Twin Cities Makers Find a Home?

Seeking to fill a perceived need for an adult hackerspace in the Twin Cities area, a guy named Paul Sobczak has created Twin Cities Maker, a forum to discuss founding such a space.

Twin Cities Maker was created to spark the discussion about creating a maker shop in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area in Minnesota

A maker shop is the generic term describing a community of like-minded makers that together create, meet, work, and play together. The movement started to get off its feet in the 2000s when people from around the world began to congregate and share their ideas together.

Think of a maker shop as a membership based gym like the YMCA but instead of racket ball courts and yoga lessons, there are CNC routers and micro-controller classes.

Here at Twin Cities Maker we hope find the makers who are interested in the idea and to start discussion about realizing one of these shops in the Twin Cities area.

Sobczak's idea seems to have struck a chord with area nerds, with almost 40 accounts created in less than 36 hours since his announcement.

The fact is, Minneapolis and St. Paul lack a fully fledged, reprap-making, coding, crafting, tinkering, laser-etching, soldering hackerspace/maker collective in the vein of NYCResistor, Make:Philly and The Hacktory. Ironically, we do have a fantastic children's maker space, Leonardo's Basement. However, its adult offshoot, Studio Bricolage, has never quite taken off, perhaps because it lacks a dedicated space.

Needless to say, the hacker collective (even "Twin Cities Maker" as a name isn't finalized) is still in its infancy with only a few dozen participants chatting up an online forum. Check it out, participate, and help make it a reality!