Poke around this Makerspaces website

DMS General
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I’ve been poking around a few other makerspaces just to look-see at what they have going on and I wanted to share this website with the community because I think they do organization of information really well for the public.
*This is not a critique of our website - don’t take everything so personal - it’s just a “hey look at this website”:

Tool info organized by “location/committee” - click on a location and poke

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Also this is fun to look how important documents are organized
https://www.txrxlabs.org/important-docs

Obviously they do things very differently - lots of corporate sponsorship, fabrication contracts, rental of space/tools class fees are higher

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That committee page is really nice. Intuitive and visual. Shows all the tools. What I like is several of our things on Wiki could be combined and be drop downs

  • The committee pages show tools which we have now have on wiki. Drop down could show other data and training links we now have on wiki
  • Tool status could be a colored dot, now on wiki
  • A link to calendar that shows classes for that committee and committee meetings
  • Maybe some photos show casing projects that have been built/made

We have lots of good info on our wiki - but it is hard to find IMO, scattered and not intuitive.

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The site has some nice aspects. I wish we made it easier to see tools available in each committee area. The following is not intended as a knock on the txrx. It is to illustrate how wonderful DMS is even with all our issues and finances.

For $50 at rxtx, you get access on Friday, Saturday, Sunday during business hours. Seven day business hour access is $90. For-profit access is $210. Our DMS 24/7 access for all is $60.

I only see two of their classes under $50. The majority of ours are free or a small fee for consumables.

When you join DMS, you get full access to the Electronics Lab. Their system requires a $$ class and attending office hours until you get signed off. I suspect their other areas have similar limitations.

Our class selection on the calendar at any time is awesome.

Lets be patient as our board juggles details to make membership fee, expansion, honorariums, capital purchases and all other items come together to be a financially solid best-in-the-world makerspace.

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I wasn’t posting to compare the two - I just thought it was a rocking website that was easy to navigate.
DMS is the queen of all the parties she just needs to be reminded.

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Holy Mackerel. I didn’t send more than a minute, and saw lots to like. The tool page, the docs page. I especially liked the offer that for $65 you can get signed off on a tool is you’ve got experienced. Also water jet! If the rest of their shop is as organized as their web page, it’s impressive.

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