Speaker. Maker. Writer. Traveler. Father. Husband.
MakerCon Co-Chair (MakerCon.com)
Maker City San Diego Roundtable Member
San Diego Maker Faire Producer (SDMakerFaire.org)
Moving East was never in the cards but now we’ve lived in the D.C. metro area for over 20 years. Not planned but it happened. Not since Courtney was six weeks old have we lived in the West. Not since 1990 have we called California home. Not throughout our daughters’ entire childhoods did we call any place other than Maryland or Virginia “home”. Now that the nest is empty Beth and I are considering a move to better living out west.
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After a long process and much hard work, Kelsey checked into her room at UCSD. She visited many many schools, applied and was accepted to several excellent institutions and after much heart wrenching angst she chose this gem in the University of California system. Did I mention it was located in paradise? This’ll be a fun four year ride!
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Kelsey and I were scurrying from a week in Yosemite to meet Beth’s flight from D.C. when we chose to route through Big Bear Lake. Why? My uncle has a cabin in Big Bear, holds an annual JazzTrax festival there, and has had a relationship with the area for 40 years. My thought was I’d show Kelsey his place but little did I know it would be a soup-to-nuts tour!
Thinking he was at his Palm Springs home we called to ask a question about the lake. “Why is the tributary lake almost empty and is that a reason for concern?” Don’t remember the answer he gave but do remember the happy surprise to learn that he was in his cabin. We dropped by, toured his home and property, exchanged stories and had a great visit.
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What to do between visiting Art in Palm Springs and climbing Half Dome in Yosemite?
Why not sprint through a stretch of Red Rock Country? Book ends to the sprint could include epic hikes. And why not? This was trip with my road-ravaging, outdoor-trekking, college-bound super daughter Kelsey!
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As lending books becomes a less dominant theme within libraries, the question asked is “What next?” I took a cross-country tour visiting a variety of libraries which have expressed interest in makerspaces to learn what they’re planning. My goal was to gain a little insight to help advance the aspiration of having more libraries offer making programs and more maker spaces. I will be sharing my learnings with the library and maker communities through MAKE and American Libraries, the journal of the American Libraries Association.
There were ten libraries I visited and spoke with from which I drew a few conclusions.
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A pretty cryptic title, I agree.
Too often we delve into a world of insider codes using of three letter acronyms without thinking about our audience. In this case “HIW” is Hardware Innovation Workshop, the conference I co-chaired with Dale Dougherty at Xerox PARC back in May. The “CTO” stands for Chief Technology Officer which is often the senior technology title in a company. What the title refers to is my having delivered an ultra-condensed summary of the HIW to the Washington Area CTO Roundtable.
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That libraries care about making is amazing. Then again, it isn’t if you reflect on what their mission has been for hundreds of years: to bring free learning resources to the public. For a long, long time this meant having books available for people to check out but in recent decades that’s become less relevant.
Following in Andrew Carnegie’s footsteps, the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation spent heavily this past decade to put computers into libraries. This helped libraries extend their mission into the Internet era when so many learning resources are available online. Now, however, the mainstreaming of ebooks and the effect of recession-impacted government budgets are causing a new challenge for libraries.
Remember, the mission of libraries is to bring free learning resources to the public. If not books then what? Well, learning is changing in important ways. Learning through doing is increasingly accepted as is the notion of life-long learning. In a country where our ability to fabricate is atrophying but the tools which empower making are being revolutionized, a new niche for libraries may be emerging. Libraries could house the new tools of personal fabrication and build programs around them to help people grow as makers. In so doing, they’ll help retool America to once again be competitive in the next industrial revolution.
In view of this dawning realization I was asked to keynote the American Library Association’s “Mapping Transformation” conference. Over the course of an hour I introduced how making has changed, explained the phenomenon of makerspaces, and encouraged libraries to learn more and reach out. Makerspaces are filled with bright makers who love to learn and to teach and who would likely be an excellent resource to assist libraries in taking their mission to the next level.
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First on the list and extraordinarily welcoming for a Saturday morning with little forewarning, the HackPitsburgh crew was decked out in their official uniform. This space is legendary for being early, being active, and having a great spirit. Touring HackPittsburgh reinforced that there is a rhythm to the lifecycle of spaces (accumulate and purge), consistency of layout (clean shop, dirty shop) and a good esprit de corps.
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Quickly following on the tail of the U.S. Olympic Trials, the U.S. Master Swimming association held our Summer Long Course Nationals in the very pool the olympians swam in. The facility was remarkable. The warm-up pool itself had something like 15 lanes while the competitive pool had 10 lanes of 50 meters. The water was a perfect temperature and, as we say in swimming, the pool was fast. Thousands of people attended this four day meet and I swam in six events.
Did I make a dent in world records? Did I set the world on fire with my awesome swimming skills?
Of course not!
However the calibre of swimming was such that records were broken all day, every day. This was truly a memorable event.
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There was a time which I’m sure I romanticize but which I sense was a golden age of transportation where powerful machines hauled long trains of passengers across the landscape of our still-young country. When all the disparate rail lines with separate terminals finally matured and agreed to co-terminate in major cities for customer convenience, the concept of a Union Station was born.
I’ve been to many and most leave you feeling small, emotionally affected by their scale and beauty. The three I visited on this trip were exceptional. For what ever reason (and they each had different stories) they were saved, brought back to life after they grew unused and neglected after passenger rail slowed to a crawl. Thankfully, money brought them back to life and these three example are a real joy to have visited.
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