Welcome Former Techshop Members

Noisebridge welcomes former techshop members!

Hello, former TechShop members.

The sudden closure of techshop is a great blow to the maker community. While you work out where to work on your projects next, you are invited to come work at Noisebridge

...but we'd like to note that we're significantly different from TechShop:

We are a :

• nonprofit,
• community run
• do-ocratic

hackerspace,

instead of a:

• for profit
• employee maintained
• members only

makerspace.

In short, Noisebridge is a community that works to share tools and knowledge with as many people as possible. We look out for each other and often help each other's projects succeed. While we work together to gather and provide as much infrastructure and and many tools as we can, we are not a production facility.

Here are some more specific differences:

• At Noisebridge, there are no employees. We are all responsible for upkeep of the space and the tools within it.
• We operate on a Do-ocracy, which is similar to a real-life wiki.
• Noisebridge is donation supported.
  • There aren't dues or monthly fees, but it's considered excellent to donate a bit when you come to cover our expenses.
  • All our tools are donated. We do not have the same variety, quality, or reliability of tools as TechShop.
  • We work to keep our tools in safe working order, but accept that when people are learning sometimes things get broken.
• We have one rule "Be excellent to each other". We also have a strict Anti-Harassment_Policy
• Noisebridge people tend to be friendly and talk to each other and resolve problems through communication
• No one at Noisebridge is entitled to be there, or to use any particular machine. You must cooperate with your fellow makers, and share.
  • You can't reserve time on machines and you're not entitled to have the machines to yourself.
• You don't need to take a class to use a machine, you can just walk up to it and use it (with the exception of the laser cutter).
  • However if you don't know how to use it safely, please ask for help and wait until someone can show you.
  • Laser cutter has a training required to use it. You can find trainings on our meetup page, or come to the space and ask around.
• If a machine breaks, there are no employees to fix it - we'll have to figure it out ourselves. Try to fix it and enlist help if you can't.
• You can, and should be, be asked to leave Noisebridge at any time if you're being disrespectful or threatening to the others in the space, or the space itself. If this occurs, you're expected to leave without protest.
• You are also empowered to ask others to leave if they are being disrespectful or threatening to the others in the space, or the space itself - this is how we maintain a safe-space.

Overall, it's a pretty different model, but it's amazing to see it work. If you are interested, please come by and take a tour of the space.

We don't work in theory - just in practice. :-)

Come by and visit us!

Here's how to get in!

Here's our events (also check the meetup)

Here's a (probably incomplete) list of the equipment we have

Here's how to host an event with us

Our Manual, a guide to more topics

Our Vision