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It was created by me, but it's funded by you, much like the theme of today's show. For information on how you can get involved in supporting the show, please go to radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron. Today on the show, we're going to dig into the concept of hackerspaces. I'm not sure if you're familiar with this concept or not, but a hackerspace is a beautiful idea that you need to know about.

That's why I'm bringing it to you on the show. In essence, it's a way for communities to come together and create a space for people to create stuff, to simply come up with and create cool stuff. And the variation and the possibilities of this are huge. It's also potentially life-changing for many people, including maybe you.

Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance podcast. My name is Joshua Sheets, and today is Thursday, March 5, 2015. Today I bring you an interview with Jessica Fong. Jessica is one of the founding members of the Southside Hackerspace in Chicago. And if you're new to this concept or to this idea, definitely pay attention to today's show.

It's a concept that has the potential of revolutionizing many neighborhoods. In our modern society, there's a real dearth of possibilities of places to go to simply make and do stuff. We seem to have changed over time from a less hands-on society to a more digits-on society or a more bits-and-bytes society.

And yet the value of actually being hands-on with things is bigger than it's ever been. And several years ago, I heard about the concept of hackerspaces or makerspaces. I hear them referred to interchangeably and was absolutely fascinated with the idea. And a listener of the show reached out to me and said, "Hey, I think you might be interested in interviewing a friend of mine." And that was how this friend came on the show.

It was Jessica from Chicago. And Jessica is one of the founding members of this Southside Hackerspace. And you know what? Let me skip the preamble and let her tell you about what is a hackerspace and why she do care. Let's get to it. Jessica, welcome to the show. I appreciate you making time for me today.

>> Thank you. Thank you so much for inviting me. >> I brought you on based upon a listener suggestion. And I'm excited to bring this topic onto the show. I haven't mentioned it before, but talking about hackerspaces and makerspaces. Kick us off by introducing yourself a little bit and just share with me your story and how you got into this hackerspace, makerspace world.

>> Sure. So I graduated with a degree in architecture from Illinois Institute of Technology. I'm in Chicago right now. And I've really been interested in entrepreneurship since forever. My family has owned restaurants and I come up with ideas every single day. And I sort of fell into this hackerspace, makerspace movement about, I'd say, a year and a half ago in a desire to advocate for STEM plus education and continued learning.

And hackerspace is actually comprised mostly of, you know, the board is comprised mostly of alumni from my school. So it was really interesting to be able to see what they were up to. Hackerspaces and makerspaces in general, you know, usually focus on peer learning and knowledge sharing, things like that.

And so it seemed really natural to move in this non-profit direction and focus on that individual and power advocacy and utilizing sort of free softwares and open source materials and things like that. So it's really exploded over the past couple of years, the movement in general. >> Describe the concept of a makerspace.

What is it? >> So a lot of people use hackerspace and makerspace interchangeably. I've heard them defined a couple of different ways. But when it comes down to it, it's really about having a community-operated space. So it's comprised of volunteers and members. And there's a fifth habit that has all sorts of different tools.

They can be woodworking, metalworking, electronics. I believe the earlier ones started out focusing mostly on electronics, which is kind of where you get the hacker space notion. But nowadays, the term hack really applies to a lot of quick fixes and DIY things. So I think the term has really sort of evolved from there.

But they utilize a lot of open labs, workshops, lectures, presentations, local educational activities. And people just come into the space. They become members. They work on their own projects. Or they help each other out trying to invent new things together. And it's really a different culture for each sort of hackerspace or makerspace you go to.

There's a slightly different focus. But overall, all of them are all about the duocracy, the idea that you make something with your own two hands in order to progress and to learn. >> And then one of the massive benefits, at least that I've understood, and unfortunately, there's none here locally.

And I've actually never been to anybody's facility that's actually involved in this. It's just pure online research. But one of the big benefits is a well-funded, well-put-together, well-run makerspace might have access to just dozens and dozens and dozens of unique, different tools and then mentors, people to help create projects.

So it's just really an incredible place to be able to learn new skills to create things, right? >> Yeah, that's correct. A lot of what I guess the pros of having a makerspace in your community is that, for the most part, they're very affordable. They are different tiers of membership.

So at Southside Hackerspace, which is the hackerspace that I help run, we have a starving hacker tier, which is more for students and things like that. And it's really great because it's $28 a month. So if you're a student, you have your own storage and things like that at your dorm or whatever.

You can just truck it over, work on a project, and then bring it back. And then there's a full membership, which is $50 a month. And that's use of all the tools in the space, regardless of whether it's starving hacker or full hacker membership. And you're right about one of the big pros is having those mentors and having those people who are willing to collaborate with you.

Because you never know the opportunity that you might get to partner up with somebody. And the fact that this sort of support group that you join is going to have very niche markets. It's going to lead you to specific interest groups. You're going to tap into such a huge database of knowledge.

And a lot of things are possible just yourself coming to space and being exposed to all of those things. >> When I first heard of the concept, one of the things that immediately stood out to me about it, it seems like a much more efficient allocation of funds for people who are interested in learning things and building things.

I think if possible, I would almost always prefer to rent something rather than own it. Because there are certain costs associated with owning it. And then one of the bigger things is most tools, I simply don't use enough to justify really owning them. I have a couple of circular saws.

And I use them, what, a couple times a year? And then you get to something like with woodworking. If you want to have a table saw, I can't justify owning a table saw. But man, there are times when if you want to make something, owning a table saw is the tool that you need.

And if you could bring that together, and that's just woodworking tools, with electronics there's different things. But if you could just bring that together, and everyone can buy a share, partial ownership, which entitles them to the use of the tool. As long as you get the number of tools to the number of members and their busyness right, which I'm sure is a challenge sometimes in some very busy places, it can just be such an efficient way to allow people access to tools without having to buy them.

And when you have access to high-end tools, I mean, the things that you can do are amazing. Yeah, you're absolutely right. There are a lot of tools that we've discovered are enormous in size. They're just obscene. You cannot fit them barely in a garage sometimes. So imagining somebody living in a city like Chicago here, you know, there's not a lot of real estate when you're in a studio apartment to take up, you know, all that room with a table saw or something like that.

So having a local space that you can go to and to work in there and, you know, get dirty and have sawdust everywhere and have your projects sit there, you know, you slap your name on it and leave it there for a while to work on, that is big money in a city like this where you have so many awesome ideas you want to put forth, but you just can't fit them in your apartment.

Right, right. Another thing that has really attracted me to makerspaces is I've heard that they can be really just excellent business incubators. I think so. Is that true? I would definitely agree with that. Of course, there are lots of positives and negatives to that. You get the positive, obviously, of getting access to tools that you normally wouldn't get access to, the mentorship that we talked about.

So you get rapid prototyping is now a possibility. You can churn things out, you know. There's collaboration, which could lead to even, you know, monetary support. There are lots of mini organizations that form within hackerspaces that get support or run their own campaigns. A big one is that you avoid huge upfront investment costs, obviously, because you don't have to own that equipment, but also because a lot of the times you can share material costs as well.

So you, you know, make a joint trip maybe with somebody who has a truck to go get a huge pile of wood and bring it back. And so now you have all that to use. And the other thing is the startup mentality. You're trying new things, you're testing things out, you're letting yourself fail and to improve.

But there are a lot of cons as well, I guess. Obviously, it costs to be a member. There's limited storage space at the actual space. Sometimes they can be inconveniently located or unfortunately, in your case, nowhere nearby at all. And they are public spaces sometimes too. So a makerspace that's at a library, you're going to have to bend to their rules about how they conduct their work there.

So there's that as well. >> How did you get involved with trying to start one? >> I actually got involved because a former classmate of mine came by one time and said, "Hey, would you be interested in doing PR for this organization that I've been working on?" So that's kind of how I hopped into it.

I'm really interested in sort of what that scene was like, I guess. It was something that I had never heard of before either. And I thought that it was just the most amazing thing because I was looking a little bit beyond that and saying, "Well, how is this ability to have people of all ages, any age pretty much?" Obviously, you don't want little ones messing around with power tools.

But teenagers, adults coming in and being able to use that kind of space and feel safe in that environment, how do you transfer that into education? Well, it's already education. And a lot of what's interesting about the school system in Chicago is that there are certain districts and areas that they don't have opportunities for the students to study STEM+ like science, technology, math, engineering.

So it's really important to expose people at a young age and encourage people at an older age to feel free to play with things like that. And I know for me, I've heard theoretically that they used to have shop class in high school. I would shop and metal shop and mechanic stuff.

And I was always a little bit jealous because in my era, we never had any of that. And it's possible I did go to a private school, which was certainly a well-funded school, but they didn't have that. My understanding is a few of the government schools around here do have that.

But it's very abnormal. And I always felt like I was missing out. And to this day, I feel pretty inept when it comes to most mechanical things. Thankfully, I did a bunch of stuff with electronics kits when I was a kid. I got a ham radio license when I was a kid.

And I built some different radio stuff. And that was really fun to get an opportunity. And my dad's an electrical engineer. So I learned he taught me how to solder and create a circuit board and do all of that stuff. But we didn't have a lot of access to the tools and to the shop and to the environment.

And I often wonder to this day, I think if I were just-- I don't know. I'm not confident enough in my desire to go out and get interested in these things, to go out and buy a bunch of tools for myself. And I'm more of like, why would I spend $3,000 on tools I may or may not use?

But if I could go somewhere and pay $50 a month to be around a community of people and just watch them and learn and kind of see what I was interested in, whether that was a leatherworking station or a metalworking or to learn how to weld, to me, that would be amazing.

And now you take it to kids, and you just think, what a tremendous opportunity that can be to help with somebody's education, just to get them around it. Because so much of schooling is focused on academics and nothing on hands-on. And some people think very well on paper and in their mind.

And some people think with their hands while they're making stuff. And how awesome would it be to have just community shops all over this country and, frankly, all over the world where kids could go and spend a lot of time with older mentors and adults who could teach them the skills that are, frankly, being lost?

It's just an amazing-- I get excited just thinking about it. Yeah. It is really exciting because there's nothing like making something from scratch with your hands, whether or not it's knitting something or building furniture or welding or whatever it is. There's so little that can teach you in the classroom when you just look at a material in a book, a picture of it, and it's in your hands.

And I think that it's almost like the service industry. You have to be a part of it before you really understand the value that you get from participating in it. And I've been so amazed by the demographic of people who participate in the makerspace community. When I first went to the Chicago Public Library, they have a wonderful maker lab.

I went to a couple classes, free classes there, and teenagers and children to come to these classes. No, it was mostly adults, I would say probably 40-plus. And they were fully engaged. They were asking questions. They were working with the instructors step by step. They were not shy about getting involved and helping each other.

And there was no sort of pretense as to, "I am so much more knowledgeable than you are. Let me go and see how awesome I am." It was completely positive. It was all collaboration the entire time. There's no negativity in that room. And it astounded me that there are so many people who are willing to put themselves forward to just throw themselves into this environment that some of them had never even seen a 3D printer work before.

And to see the wonder as they're experiencing that is so rewarding. There's nothing better than being able to show somebody and teach something something new. Absolutely. I think we're all – those of us who are so-called knowledge workers, I think we're all a little bit desperate to see the work of our hand in some way, to be able to create something and step back and look at it.

And so I enjoy mowing the lawn because you can step back and look. I did that. I actually did something visible. It wasn't just 14 emails that I sent off or some idea that I created. It was visible. Here's the work of my hands. I think as our society goes so heavy and even more day by day into that knowledge work idea, I think there's going to be more and more people who want to have the experience of creating something.

I totally agree. What stage are you with regard – and so I'm asking this as a selfish question because I really have thought of doing this here locally. It's one of many projects on my someday maybe list of things that I don't have – I simply don't have the capacity for right now, but I keep coming back to it and saying this should exist where I live.

Somebody should do this and I don't see anybody doing it. So I either have to find somebody and inspire them to do it or I have to do it myself. And so I'm just interested in the actual process. As you're building this space, first of all, what phase are you in with the project you're involved with in Chicago?

Do you have a fully open and functioning space or is it still being built out? Where are you? Yeah, so Southside Hacker Space was formed about three years ago. Our three-year birthday party is actually coming up pretty soon and we are fully functioning now. Our doors are open. We're accepting members and really it started out in someone's garage and then meeting around in public spaces just to kind of flush out the idea of what we wanted in this particular hacker space.

From then on, it's a lot of, I guess, nitty-gritty of where's the best location, what kind of neighborhoods are we trying to service, and do we get either purchasing or donations. A lot of what we receive are donations from other small or big tech companies that are within the city, people even who are like, "Oh, I've got this cabinet in my garage that I'm not using anymore.

Do you guys want it?" So a lot of that stuff is community-based. You just reach out either through online or calling people even. And we do have several people who call us or email us saying, "Hey, I'm really interested in starting up a hacker space in my local area.

What are some tips that you can provide or can you actually make a trip over here and let me know if there's something that I'm missing?" So that's all very exciting. But yeah, we're open right now and we have a really great set of members and the culture of our space is very positive.

So I'm very pleased with that. I'm sure that countless of hours have been donated and invested by you and the founding team. Do you have any sense of how much money has come out of pocket to get things going? Oh, that's a tough question. I'm not sure if I really know the exact number.

I personally do, yes, invest a lot of my spare time in just running the organization. I joke with the rest of the board that it's my second job after my full-time job. And all of us do put in at least, I would say, hours a week just running things or networking and stuff like that.

It really depends on the space that you get as well. If you can manage to get a space with somebody else, then your rent costs are a lot cheaper. And like I said, a lot of what we received were donations. So the things that you really have to make sure you cover are your rent and any insurance that pertains to your particular city and your district, your location, and if you're filing for 501(c)(3) and things like that as a non-profit or if you're going to be a for-profit, different things like that have different fees and costs and waivers and everything like that that you need to sign.

You mentioned non-profit versus for-profit. Are you aware of anybody who's made a business off of starting and running hackerspaces? Yeah, actually, there are lots of people that sort of start out, I think, with the idea that, "Oh, we're going to end," and they discover, "Oh, well, maybe our passion is really in this one area," and they either turn it into a for-profit or they have the idea from the start.

A lot of these are similar to TechShop where it's tools that people can almost come in and like a makerspace, you pay them a due and you rent the space for a daily pass or a weekly pass or a monthly pass or something like that, and that really use the tools, do your own business and pop out.

But there are places that focus on classes as well, and that's all lumped into whatever costs that you would pay to join or get that pass for that month. So it's really a toss-up, but there are definitely some that are in Chicago right now that are functioning as for-profits.

One of the things on my list I've been trying to make time is to get to a maker fair, and there are actually some of those nearby, and the timing hasn't worked out. Are you involved with that scene at all, and are you able to describe what the maker fairs are and why they exist and what they're about?

Yeah, maker fairs are pretty much a big party for everybody who's involved in the maker community. You know, it's kind of like a convention. There are booths set up. You get specific makerspace or hackerspace and what you do there. A lot of them have free activities for kids and adults to do.

So we went to the Northside Maker Fair here in Chicago, and we were printing 3D models and 3D keychains, showing off our 3D printer there. So you have a little bit of a demonstration. There are some other ones that do paper crafts or do soldering or showing off quadcopters, doing demos, things like that.

And really, it's just an opportunity to get sort of market and see what's out there in your local area, see what kind of makerspaces are there, if there are any ones that you can participate in for free or if they're offering classes or anything like that. And it's a really brilliant way to meet other people who are interested in the same things as well.

What's your vision long-term for your space? I know it's a relatively small space square footage-wise, but do you guys have a long-term vision for what you're trying to accomplish? Yeah, I would say that hopefully within the next couple years we expand. I'd really like for us to get a bigger space, and I know that the rest of the members are itching to get more tools in the space already.

But of course, you have to observe a certain amount of clearance around all of the woodworking tools especially. So getting a bigger space would be great. Overall, because Southside Hackerspace is really focused on continued education and STEM plus, a lot of what we want to do is to offer more free classes to the public to get them in through the doors and to get them exposed to that.

So I hope that in the future we might even be able to hook up with other hackerspaces and get involved with having them come in and give talks as well, us going over there. We do a little bit of that now with the Northside Hackerspace called Pumping Station One.

Bigger is what I'm shooting for right now is Chicago and then Illinois and then the United States. It's going to be really big. Explain what you mean. I understand STEM, let's see, the science technology. Okay, maybe I don't. Engineering, mathematics, something like that. What are you trying to do when you say STEM plus?

What exactly is the change that you're working to affect? What I'm focusing on is using the hackerspace as a safe environment for people who don't have exposure to those fields of study in their own schools and being able to almost supplement the education that they're getting right now. I think overall it's going to really challenge the way people think about education in general.

There's still homeschooling, there's Montessori school, there's public schools, there's private schools. Who's to say that in the future maybe a child will get all of their schooling from a hackerspace or some combination of multiple things? I think that it's really a fantastic way to figure out where your passion really is.

If you find that you're not getting enough exposure to technology or engineering in your school, then seeking it out yourself enables you to become an advocate for yourself in the educational world. I'd love to see that model explored. One of the things I think we'd probably do a poor job with is making science applicable.

It's one thing to study mathematics and to figure out how to add and divide fractions and to do it in isolation. But if you're building a bird feeder or doing some introductory woodworking project, and as part of that you have to learn how to navigate these fractions, now you have a reason to learn the actual math behind it.

You have a reason if you're interested in studying engineering, if you're working on something with a 3D printer or you're trying to make a CAD design, you have a reason. To me, that can be so valuable because what seems to be missing in so much of schooling is context.

There's little context for the information. It's not connected to anything. It's presented in a disjointed manner. You just go from subject to subject to subject and there's very little practical application of it. But if you can flip it and you can focus on practical application, now let's learn what we need to do to lean to know of the theory in order to really understand the practical application, you have a much more powerful model of education.

Exactly. Is there any resources for people who are interested, who might be interested in finding a hackerspace, anything beyond just a web search? Because that's about all I've ever done is look on Meetup and do web searches. But are there any listings, directories, websites that are joining the industry together?

I think that a lot of hackerspaces are trying to keep hackerspaces.org updated as much as possible. It kind of fell by the wayside for a while. And since it's got so many hackerspaces listed on there internationally, it's really only keeping track of the ones that are updating more frequently.

So there could be hackerspaces that just haven't taken the time to update on that website, but they are in your local area. I would encourage people to do is to check out the local library. Even if they don't have a hackerspace there, they might know the connections. And asking friends and family and getting exposed, a lot of the hackerspaces in Chicago anyway, you just walk around and you could pass by and discover one.

They are kind of known to be a little bit hidden. But there are definitely communities that you can, I would say, like you're doing on Meetup, Reddit, even for your specific city, they might post in there. We've done that a couple of times on our Chicago. And then all of the social networking, we utilize Facebook a lot.

We have our own web page that we try and update. And a lot of the colleges too, I should think, because students will come out of the university and some of them will have, like us, the idea to start a space. So you could even tap alumni association at your local university.

Very cool. So final question, if you were going to leave us today with a charge to kind of share your vision of why you'd like to get people involved in what you're doing locally and why you'd like to get other people involved in their location, what would be your kind of closing rallying cry for the hackerspace movement?

I think that a lot of what it comes down to, everything that we've been talking about, education and about being an advocate for yourself. This is the kind of legacy that you teach and you give your, you know, lead the way for your children. In architecture and design school, one of the things that I learned was that your first try is really far from your masterpiece.

You have to fight constantly for your ideas and you watch them get broken and you have to put them back together. But being us is the most rewarding thing you can do for yourself. It's the best thing that you can teach yourself and to feel good about because, you know, coming back to this idea of business incubator, it being a business incubator, what makes a good business, in my opinion, is passion, it's dedication, it's a need or an audience and churning out that refined product that you're really, really proud of.

Those are the things that you learn when you focus on making education something applicable to you. So I guess I would challenge people, your listeners, to think about how a hackerspace or a makerspace can really help them personally and help the people around them because I think that that's what we have to focus on in order to improve the way we live our lives.

- Jessica, thanks for making the time to come on. I've enjoyed talking with you. - Thank you so much. - Here's my question for you. Could your community benefit from that type of, I guess, facility? I know mine could and I would very much love to have one of these in my area.

If any of the listeners are here in South Florida, I don't know, maybe I can get together with you. I've looked around. This is one of those projects that I would dearly love. If I were financially independent and I had the money to put behind this and was willing to allocate towards this right now, I would dearly love to get this started here in my area.

There's such a need, such a need in our communities. And if any of you have an interest in helping other people find a community that doesn't have access to this kind of thing, I mean, in my community, there are so many neighborhoods that could just benefit from somebody coming in and opening up a warehouse where people can just simply tinker and do stuff and make stuff.

And we've got to keep the ability to create things. We've got to keep the ability to use our hands and to understand how things fit together. And this is such an important thing because when you take the power of, I mean, the technological revolution is powerful. The ability to simply have new technologies as governed by bits and bytes is powerful.

But you know what's even more powerful? When you connect those things to physical stuff. Because we live in a physical world, a material world, and we need to have these things connected. So make sure, go online, check out some information on hackerspaces and makerspaces and just look and look around in your community.

See if anybody's getting started with one of these. See if you can chip in. See if something's available. And I hope to hear from several of you at least who maybe can help sponsor something like this going forward in your communities. That would thrill me. So go and get busy, I guess.

Thanks so much for listening today. I appreciate so much your time and attention. I hope this content has been valuable. I crave feedback. So feel free to email me, joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com with feedback. And if you'd like to make sure the show is here for you continually day after day, please go to radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron.

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Thank you for listening to today's show. If you'd like to contact me personally, my email address is joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com. You can also connect with the show on Twitter @radicalpf and at facebook.com/radicalpersonalfinance. This show is intended to provide entertainment, education, and financial enlightenment. But your situation is unique, and I cannot deliver any actionable advice without knowing anything about you.

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