Shouldn’t it now be: W000T?
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lol yeah maybe… i’m just not that kewl! 
w00t! 
No, that would be W1111101000T
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They have 65,000 square feet among 275 members? That’s more than three times the space and almost 1/4th the members… shizzle…
Still, we are most awesome with the AMOUNT of growth in the last year. And “Amen” to Mitch’s comment about no major incidents.
JAG “The Secret Life of Calvin & Hobbes” MAN
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Mell and I were actually at the Columbus Idea Foundry this past Monday. I spoke with the founder/CEO for a bit, got a really quick tour and gained some insight. They are just over 450 members with 5 employees. They do not have a cleaning crew. They have an interview process for all new members and require that you take at least 2 classes before you can even try to be a member. This is to screen out the “toxic members” .
They do rent out office space in their 60K+ sqft building but not all of it is finished. They just got a grant for $500K to renovate their top floor. He said you can’t under estimate the marketing team. All classes cost money and all tool usage costs money.
They had two wood shops because it is hard to teach a class while members use tools (I totally get that!).
There are areas where we excel and areas where they do. I took more notes but I am currently just on my phone.
Below are my pics, hope you all can see them. https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-KBCWE3VUfdflU3RXF2Zm5tNUllVmw1dEhoUmJ2OXV4N0stRGJKc0lQbS04NWQ1Mmg1Zlk&usp=sharing
EDIT: Had to update the link.
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I’m not flinging pooh. What they have appears to be very nice. But, when you want to start talking floorspace and industrial manufacturing machines, Columbus Ohio WILL cost less than Dallas Texas, especially in years following 2008…
If you need a map to figure out what I mean, this post was probably not meant for you.
Bring on more “Tracer Bullet”. Best comic ever. Please come back, Bill! We miss you! (No offense Berkley, we love your work, too)
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Thanks for the pics, I don’t know anything about grants, where do you go looking to get half a million dollars?
Federales.
Living in a depressed former manufacturing region would help, but we do not.
Wouldn’t hurt us to look around though. Sometimes you can find private grants or educational grants which fit your facility.
Grant WRITING, on the other hand, is even harder, and then there’s the execution, to keep your @55 out of trouble for how it’s spent. I have zero capabilities there…
http://www.preservationdirectory.com/PreservationGeneralResources/GrantsFundingSources.aspx#general
http://www.thecne.org/news/featured-grants
https://www.cfda.gov/?s=main&mode=list&tab=list
We are not the largest in terms of membership. But a lot has to do with how you frame what is a member.
The Geek Group claims: “The Geek Group has 26575 members scattered across the globe, in every state in the US and one hundred and forty-two countries.” They also have a 43,000 square foot facility. Although their director/dictator Chris Boden while unliked by many he can rally troops and fundraise.
Growth is not a solution to everything.
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As I recall the Geek Group considers every YouTube subscriber to be a member. I’m not saying we’re the biggest, but the metric to look at is paying members.
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@AlexRhodes
Alex thanks for the photos and assessment of viewing another Maker-type space. A few questions:
Does the Columbus site have a webpage? While they clearly have space we’d love to have do they have the diversity and quantity of classes, topics, etc.? Curious what their dues are that support that much space plus 5 employees, also how much of the space is actually rented out?
Our offerings are expanding and I believe the pool of instructors is increasing to avoid burn-out. The plan for the two part-time employees discussed in another thread and the BoD will provide relief needed for those with the most work.
Be interested in what things you think are better practices than ours that may be adapted?
Thanks
An extremely low bar in the case of The Geek Group…
Basic membership is, and always will be, free. To sign up, just fill out this simple form. That’s it!
I wonder how many of the 26,575 are people (bots) hoping to post spam on their forum?
They have a free membership so yes they do count those. I’m a free member so I can see what they are generally doing. They definitely are behind us on the amount of class they offer!
Thanks for the link!
Oops. Not exactly 1000 members…
Brooks and I went thru the member database and cleaned up a bunch of old members who had cancelled as long as 18 months ago and still showed up as active in the system.
The current count of 987 is closer to being correct.
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You guys are just big teases, you know that?
JAG “Won’t Get Fooled Again” MAN
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From W00T to 000P ... nothing to see here, move along,
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I’m pretty sure we can get 13 new members in the next week after open house.
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I just checked, and after the new memberships from the Big Open House, we are at 1010 members.
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