The idea of a having a makerspace in Manchester NH is a long time in progress. This is a recount of the history of the founding from my own perspective. It’s actually more complicated then this but, for the sake of summary I’ll just cover the highlight reel.

For me the idea started in 2010 and back then it was a lot of talk, research, and presentations. There was a lot of realization about the difficulty an the topic of Hackerspaces was still a bit of an underground movement. Eventually I ran out of fumes trying to do things on my own. Which can be seen in rare blog that I wrote at the time http://paulbeaudet.blogspot.com/2011/01/update-hacker-space.html

In the mean time afterwards there was quite a bit of interest and false starts. Somewhere between 2012-2014 the idea of makerspaces really started to take hold in the minds of the general public. I talked to a number of people who wanted to start a space during this time, helping where I could. The lack of awareness between individual parties almost became a running joke in the local maker meetup groups. Almost inevitably there was always a new person coming into monthly show and tells that wanted to start-up a space. “Which makerspace guy are we talking about?, oh I thought you were talking about the other one”

Understandably at one point I got a bit skeptical of who was actually interested in getting a space together. Particularly knowing it was going to take more than one person to get it together. Which could be the topic of a few side tangents. However slowly the right people started talking to each other

Sometime in late 2014 I was connected with Steve Korzyniowski. Steve was very adamant that this was something that needed to happen Manchester. He sees us as a society of people that should make things and be entrepreneurial. We visited another local makerspace and got to know each other talking about the possibilities. I’m glad to say Steve became a integral part of co-founding the current Manchester Makerspace

During the same time frame Brian Brady had picked up a meetup page from a previous effort. Brian used this opportunity to call an election to form a steering committee. Somewhere along the line in 2015 a board of directors formed eventually from this seed with Steve as part.

Now I say somewhere along the line… There where quite a few people involved in helping found the makerspace, too numerous to mention all in this short post. If you know me you might be aware that I’m the type of person who instinctively rolls theirs eyes whenever they hear the word “committee”. Committees beget committees, and generally scare the people of action away. Given the amount of efforts that were happening at once and the equal credibility in any those efforts I missed a couple steps of the process. My involvement in Manchester Makerspace intensified shortly before the lease was signed for 36 Old Granite st in November 2015. It was after this point I became a board member helping get the right folks involved, and build out the space. After a bit of a struggle to get occupancy we opened in August of 2016.

Inevitably we have folks attend our weekly open houses and are excited to learn there is a great and versatile makerspace in their city. Many times to them the idea is so new and novel, something they just read about. Its still hard to comprehend that its a space that contains Wood, Metal, Prototyping and Automotive shops all in one. All while managing to be an inclusive social community of creative people at the same time.

I’m writing this in January of 2018 reflecting upon the events to this point. Work does still needs to be done, for sure. Regardless its ironic to think about the day in the future when we will be celebrating our overnight success.