Restarting
There’s a new job and a new space waiting.
Blank walls to fill and new faces to learn.
In every conversation for the last 8 years, I’ve felt like the Makerspace expert, or at least at parity. I have pat answers for “what’s the most important tool,” or “what kind of space do we need?” or “how do we find someone to help us grow?” Taking your own advice is always daunting.
Taking a decade of it all at once is terrifying. I feel how inadequate my advice has been all along.
“Start with people. Build relationships and cultivate passion. Tools and projects will follow.”
That worked well for me at FHS, where I was on the ground for years before I said the word “Makerspace” out loud. At CI, I was able to draft off Gary and Shelly’s years of work until I made my own connections and brought new classes into our orbit. For new faculty opening a brand new dedicated space, it seems impossible to take things that slow.
I need to think things through from principles again, need to process the great work being done by my colleagues and (absent) friends around the globe, need to reflect on what a program could become before it’s constrained by “how we do things.”
Fortunately, I remembered a place where I used to do all of that. Welcome back.
Tie And Jeans 
Now there’s a friendly face in the ole RSS Reader! Welcome back indeed
Thanks for stopping by! Are you still running Reclaim from Cville?
Fredericksburg! We have our main office which is also a coworking space and then we have Reclaim Video bringing the VHS and Laserdisc revolution next door to us :)
So happy to see this in my inbox today!
Yay! Nice to see that email updates endure even as the rest of the social infrastructure crumbles.