noisebridge people tend to be friendly and talk to each other and resolve problems through communication
- No one at Noisebridge is entitled to be there, or to use any particular machine. We cooperate with our fellow makers, and share.
- We don't reserve time on machines and we share our time on them.
- We don't require classes to use our tools, with the exception of the laser cutter.
- However if we don't know how to use a tool safely, we ask for help and wait until someone can show us how.
- The laser cutter has training required to use it. Our scheduled trainings are on our meetup page, or one can come to the space and ask around.
- If a machine breaks, there are no employees to fix it - we'll have to figure it out ourselves. We try to fix it and enlist help when we can't do it ourselves.
- We can, and should be, asked to leave Noisebridge at any time if we're being disrespectful or threatening to the others in the space, or the space itself. If this occurs, we are expected to leave without protest.
- We are also all empowered to ask others to leave if they are being disrespectful or threatening to the others in the space, or the space itself - this is how we maintain a safe-space.
Overall, it's a pretty different model, and it doesn't fit everyone's needs, but it's amazing to see it work. If you are interested, please come by and take a tour of the space.
We don't work in theory - just in practice. :-)
Come by and visit us!
Here's a list of our events
(also check the Noisebridge Meetup page)
Here's a (probably incomplete) list of the equipment we have
Here's how to host an event with us