| Yes. Maker spaces in Silicon Valley are doing very badly. I was a TechShop member for most of a decade. They went bankrupt, in a very messy way. I'm currently a "TheShop.build" member, at least for a few more days. They closed their San Francisco location months ago, despite it still being listed on the web site. The San Jose location got a 3-day notice of eviction from their landlord, but they seem to have survived that for now. Rumors of unpaid employees, and former employees removing equipment they'd loaned to the shop indicate that the end is probably near. The new nonprofit shop, Maker Nexus, is below critical mass. Only 50 or so paying members. (I tried to join, but their outsourced signup site can't send me a confirmation email. So I didn't join.) What happened? The "maker movement" fad declined. Etsy changed their policies - you no longer have to make it yourself; you can outsource manufacturing. TechShop SF used to have six CNC laser cutters busy cranking out "handmade" crap for Etsy. That stopped. The rest of the place mostly turned out stuff for Burning Man. Rising rents forced shops out, of course. TechShop tried to pivot to "STEM" or "STEAM" education. In practice this meant teaching middle schoolers to wire up Arduinos. That's fine, but a huge mismatch with the tools available at TechShop. Autodesk's previous CEO, Carl Bass, thought 3D printing was going to be a big deal, and put money and software into TechShop. His successor decided that wasn't happening and pulled the plug. It's been a long time since there were people building parts for X-Prize entries. I don't think there's any public space in Silicon Valley which has everything you need for surface mount soldering. Which is embarrassing. |