10 Documenting

Sharing projects … and the stories behind their making

It’s not enough to just make something—it’s also important to be able to tell others about the projects and why they are great. To tell their stories better, your Makerspace’s project teams will want to think ahead to make sure they have the tools they need to document their process and their final project.

Exhibiting at a showcase event such as a Maker Faire is a golden opportunity to take a step back and tell the story of how and why a project was made. But once the event is over, how will your members be able to show off what they’ve done? It’s possible that their project is too large or the pieces of it too temptingly reusable that the project won’t last long. Spend the time after Maker Faire adding the project to your Makerspace members’ portfolios, or starting some kind of portfolio.

As they prepare to exhibit, ask your members to collect documentation that tells the story of how and why their projects came to be. One team member on each project could take on the role of documentarian along with their other making duties. Maker Faire attendees love to know how and why Makers created their project, and so you will want to encourage your members to gather evidence of their process. This can go all the way back to the brainstorming phase—one exhibiting group “Awesome is What We Totally Are” proudly shared the dog-eared spiral notebook which they had used for their original brainstorming session. In it you could see a full page of great project ideas scribbled down. The ideas were all over the place and each one looked like the next great project.

Forms of documentation

Documentation could take many forms, but whatever medium the members choose to tell their story, the important thing is that it captures why and how they made what they made. Some ways that your project teams may choose to capture their projects follow.

Notebooks. At our first meeting, we often distribute a Maker’s Notebook to make sure that each Young Maker has a place to sketch concepts, jot down notes, paste in inspiring clippings and printouts, and so on. Students have found it helpful to bring their notebooks to Maker Faire so that they can answer questions about what they’ve done and also show off the hard work they put into their project. Paper is low-tech and affordable by all.

Blogs. Blogging software is pretty easy to use, and multiple teammates can contribute to a blog, whereas it’s harder to share a notebook. If members keep Maker’s journal online, adding photos as they go along, they’ll have a pretty rich record to tap later.

Project Binders. Simplify and revise what has been recorded in the notebooks to create scrapbooks of the projects. Three ring binders are wonderful tools since they allow you to collect all sorts of different printed material (component spec sheets, press clippings, sketches on napkins...) in one place. You may prefer a binder to a bound notebook because of the flexibility. It is also helpful to date everything you put in the binder. That provides an accurate historical record that becomes increasingly interesting over time.

Photos. Take candids of the team working together and time-lapse shots of the project forming, as well as well-staged explanatory photos in case you want to write up their project as a “how-to” someday. Snap pictures of materials before and after adding them to the project. Sure, it helps to have an amazing camera, but you can also just ask the Students to use their phone’s camera. If you create a Flickr set or collection of photos online, please be sure to add “youngmakers” to your tags. License photos as Creative Commons images as appropriate, and then email any links to sets to [e-mail].

Posters. After Maker Faire, Aaron Vanderwerff asked his students to create posters describing their project. The posters were designed to be similar to those that scientists and engineers create to share their work at professional and academic conferences. The posters included a description of the project, a key scientific concept the project exhibited, an explanation of how one piece of technology worked on their project, and the students’ conclusions about the project.

How-tos. Give back to the DIY community and the Maker movement by having your Students write up their projects and add them to Make:Projects, Instructables, or another DIY community website. Having to explain how to do something to another person often helps learning “stick” better in the long- term.

Slideshows. Have your members tell their stories through a slideshow. You can give them free rein with the length and number of slides, or challenge them to use a quick-and-lively format like Ignite or Pecha Kucha, both of which limit the number of time and images the speaker can share. Using the slideshow format gives you automatic content for future fundraising and recruitment presentations.

Videos. Bring a digital video camera to all build sessions and meetings. Joseph, from the team that created Saphira, created a fantastic “trailer” to show off the animatronic, fire-breathing dragon he helped to build and the months of work that went into it. And don’t forget, video is much easier to move around than a machine with propane and an 8.5-foot wingspan. While a good microphone would be great for capturing the conversations and sounds of building, it’s not essential as you can always add voiceover or an energetic soundtrack over the footage you capture.

Digital Stories. Digital storytelling combines photos, video, animation, sound, music, text, and often a voiceover to create a short 2- to 3-minute multimedia narrative. The Center for Digital Storytelling has used this technique to have their storytellers reflect on their lives and work, and it has also been used with young people to reflect on creative projects of their own design. While we don’t have any favorite tools for classroom or Makerspace use, and video editing is getting easier all the time, a quick online search of “digital storytelling” will get you some of the latest news on how you can bring this to your students. Often, the voiceover in a digital story is recorded with a quality microphone.

Project Books. At the end of the project, you can put together your best photos of the finished project and the process of making it, and print these out on a nice printer so that the members have a permanent record of the project. Or consider printing custom photobooks (from Blurb, Apple, Lulu, etc.) that the members can keep in their portfolio to show off how they spent their months of work.

Regardless of the form your members choose to document the story of their project, the questions they can answer are not unlike those that they may have answered at the plussing sessions and Maker Faire.

• What was the project vision? What were we hoping to do?

• What inspired us to pick this project? Why did we do it?

• Have other Makers done similar projects, or was this one-of-a-kind?

• What’s next? Are there other project ideas we have toyed with?

• What kinds of projects had we built before?

• What was hard to do? What was easier to do? Did that surprise you?

• Were there any interesting, surprising, or spectacular failures?

• Were there any interesting or surprising behind-the-scenes stories?

Along with adding to your personal record of what the Makerspace has accomplished together, you can also share this documentation with us and we will consider it as a post on our active blog at makezine.com or in Make: magazine.

You made it! (Literally!) They made it! How can you keep on making? This chapter covers the steps you should take to keep the momentum going and also to give back to the network so that others can learn from your experiences.

Congratulating the students

As soon as you can manage to do so after the event, reach out to your participants to congratulate them on their good work. Thank everyone who participated in the program as makers, mentors, supporters, and in various other roles you might not have witnessed.

Offer a special congratulations to the amazing Makers who exhibited and to the dedicated, patient, and talented mentors who helped bring so many wonderful projects to fruition. Tell them again that you are very proud of the results of all their hard work. For those who helped set up and cover your area, or special patrons or sponsors of your Makerspace or its projects, be sure to offer a hearty thanks as well.

Give your participants some talking points for between seasons, as people who hear about their experience may ask them how they can start a Makerspace or get involved in the Makerspace. Give them any data you have, like how many projects you made, how many aggregate person-hours you worked on the projects, how many people attended the event, etc. If you have any links to great images, photo sets, videos, or media mentions, share those too—whether those cover the

event, your Makerspace or its projects. Share all these things with people who ask, and share them with us too! Send links to [e-mail], and we’ll send them along to others.

Pass along to the members any great feedback you heard about their projects — and request that they share some of the things they heard from visitors this weekend or to let you know if they know that they happened to speak to anyone from the press. Send a survey to your participants to gather feedback for improvement next year. Welcome any advice, suggestions, or tips that can’t fit in the survey.

Surveys

Within one or two weeks after your members exhibit their final projects, you should reach out to them, their parents, the mentors and other volunteers and offer them a chance to weigh in, offer suggestions, and give compliments. Use an online survey tool such as Google Forms or Survey Monkey to give your participants the option of anonymous responses. Or, at least, send an email where you ask for feedback.

Questions we have asked in past surveys include…

• If a friend asked you to describe your Makerspace in 10 seconds or less, what would you say?

• What did you think of the project vision?

  …the completed project?

  …the experience exhibiting?

  …meetings?

  …workshops?

  …plussing?

  …shop facilities?

  …overall: the whole program this year?

• For students: How much help did you get from your mentor(s)?

  • What part of your Makerspace was the most fun for you?

  • What was the least fun or most frustrating?

• For adult participants: How many projects did you help with?

  • Were any of the team members you helped your children?

  • How engaged were the project team members?

• If you could change one thing about the program, what would it be? This is the place to give more feedback that didn’t fit any of the questions we’ve asked. Suggest changes would you like to see for next year, or ways to reduce any frustration you felt.

• Share your success stories! Tell us anything we might share when we try to get other kids and adults excited about the program. Students, you can tell us about things you learned or new skills you gained. You can even describe anything at Maker Faire that interested or inspired you.

• Do you think you’ll use a Makerspace again in the future?

• Spreading the word: If you know someone who should hear about this program, please give us their email address(es) here.

In asking these questions and analyzing the results, your goal is two-fold: to continually improve the Makerspace, and also to gather great stories and data to help sustain the program.

Debriefing your work as the Makerspace leader

What your group did will inspire other Makerspaces, so be sure to share what happened with us and keep a copy of it all for yourself and future students.

• Ask someone to write up what your Makerspace did in a blog post or make a video about it.

• Write down some notes about what you did, what worked especially well, and what you might change for next year. Include any highlights or summaries from the survey you sent to your participants.

• Pull together any documentation your members made of their projects. Keep a record of all the projects that emerged from your Makerspace in one place, probably a page of your website.

• Before you lose touch with everyone, ask the members if there’s anything they wish they knew before they started their projects.

• Ask the parents, mentors, and volunteers to write or revise their job descriptions so that next year everyone can start the season ahead of the game.

• Organize any photos taken along the way and put them in a place you can find them later.

Everyone has a digital camera these days, so it’s easier than ever to crowdsource the task of documentation. Encourage members, parents, and mentors to use a Flickr tag for your Makerspace (e.g. “Makerspace-SF-2012”) as well as our generic “Makerspace” in advance. You can also ask them to share pictures via email.

It’s handy to organize your photos in a place everyone can access, but it can be a big job too. Google Docs Collections seems to be a solid, free tool for managing these visual assets and keeping them available in the “cloud.” Other people pay for a subscription to DropBox for similar functionality.

Make the effort to get an image of every project. When kids don’t see a record of their work on your website, they notice and could take it personally. They might assume you don’t appreciate their hard work.

Reporting and sharing with other Makerspaces

The network of all Makerspaces would very much appreciate your sharing some notes, write-ups, images, and videos from your time making together. These help build the national and international community of Makers, and we can sometimes feature

your Makerspace’s efforts in MAKE Magazine or on the makezine.com blog.

There are a few specific things we ask that you do as members of a supportive Makerspace network.

Maker List

Maker Media is building an international database of Makers and their projects with the ultimate goal of starting a Maker Guild. We’d also like to offer subscriptions and contact your makers for potential editorial coverage in MAKE magazine or the blog.

Submit.csv or.xls files to [e-mail]. These are fields that would be helpful:

• Name

• Makerspace Name and Location

• Website URL

• Exhibit name

• Exhibit description

• Email address

• Snail mail address, if you have one

Share best practices

Our hope is to learn more about how we can support making more Makerspaces, and to know more about what works and what doesn’t. We may send you a simple survey to ask questions about your year, like:

• • How many members? mentors? other volunteers?

  • How many completed projects?

  • What was your Makerspace’s budget?

  • Most successful innovation?

  • Priority improvement areas for next season?

  • Will you do it again next year?

Take a moment occasionally to report back to the Makerspace core team.

Contribute to this playbook

The Makerspace Playbook is intended to be a living document, evolving as the collective experience of the network and its community of Makerspaces grows.

Please email your comments, helpful anecdotes, or a snapshot to [e-mail].

Share images and video of your accomplishments Every day makezine.com offers up inspiring content about Maker projects. We would love the opportunity to feature documentation from your Makerspaces on our blog. Consider one of these ways to share what you did:

• Make a three-minute (or shorter) video documenting your Makerspace’s season. One format is to get each of the exhibiting Makerspace to introduce themselves and say “I Make...” Here are some examples from Maker Faire that you can follow:

  • youtube.com/watch?v=Usw4t7NVnt0

  • youtube.com/watch?v=Cn9ST2ay6c4

  • youtube.com/watch?v=TRjNOoAHaGg

• Create a Flickr set or collection of photos and tag them “youngmakers”. License them as Creative Commons images, and then email the link to [e-mail].