Why I started Factory 3
Growing up, I had many creative and productive influences. My mother is an artist and my father is a mechanical engineer. My grandmother ran a business and some of my fondest memories as a child are visiting her office and learning from her. Business runs back several generations on both branches of my family tree.
This led me to a business degree from Northeastern University and, upon graduating, a full-time job in technology sales. It was a lucrative job that rewarded me with a commission proportionate to the work I put in. It felt like I was running my own business, but the whole time I did it, I was hungry for something more. I had always wanted to start an organization that would change the world.
Drawn here by the creative community, I quit everything and moved to Portland in 2009. At the time, it was a place where people could start small and try new things. Rent was cheap and creative energy filled the air. The community that surrounded me was a mix of born-and-raised Mainers that embodied resourcefulness and ingenuity, art students, and telecommuting tech workers who had recently relocated from much bigger cities.
During the next few years, I watched as rents steadily rose — and eventually priced out many of the very same people who'd made Portland such a desirable place to live in the first place. The cheap warehouse space that had once been fertile ground for making art and launching businesses had all been converted for "higher uses". The affordable apartments that had housed artists and entrepreneurs had been renovated into "luxury housing". It was hard to watch.
In 2016, I moved away and spent some time traveling. I stayed in Los Angeles, New York City, Boston, and eventually wound up in Portsmouth, NH of all places. It was there that I became a part of the "maker movement" and it changed me forever.
I joined Port City Makerspace in Portsmouth with a single goal: learning the art of motorcycle maintenance. On my way there, I ended up learning way more than I expected. The makerspace gave me basic training in welding, machining, woodworking, electronics, and drawing. The supportive community helped me step outside my comfort zone and learn skills that I never could have imagined having.
A makerspace offers formal training on how to operate machinery safely, but its unique value lies in the knowledge within its community of makers. Informal training from experts willing to share their skills is an incredible value. At Port City Makerspace, a motorcycle mechanic sat down with me and explained how an engine works. A retired machinist taught me how to build my own tools on a Bridgeport milling machine. Art students taught me how to draw better sketches. And the Makerspace Director, Alex, was always around to answer the various questions that pop up when one is learning something new for the first time.
My new community was kind, supportive, and inspiring. But being only an hour away, Portland eventually pulled me back. Home again with fresh eyes, I could see that creative people were still steadily migrating to Portland. Having been priced out by even higher rents in the big cities, Portland offered them a relatively affordable home with a one-of-a-kind, creative community.
Upon landing back in Portland, I set out to find a makerspace like the one I had been a part of. I had no doubt that I would find such a place here, but — very much to my surprise and disappointment — the search turned up nothing that compared. Portland had some amazing community workspaces, but each one seemed to be geared towards either "art" or "tech".
Then, it hit me. Portland has different types of makers, but there is no common ground for them to meet, mingle, and combine their skill sets into something completely new. Some are life-long Mainers who know how to work with their hands and move to Portland to start a small business. Others are art students in Greater Portland who, upon graduation, immediately lose access to most of their tools of production, as well as their workspaces. Yet others are creative people who migrated to Portland from tech jobs in much bigger cities but who live in apartments with no access to machinery and who have few connections to the "creative community". A well-designed, professionally-managed makerspace to unite all makers could be the catalyst Portland needs for a creative explosion — and I had to make one exist here.
