On a lovely Sunday afternoon I rolled up to the front door of Crashspace in Culver City. I was feeling a bit nervous about the first Los Angeles Young Makers meetup and wondering if anyone would show up. When I walked inside the front door, people were already hanging out a full 30 minutes early, including Gabrielle with her two young kids. I met her virtually through my LA Moms Group; turns out she is a welder among other talents.
At 4:30pm the place was packed full of people I consider dear friends and a bunch of new faces (these pics were taken by the wonderful Kent Nichols).
Donna Mandosa welcomed everyone and kicked things off.
She turned it over to me so I could introduce myself and explain why I want a permanent kid friendly space.
From there we spent over an hour going around the room learning a bit about everyone.
There were a bunch of teachers including Sara Nichols who brought a student from her school in Koreatown where they are trying to start a robotics club.
Kent Nichols and Leena Pendharkar are both filmmakers. As excited as I was to have robot and rocketship experts from places like SpaceX and xcor, the arts are are very important to the balance of the space.
Some folks have started schools, know how to write grants and are statisticians. Others work at tech startups, run machine shops and work at radio stations. It was a mixed, enthusiastic crowd and I was so happy that they are game to create more opportunities for youth to make awesome stuff.
We are forming working groups depending on who wants what and I’m leading the permanent physical space working group aka Really Awesome Space. The plan is to meet frequently; both Sean Bonner who founded Crashspace and Michael Clive who founded Mojave Makers both said they got their spaces up and running within a few months of the first working group meeting and they attribute that to having weekly meetings to form the core founding group.
If you are interested in being apart of the Los Angeles Young Makers Group to share skills, find skills or help get the permanent physical space, here are the links to get you involved:
Working Group Meetup on May 14th
Los Angeles Youth Hack Jam on June 23rd
Note: This discussion turned into a real live working and thriving nonprofit called LA Makerspace.
