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TSW* S1E3 - Michael Koenig - IIT
27 Plays4 months ago
In this insightful episode, we dive into the world of academic makerspaces with Michael Koenig, a seasoned makerspace manager now helping oversee IIT's facility. Michael shares his journey from student to lab manager, offering a unique perspective on the evolution of makerspaces in educational settings.Key topics discussed include:
- The transition from student to makerspace manager
- Challenges and rewards of running an academic makerspace
- Strategies for fostering innovation and creativity among students
- The impact of makerspaces on interdisciplinary collaboration
- Balancing safety concerns with the need for experimentation
- The role of makerspaces in preparing students for future careers
- Emerging technologies and their integration into makerspace environments
Michael provides valuable insights into the day-to-day operations of a makerspace, discussing everything from equipment maintenance to project management. He also reflects on the transformative power of hands-on learning and the importance of creating inclusive spaces that cater to diverse student needs.This episode offers a behind-the-scenes look at the dynamic world of academic makerspaces, providing inspiration for educators, students, and anyone interested in the intersection of technology, creativity, and education.
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Transcript
00:00:00
margalus
think. Yep. Okay.
00:00:01
Michael Koenig
Yep.
Introduction with Michael Koenig
00:00:02
margalus
We are we are beginning here with Michael Koenig, who was a lab manager at the idea realization labs at DePaul University, where we worked together for a number of years.
00:00:15
margalus
Now, uh, well now really Michael's in Kuwait. So, uh, hopefully our connection is strong and I have to thank Michael. I have to thank you for, uh, rescheduling urine Kuwait. And I flew in from Portland and I was, I got in it.
Navigating Time Zones and Scheduling Challenges
00:00:32
margalus
four in the morning and I emailed you at five in the morning our time and said, I'm sorry, but I can't, I'm so tired. And I felt so bad doing that because you're in Kuwait.
00:00:42
Michael Koenig
No.
00:00:44
Michael Koenig
Don't worry about that. The time difference makes it easy. Your five in the morning is like my afternoon.
00:00:50
margalus
Okay. Okay. And Michael is also the shop technician at the Idea Shop at IIT, the Illinois Institute of Technology. And Michael, what did I miss? And thank you for doing this.
00:01:06
Michael Koenig
Um, you seem to cover most of it, it's pretty straightforward there.
00:01:11
margalus
Okay. All right. Well, okay.
Experiences at Two Innovation Centers: DePaul vs. IIT
00:01:13
margalus
So, you know, I figured your, your, your experiences straddle kind of two different innovation centers. And I figured with those experiences, you might be able to, you know, do a little comparison contrast. We talked a little bit before I started recording about how I talked with Jake, who has kind of a similar experience as well, both at the idea realization lab and not Northwestern, but
00:01:36
margalus
Before we dive into that, can you talk a little bit about the Idea Shop, what its mission and goals are, and what your role is there, what you do?
00:01:43
Michael Koenig
Yeah, so the idea shop itself, it's kind of a mixed bag. So at least when I started, there wasn't really major goals of the space. It was more space used to support only a few classes and basically just be a space for people to come in and work on projects. but as kind of growing through the space it was primarily meant to support there was a ton of other names it's been a while but basically industry supported classes so basically the professors would partner with
00:02:14
margalus
Yeah.
Strategic Approaches to Support Student and Industry Projects
00:02:28
Michael Koenig
different industry partners. So there was a partner with Big Monster Toys out of Chicago, as well as like Wilson for a couple of them to basically help them basically solve a problem. So we help support, especially the Big Monster Toy class, basically training the students that were in that class to use the tools to be able to prototype potential toys and game ideas. So that's where the space started to grow into prior to where I was leaving is that we worked more to support these classes that were growing around the space and then vice versa, then the space would grow with the different offerings that we could provide since we were there, since I was there.
00:03:16
margalus
That's really interesting. It seems very industry-driven, which is maybe slightly different from some of the things we were doing at the labs at DePaul. There were some collaborations, I suppose, with industry, but a lot of the work that happened there was more student-driven and what students were interested in. Whether at the Idea Shop or the Idea Realization Lab, I'm wondering what are some strategic approaches you took in either of your roles to support either student-led kind of work or to support industry-focused kind of work? And when I say programming, ways to get people in, ways to keep people engaged,
00:03:57
margalus
What are some successful models that you noticed in either of these spaces to keep people engaged and get them working?
Workshop Design and Increasing Student Engagement
00:04:04
Michael Koenig
Yeah, so at the IRL with the workshops that we had going on, what eventually evolved from our Fun Friday workshops that we built towards kind of the later half of my time there, those were a great way to encourage student engagement with the shop as well to help grow the different programs and to give the students a base understanding of the tools that they are utilizing. When stepping into my role at the idea shop, that was a big thing that was lacking, at least from my first impressions of the space, is that it was very much kind of an on the cuff, like students would come in and be like, I want to learn this tool. And then you kind of had to teach them in the moment. And or if you had time, walk them through it, or else there was potential of just user errors with a lot of the tools.
00:04:54
Michael Koenig
So early on, we experienced a lot of, at least early on in my experience, we experienced a lot of user errors, essentially causing failed prints, damaged different machinery, things
Impact of Management Shifts on User Engagement
00:05:06
Michael Koenig
like that.
00:05:06
margalus
Mm.
00:05:07
Michael Koenig
That seemed to kind of have been an ongoing issue after COVID because when I came into the Idea Shop, There was, it was a fairly new management shift because the manager that was through COVID had left prior to like right after COVID. So a new manager was in which kind of flipped all of the lab policies and procedures kind of on its head because they basically had two very differing ideas of how to run the shop. The one was very locked down and strict where it's like,
00:05:41
Michael Koenig
you have to go through our 18-step training in order to use this tool very in-depth like great for someone to learn how to use something properly but was very almost gatekeeping what you could do in the shop versus someone that basically had no regulations it was just come in and use the tools as you want as long as you're not causing danger to yourself basically.
00:05:56
margalus
Yeah.
00:06:04
Michael Koenig
The only thing that actually had training when I started was the wood shop. And that was an hour-long course to just make sure that you knew basic safety procedures of how to operate with the wood shop. It took us a long time and that I kind of fell back on to what I knew from the IRL to start building out more or less a curriculum to help kind of facilitate increased user activity by encouraging students to come to a class to learn how to use the tools so they weren't as intimidated from something they had no idea how to use.
00:06:25
margalus
Mm.
00:06:42
Michael Koenig
And a lot of the tools could be fairly intimidating. as well as to then encourage the student workers to develop workshops and trainings that would emphasize a project versus like just learning the basics of the tool. Because at the IRL, I found that was one of the best things that we came up with, basically having a longer workshop or timeframe that students could come in and actually then walk away with more or less a finished project.
00:06:59
margalus
I see.
00:07:13
Michael Koenig
versus, oh, I'm coming in and learning the basics of how to use a tool that now I have to come up with my own ideas to do something with.
00:07:13
margalus
Right.
Balancing Commercial Objectives and Creativity
00:07:23
margalus
And I wonder when you're teaching them, you're at the idea shop and you're teaching these students how to use tools to make a specific project. You'd mentioned kind of those commercial objectives. I don't know if I want to call them objectives, but they were partnerships or things like that. And how did you balance those relationships in the commercial space with giving students also the creative freedom and the balance to kind of wander a little bit? Or did you run into that at all?
00:07:53
Michael Koenig
So the one class that we had like a real direct involvement with was the the toy making class with big monster toys and that one they kind of encouraged the students to wander and take their ideas where they went.
00:08:07
margalus
Mm.
00:08:07
Michael Koenig
They gave them general guidelines of like hey it is still a class project they used to have to produce something but it allowed them to kind of it basically throughout the class they had different projects that they would do to kind of learn the different tools in the shop and then they could take and involve whatever one of those projects or none of them and create kind of their final project that they would then work with they would have demo days with the industry partners as well as like
00:08:38
margalus
Bye.
00:08:41
Michael Koenig
like play testing with the different age groups. So we would have like middle school students come in and play the different games to see kind of get their feedback on like the how fun it was for that kind of age group. So they were able to get kind of different age ranges for that. So they both got feedback from a potential user as well as feedback from the actual industry partner to kind of guide how they might evolve and produce their game more like how they would if they were actually coming to like working in the industry that they would bring it to their boss whatever it's like well we might want to change this here this doesn't really work and then they would take it to a play test that play test would give them some more feedback on how the different player interactions or how a child might actually interact with the toy they built
00:09:27
margalus
you
00:09:36
margalus
I see. Okay. So you've got a lot of people coming through the space it sounds like
Measuring Success: User Engagement and Beyond
00:09:41
margalus
there. You've got everything from kids to students who are working on course projects to students who want to work on projects for their school, just independently. You've got faculty coming through.
00:09:52
Michael Koenig
Yeah.
00:09:54
margalus
So a lot of different audiences, a lot of different people to think about. And I'm wondering, As these people are coming through, what is success look like for you? What does success look like for the shop?
00:10:10
Michael Koenig
The biggest, or at least when I was there, my biggest goal for the shop was to basically expand the user experience and to be able to get more users through the space, to encourage more people that might not be in these direct courses to come and utilize the space.
00:10:17
margalus
Yeah. Yeah.
00:10:27
Michael Koenig
Because that was one of the biggest things that we lacked, at least what I noticed again, this was all after COVID and all that stuff. So a lot of things had changed. Do people that maybe wouldn't have known about the shop and whatnot,
00:10:36
margalus
Yeah.
00:10:41
Michael Koenig
So it very much, there was a lack of user engagement where you would see the people that were here for a class and maybe one or two other people that were kind of regulars coming to the space, but there wasn't just people coming in to experiment and try new things and learn the different tools that we could use just for their own experience. So the biggest success factor that we could see was
00:11:03
margalus
Right.
00:11:07
Michael Koenig
being able to see the uptick in users that weren't coming through just for class work.
00:11:19
margalus
By the way, this was experienced everywhere. At DePaul, at the time, after COVID, there was a huge downswing in the number of people who were coming through the spaces. I think it's just people got used to being at home and they just wanted to get home as soon as possible, probably.
00:11:39
Michael Koenig
Yeah, and it also affected into the fact that there was a new group of people that didn't know about the space as well, I think, too.
00:11:47
margalus
Right. So thinking of that new group of people then, and thinking of the success factors that you're talking about, what's one story? What's one big win that you noticed while you were there that other people might be able to learn from? If you think of a big win that other people can go, oh, that's a template that we might be able to follow, or that's a way of thinking that we might be able to copy.
00:12:13
Michael Koenig
Yeah, um, God, I gotta think back on that. It's been five months since I've been there.
00:12:17
margalus
Uh-huh.
00:12:20
margalus
Right.
00:12:20
Michael Koenig
Um, but, uh, the biggest, yeah, what is it?
00:12:22
margalus
It looks pretty hot in Kuwait, by the way.
00:12:25
Michael Koenig
It's like a hundred and something degrees right now.
00:12:28
margalus
Oh my God. Okay.
00:12:31
Michael Koenig
Yeah, it's 111 right now.
00:12:33
margalus
Oh my God, Michael. Okay.
00:12:36
Michael Koenig
Um, at least it's a dry heat, like they all say. It's not too bad.
00:12:39
margalus
All right.
00:12:39
Michael Koenig
It's not like Chicago's humidity or whatnot. Um,
00:12:45
Michael Koenig
That one's hard because it's like there's, there was a lot of little wins we had of like, especially through classes and stuff like that, where I was, we were able to basically help a student that just took this class because it sounded interesting, kind of get excited to work in the space where they're like, Oh, I would have never probably have experienced or tried this out if it wasn't for this class.
00:12:52
margalus
you
00:13:09
Michael Koenig
And now I want to do more. like that's the kind of like little wins like that are really what kind of helped encourage like keep me excited to expand the space is that basically giving someone the opportunity to try something they wouldn't have done
Building Inclusive Innovation Spaces
00:13:26
Michael Koenig
before and then seeing them grow and develop from there.
00:13:32
margalus
Okay, so not like necessarily a big specific win, but definitely the kind of a template that you would look for in wins in these kind of spaces, which is students who might not have, they're not engineering students, right?
00:13:46
margalus
Necessarily they're not. They don't feel natural when they're around some of this kind of equipment and through the community that you facilitate, they find themselves feeling like they're part of that space and maybe exploring some of the things in it. Is that kind of where you're?
00:14:04
Michael Koenig
Yeah, very much kind of along those lines, just like getting people excited about making things because that's what these spaces are about.
00:14:05
margalus
Yeah.
00:14:13
Michael Koenig
They're places for you to experiment, learn, try something that you wouldn't, might not have access to in the future outside of the university and stuff like that.
00:14:21
margalus
Right.
00:14:23
Michael Koenig
And it's like getting them excited to experiment and try those new things, learn new tools that they could take
00:14:24
margalus
Right.
00:14:29
margalus
Yeah.
00:14:31
Michael Koenig
to a work environment as a designer, as a whatever, and bring that experience that they then will have a better idea if you're a product designer being like, oh, I can't use this. Maybe this fabrication method won't work for what I'm doing. And they're better all well-rounded individual that they can take some of those experiences from the shop and apply those to something that they wouldn't have necessarily directly connected it to originally.
00:14:56
margalus
Yeah.
00:15:01
margalus
You know, one of the things that I've noticed in some of these spaces and having conducted some of these interviews now too, is that the element of, well, two elements. There are two elements that are important for making people feel like they're getting them comfortable in these spaces. And one of them is, I mean, the space itself, the things that are in the space that occupy the space, the furniture, how it's oriented. And a lot of that, as you know, for the IRL, at least, was all on CAS. Everything's on wheels. And that's so that the community can reconfigure it as it sees fit rather than it being a static space over, you know, years.
00:15:42
margalus
The second thing is community and not just the sense that I belong here because I know how to use the things, but I belong here because I want to be around the people in the space as well. And I'm wondering how you went about it. Either of these spaces are both developing the community that made people feel welcome and developing a space that made people feel welcome as well.
00:16:10
Michael Koenig
Yeah. So that was, it is, it's a challenge and it's like, I don't, I don't feel like we necessarily cracked the code yet, at least at IIT. Like we're still, we were like, when I left, we were still working on building that community engagement. Like we had seen a great increase in the number of users.
00:16:25
margalus
Yeah.
00:16:29
Michael Koenig
Um, but like it, we were still working towards that end goal of encouraging different clubs to participate in the space. getting more organizations, groups, whatnot through the space versus a lot of individuals.
00:16:37
margalus
Hmm.
00:16:44
Michael Koenig
But the biggest, one of the hardest factors I found with that space in particular was the dual nature of it. So we had, it was actually split between two different rooms divided by kind of a main hallway where a cafe was located. So the two different spaces, we had a wood shop and like laser cutting CNC on one side. And then we had like our assembly area, which had our sewing machines, like heat press and three printers on the other side.
00:17:15
Michael Koenig
So it felt very like disjointed. So people might know one side, but not experience the other. And there wasn't, it was hard to kind of get that flow right.
00:17:23
margalus
Hmm.
00:17:27
Michael Koenig
So I think we are still kind of working through how to get people to engage with both sides in the best layout especially because one of the biggest things we found was the CNC you need to program the CNC but all the machines that could program were on the other side so you had to go to the other side program bring it over plug it in and go from there
00:17:34
margalus
Ah.
Catalysts for Change at Idea Shop
00:17:50
Michael Koenig
so
00:17:50
margalus
So can you talk a little bit more about how this, how, because it sounds like there is an evolution of, of this, this space post COVID probably, you know, earlier than that as well. And that has to do with a number of factors. It sounds like two, right? Uh, both people and management related. Um, you came in and kind of made some changes. It sounds like to the way, you know, workshops are run and things like that. And I'm wondering like two, two things. And one of them is.
00:18:25
margalus
What were the catalysts for those changes? What did people notice? And some of them were just forced. It sounds like somebody left and so that happened.
00:18:33
Michael Koenig
Yeah.
00:18:34
margalus
But some of them had to be things that you noticed as areas for improvement. And I'm wondering, what were the things that you noticed? How did it evolve? And then also, as you implement these programs, and this is a key part of the question here, how do you ensure that these new processes and programs that you're implementing are sustainable and can be carried over time that other people can implement them as well?
00:18:59
Michael Koenig
Yeah, so at least some of the processes that really we had to make kind of major changes to was, one, the culture that the staff themselves presented in the space.
00:19:13
margalus
Mmm.
00:19:14
Michael Koenig
Because like any space, normally we have a lot of student workers. And the biggest thing is managing those student workers and encouraging them to engage and be engaged with those people coming into the space. We had, initially when I had joined, it felt very much like a free-for-all, where the student workers just kind of left. They would work whatever times they wanted. There was no schedules or anything. They just kind of came in and worked, which was kind of a hard thing to work around because you just didn't know who was going to be working with.
00:19:53
Michael Koenig
But moving through that, developing things like student handbooks, having actual set schedules, which were not necessarily liked by the student workers because they liked just being able to kind of do what they wanted.
00:20:07
margalus
Who doesn't?
00:20:07
Michael Koenig
But it it helped improve the environment that we had in the space because then
00:20:07
margalus
Yeah.
00:20:13
Michael Koenig
we could schedule those workshops. We could actually be like, okay, I know this person who is an expert in this tool is on this day. And it allowed us to actually have a little bit more structure for people to understand what days served, what kind of tools. But with that, it also helped the student workers feel more engaged in the space, which made it more of a welcoming space. It wasn't so much of like, I don't know who's working. I don't know if this person actually works here or they're just here all the time kind of thing.
00:20:47
Michael Koenig
So it gave the space a little bit more of an identity so that people felt like they could actually ask those questions if they didn't know how to do something or they forgot how to this step of a tool.
00:20:47
margalus
Yeah.
00:21:01
Michael Koenig
So that was kind of a big change we had to make.
00:21:04
margalus
Interesting.
00:21:05
Michael Koenig
What was the second half of that?
00:21:06
margalus
I mean, and I think you're kind of touching on some of it too, but the second half was about sustainability. So as you introduce those programs and processes, how do you make sure that they carry over time? So in the example I would give is I'm now at Washington and Lee University. I have my own centers here. And yet at DePaul, which I haven't had to do anything for since I've left, I would assume a lot of the processes and things that we put in place are carrying over time. And so it's important to me that as you introduce things,
00:21:41
margalus
that you ensure that they're sustainable so that the effort that you put in can be honored and can remain in place after you leave, as long as it
Ensuring Sustainability Through Documentation
00:21:52
margalus
makes sense.
00:21:52
Michael Koenig
Yeah.
00:21:53
margalus
I'm sure things change and are changing it to Paul and wherever else as well. But in general, nothing fell apart. Everything is still running, and that's important.
00:22:03
Michael Koenig
And that I think just comes into the sense of documentation. Basically documenting how
00:22:07
margalus
Yeah.
00:22:09
Michael Koenig
how you went about kind of building the original one so someone could look at an example and continue to build off of it. So that was kind of the biggest thing that I saw at least originally with the space is it lacked any kind of documentation. Like when I came on there was very little like onboarding it was just kind of, hey, figure out something to do.
00:22:32
margalus
All right.
00:22:32
Michael Koenig
So there wasn't a lot of the kind of the base groundwork that needed to be done to
00:22:33
margalus
Right.
00:22:38
Michael Koenig
help people feel comfortable in the space, whether they're student workers, full-time staff. And then that applied to also then students coming in. So there was not really any structure in place to help train those people up.
00:22:50
margalus
Right.
00:22:53
Michael Koenig
It was just kind of, hey, you know how to use this tool. Can you show me how to use it? But that's a hard thing for someone freshly walking into space, not knowing anything. A lot of times that's really hard for them to come up and be like, can you show me how to use this? I don't know anything about it.
00:23:09
margalus
Yeah.
00:23:09
Michael Koenig
So building that process that they no longer have to ask, they can just attend a class basically that is an hour long or whatnot. And they get that training and then they know, Oh, this person taught this class. If I have questions, I can always go back. Or they, I can reference this guide that we have, like building those base structures to help give people that comfortability in the space.
Creating a Safe Space for Learning
00:23:36
Michael Koenig
Um, and. that engagement with the staff as well so that they're not afraid to ask the questions.
00:23:44
Michael Koenig
Because that's what I've seen through both spaces and just in general in even here, people are afraid to not have the answer or not know how to do something.
00:23:45
margalus
Yeah.
00:23:54
margalus
Right.
00:23:56
Michael Koenig
And that being able to admit that you're like, I don't know what I'm doing. Can you help me? That's a very hard question to That's a very hard thing to say to people, for a lot of people. And it takes a long time to learn. And I bet you've experienced that as well. It is something that you learn to do over time, as you mature as a person, someone in the workforce, and just a human being.
00:24:13
margalus
Heh.
00:24:28
margalus
Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of excellent things in there that you said that I'd love to unpack. I mean, one of them is the evolution of not pretending that you know what you're doing, or at least knowing when to admit that you don't know what you're doing. There are certain times, I suppose, when you have to just kind of move forward and pretend you know what's going on, because if you don't, chaos will follow. But most of the time, most of the time, it's good to admit that you don't know what you're doing. And, you know, there's, there's, as my teaching has evolved, you know, because that's something you notice in students, you have to create a space for them to feel like it's okay to say they don't know what they're doing.
00:25:03
Michael Koenig
Okay.
00:25:06
margalus
One of the things that I do when I teach is even if I do know what I'm doing, I pretend I don't know what I'm doing, and I make mistakes on purpose. And maybe I'll take like, dumb, like, you know, I was teaching somebody how to use Here's a piece of technology now where it's pre-emulsified silk screens that you can laser cut laser etched designs onto. And so I was teaching somebody how to use it yesterday. It was my first time using it, but I generally knew what the process would look like.
00:25:39
margalus
and I put the screen in there and the first thing I noticed was that the height was off and that the laser was gonna run into it but I shut the laser anyways and turned it on to show him that it was okay that the laser ran into it and that it made a mistake because it was recoverable.
00:25:41
Michael Koenig
Bye.
00:25:53
margalus
Then I knew that we were etching it onto the thing backwards and I mentioned it like briefly but then I was like I don't care whatever let's let's laser etch this thing on backwards and then he'll learn that it's okay and the whole process was just showing him that like really it's an $8 screen and the laser will fix itself. And so if these mistakes happen, it's totally okay that they happen. And that's the next iteration is creating that kind of environment where people watch you making mistakes, and then they realize it's okay to make mistakes as well.
00:26:13
Michael Koenig
Yeah.
00:26:23
margalus
And it certainly If you have a big ego, it could feel like it's a blow to your ego because you're looking stupid. But honestly, I don't care. I'm almost 40, Michael. I don't care if I look stupid anymore. If somebody thinks I'm dumb, that's fine. My ego doesn't need for people to think. Anyways, so that's interesting. You mentioned that that's really compelling. I think just talking about the sustainability and documentation is also interesting. There's a question I had in there, which is,
00:26:53
margalus
You know, documentation is excellent. Documenting processes, I've written many 20-page documents for how to run centers and things like that. Is there a point at which documentation, and I think you may have noticed this maybe at DePaul even, is there a point at which documentation becomes burdensome as well, like almost too much documentation, too many processes, and that can get in the way?
00:27:15
Michael Koenig
Yep.
00:27:16
margalus
How do you balance that?
00:27:45
margalus
Yeah.
00:27:48
Michael Koenig
Even at at the Idea Shop, where bureaucracy and policies can really drag things down. And the biggest thing is being able to go back and look at what policies, documentation you might have, and actually like analyzing, is this useful? Or is this just another control measure that we already have in three different ways that is just kind of a redundancy? So
00:28:21
Michael Koenig
When you realize that, oh, I'm doing the same thing three different ways to make the same outcome, is the redundant thing that I have in place, or the redundant document, whatever it is, do I actually need that? And being able to go through and doing a scrub basically of what you're doing and does it make sense for me to still be doing this? Because like you said, the industry evolves. you might need it to do something where yeah if it was the laser might have been damaged if that user ran it into it but nowadays they're more robust so now it doesn't matter so it's like having that failure it's like oh it's not as big of a deal anyway
00:28:54
margalus
Thank you.
Balancing Documentation and Process Evolution
00:29:04
margalus
Right, right. Another thing I noticed is if you know what your strategies and your values are as an organization, what you're trying to achieve, and you've got processes that are making it harder to achieve that and aren't getting you close to the goal faster, then you need to reevaluate those processes as well. I'm thinking of several processes we put in place.
00:29:22
Michael Koenig
Yeah.
00:29:27
margalus
I don't know if I want to say back in the day, it wasn't that long ago, but it was long enough ago.
00:29:30
Michael Koenig
It's a couple years ago now.
00:29:33
margalus
Yeah, feels like ages ago, both because of COVID and everything else. Two, three, I mean, I've been in Virginia for a year. So yeah, and then two, yeah, about two years, something like that, two, three years. Boy.
00:29:49
Michael Koenig
So I think it was, I left in March of 2082.
00:29:54
margalus
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Wow. Things change fast. Um, but, but there were processes that we had had put in place and it was, it just got, it just got onerous.
00:29:57
Michael Koenig
Yeah.
00:30:05
margalus
And, um, you know, that's, that was something I learned, but, but yeah.
00:30:10
Michael Koenig
I... Like I think that also came from just that this was a new space and that we had to basically keep evolved. Like at least the RL, we had to keep evolving and trying to change with everything.
00:30:18
margalus
Right.
00:30:21
Michael Koenig
And the biggest thing is that the amount of documentation we had from the very beginning to where we were when we, when I left, like had completely changed the way we did things had changed.
00:30:32
margalus
Oh.
00:30:34
Michael Koenig
But.
00:30:34
margalus
Did you hear that? Was I yelling into the microphone or not? No?
00:30:38
Michael Koenig
I didn't hear it.
00:30:39
margalus
OK, good. Sorry. So sorry. I cleared my throat. Yeah, I mean, it was a new space. Things changed. And while you were saying that, I muted myself to clear my throat. I didn't want to. I didn't know if I actually muted or not. And I was OK.
00:30:58
Michael Koenig
Yeah, no, but it was just like the amount of documentation that we had from the, all the proposed things we wanted to do. it became so hard to actually navigate any of it that it's like that's where it's like you would need to kind of look at it's like okay we need to kind of do a purge what do we actually need here and what is just kind of a some an idea we had basically
00:31:09
margalus
Right.
00:31:17
margalus
Yeah.
00:31:21
margalus
Right. I wonder, okay, so things change, new spaces, a lot of things moving around.
Essential Makerspace Technologies
00:31:28
margalus
This isn't like an easy transition into this next question, but as you're talking about new things and introducing new things, I'm thinking of a conversation I had with Jake where we geeked out on just some of the new technologies. that he's bringing in in Northwestern, and we talked a little bit about some of the stuff that I'm getting here, and I'm wondering what are some of the, I guess, number one, what are some of the essential technologies and resources that you saw utilized in the spaces, and then number two, what's something that you're excited about or that's new or on the horizon that can be adopted or integrated into these centers?
00:32:01
Michael Koenig
So the biggest thing that I saw, like one of the tools that was pretty much used every day, two of them really, pretty much nonstop was 1R laser cutter. Just because the Illinois Institute of Technology has a very large engineering and architecture base of students that needed to do stuff, scale models, things like that, which was perfectly perfect for the laser cutter.
00:32:21
margalus
Right.
00:32:28
Michael Koenig
That was one of the tools that was very, very widely used for everyday projects from basics, someone's making gifts for their family or ornaments or something to actual projects, industry, things like that. And then number two was our 3D printers. Our 3D printers, like what we kind of saw at the IRL, are just a really cool piece of technology that people can pretty much make whatever they want.
00:32:58
margalus
All right.
00:32:59
Michael Koenig
So that was one of the things that I am very much a 3D printer person. I love my 3D printers.
00:33:03
margalus
Yeah.
00:33:05
Michael Koenig
You know that.
00:33:07
margalus
Yeah.
00:33:08
margalus
Do you have it? Did they, did they give you any access to any of that where you're at now? Or are you just like, uh, in the desert with no 3d printers?
00:33:15
Michael Koenig
I'm in the desert with no 3D printers. Doesn't mean I can't still do my hobbies and stuff.
00:33:19
margalus
All right.
00:33:20
Michael Koenig
Thanks to Amazon, I've got, I can get most of my stuff here. But yeah, not having 3D printers is like, I see a lot of stuff that I'm like, Oh, I want to do that, but I can't really do that right now.
00:33:24
margalus
Nice.
00:33:33
Michael Koenig
But funny enough, there's actually I'll circle back to that.
00:33:38
margalus
Yeah.
00:33:39
Michael Koenig
But going back to your original question, those are the two piece of movements that were like very heavy in use and in demand, especially kind of towards that final season because everyone's trying to do their scale projects and do their mock-ups and things like that that require those tools.
00:34:00
Michael Koenig
Something like, was it the limiting factors?
00:34:04
margalus
I'm thinking of the piece of technology that's on the horizon that you're excited about, that's like, oh, if only everybody knew about this.
00:34:06
Michael Koenig
oh future technology no well those those are pretty those are more like mainstream now like that's not really an on the horizon thing
00:34:13
margalus
And if you say the Elegoo SLAs, I won't be surprised, but if there's anything else you're thinking of too.
00:34:24
margalus
Yeah.
00:34:27
Michael Koenig
It's going to be potentially the size, actually be able to upscale a lot of these existing products from laser cutters to 3D printers.
00:34:36
margalus
Yeah.
00:34:37
Michael Koenig
the fact that CNCs are heavily used just for cutting things out. But if you could have a large format laser cutter that is a 8x4 that can cut through plywood kind of thing, that would be a huge speed boost for one within industries for cutting out just paneled work. But it could open up new avenue for being able to do things a lot quicker in one
00:35:05
Michael Koenig
one fell swoop. Because in theory, laser cutting in some aspects is faster and a lot more precise than a CNC would be.
00:35:06
margalus
Yeah.
00:35:14
margalus
Excuse me. Yeah.
00:35:15
Michael Koenig
So something like that, where it's not so much any new piece of technology, it's more upscaling the existing technology that's already there.
00:35:25
margalus
Yeah, I mean, you know, one of the, I don't know if you've heard of these new bamboo B-A-M-B-U 3D printers. This is what Jake geeked out on actually, but it's actually similar in concept to what you're talking about in that it made 3D printing Um, much easier, more approachable and faster than people had noticed. So the, the bamboo three printers that are out now print about five times faster than a regular one and prints multicolor. And it's just by clicking a button and telling it what color you want. And then it also has error correction where.
00:36:02
margalus
As you know, if you're printing like 10 different objects on one bed to get them all done, if one fails, everything else fails. So the bamboo allows you to go in and select the object in mid 3D print and say, stop printing just that piece. And so it's doing all sorts of interesting things using machine learning and computing. that prior 3D printers didn't do.
00:36:22
Michael Koenig
Yeah.
00:36:25
margalus
It's doing error correction. Basically, the way it's able to go faster is that it auto-corrects via computing for the jitter that happens when something moves really fast.
00:36:34
Michael Koenig
Okay.
00:36:35
margalus
And then it's...
00:36:35
Michael Koenig
Yeah, no, that's a huge benefit.
00:36:38
Michael Koenig
That's a huge change to what's kind of there.
00:36:40
margalus
Yeah.
00:36:42
Michael Koenig
But I know my focus area really went towards resin printing. That was my bread and butter with figures and stuff.
00:36:47
margalus
Right. Right.
00:36:50
Michael Koenig
The quality that you can get from that is far superior than what you can get from a standard FDM printer. not recently, but within the last like two years, the size of them, the like available on the market, like that sizes of those have significantly increased.
00:37:05
margalus
Right. Right.
00:37:09
Michael Koenig
So best example is the forms. And eventually when we went to the Elegoo, it's like, I very much like that brand because I've had very good working, they're cheap and they're very kind of open source. And there's a lot of users out there that kind of help fix errors you might be having.
00:37:25
margalus
Yeah.
00:37:28
Michael Koenig
It's the community that's around them that really kind of sold them up for me. But what they have done too is now they have built those plates that can rival some of the larger filament printers and be able to do those larger projects in a higher quality material, which is a huge advantage for prototyping because you can now use more solid material or denser material
00:37:42
margalus
All right.
00:37:56
Michael Koenig
something that has a lot more detail oriented into it and not have to do as much finishing work on that material to make it look like a prototype-ready display product.
00:38:10
margalus
Yeah.
00:38:10
Michael Koenig
And at the lab itself, we actually had a machine that was a very, very cool, very advanced piece of equipment that was very rarely used because we didn't really have anyone that needed that specific type of machine. It was also like, it was, you had to do a lot more in the backend design work that no one really had experience with uses. I don't remember the name of it. I remember the J55, I think that was the version number, but it was a, the best way I could describe it was a Inkjet printer, 3D, an Inkjet 3D printer.
00:38:51
Michael Koenig
It basically had your standard inkjet cartridges, so your black, your white, your cyan, your magenta, your yellow, and it could actually do on-the-fly mixing to basically build whatever color you wanted and give the 3D print something in full color with a resin-based material.
00:38:51
margalus
Oh.
00:39:12
margalus
Wow, okay, yeah, yeah, it's that combination of you want people to be able to make things as high fidelity and as complex as possible without exposing them to the complexities that are behind the thing, you know, you don't, we, the loop de Paul space had an SLS printer, which was expensive and difficult to use and broke.
00:39:31
Michael Koenig
Yep.
00:39:34
margalus
And it was really cool in theory.
00:39:36
Michael Koenig
Yep.
00:39:36
margalus
In theory, it's really cool. In practice, it was wholly uninteresting and unused in so many ways.
00:39:40
Michael Koenig
I remember that thing and it's like, it was a cool machine, but the actual use cases of it were far and few between.
00:39:50
margalus
Right, right. So that's that's a lesson for me at least that I learned is sometimes big expensive things are not actually that useful.
Lessons Learned in Makerspace Management
00:39:59
margalus
Other times, you know, I think maybe they could be and it just requires some on ramping and adoption and things like that.
00:40:07
margalus
But I guess that leads me to my next question, which is like, what are some other lessons that you've learned through your work at both of these spaces? What are some things, good, positive, things that you change as well, things that could have been done better that people could learn from?
00:40:23
Michael Koenig
yeah so that's that's interesting yeah because both spaces had they like Eventually they kind of fell into the same category or style of like workshops, training you on equipment, things like that.
00:40:41
margalus
Right.
00:40:42
Michael Koenig
But one of the biggest differences, at least for me, between the two spaces is just the material aspect. So this is kind of leading into the main question, but at the IRL, material is free.
00:40:56
margalus
Right.
00:40:59
Michael Koenig
as long as you weren't using it for business practices, things like that, like mass manufacturing. But at IIT, it was something that the students actually had to buy, so there was no material to start out that was free. If you used a tool and you didn't bring your own material in, you had to pay for it from the shop. So that was a huge challenge for us just because the system that was in place wasn't fully functional for having people understand the pricing of materials, things like that. And that was a challenge I experienced that I never was able to get a really strong holdover because it was hard for us to track inventory. We were basically a store. And that's one of the hardest things is
00:41:45
Michael Koenig
tracking that inventory and having it available for you to come by when they need it.
00:41:46
margalus
you
00:41:50
Michael Koenig
And the advantage the IRL had was that, yeah, we might not have something. It might not be in stock for a while, but we weren't trying to sell it to anyone. So it was just kind of like, hey, it's free. So if it's available, it's here free to use. But if it's not, you can request it, but it might take a little while to get in. But as a storefront, basically, you're expected to try to have a stock at all times. So managing that is a tricky aspect. So kind of like a word of warning from that is that inventory management is something that I think every space, IRL, idea shop struggles with because you don't think about that initially. You think about, oh, this tool I have, how to train someone on this tool, but the actual materials that that tool uses tends to
00:42:42
Michael Koenig
fall by the wayside, I feel like.
00:42:45
margalus
Yeah, building in that extra percentage for materials and also, quite frankly, for maintenance is critical. You buy something and it's brand new and it comes with some material and so everything's honky-dory for the first couple months. And then you run out of material and it breaks and nobody wants to use it anymore and then on top of that you become known as the place. Where nothing works and so people stop you know utilizing the space is.
00:43:20
margalus
is a big challenge. And building in, generally, I've found that 10% to 15% extra play for materials and maintenance is important. So if you buy a thing that's $1,000, anticipate that you're going to be spending $100 to $150 on it minimum every year. And that's a good way to think about what your actual real budget is, too. Um, what, what are some other, any other challenges, I think maybe even more strategically, you know, or policy wise that you can think of that, that kind of like, um, you've noticed these, these centers face as they're trying to get off the ground and then sustain themselves.
00:44:02
Michael Koenig
Yeah. Yeah, so... I do want to circle back to your machine question, but I'll get to that.
00:44:08
margalus
Yeah.
00:44:09
Michael Koenig
But I think the biggest one is training accountability. So a lot of these spaces they have, like we have these trainings that you're supposed to do in order to use that machine, but being able to actually track personnel that have conducted that training and ensuring that someone using the tools have actually gone through and learned how to use it properly or learn how the space itself operates where it's like, oh, if you want to use this tool, you have like, here's kind of our own policy we have on that space.
00:44:41
Michael Koenig
That's been one of the biggest struggles I think from both spaces is that that accountability aspect of it is hard to track of like who's actually authorized to use this tool.
00:44:51
margalus
Right.
00:44:56
Michael Koenig
Some things are easier than others cause you can actually go and check it or you're a little bit more like, I don't want to say like hands on with, but like things like a wood shop, like you're going to be a lot more like I'm, if you're coming in and I don't recognize you, I'm actually going to go into the system and check it to make sure that you have done our training. You do understand our policies within the shop versus something that is a little less, um, like actually physically dangerous to the individual like 3d printing or something that Someone might have learned from a youtube video and they just they walk in and like I'm just gonna use this not knowing that They can't just go and use it basically Yeah, and like that aspect of like machines being down for extended periods of time a word of warning that I have is
00:45:38
margalus
Right. Right. So you said you wanted to circle back to the machine question. Yeah.
00:45:49
margalus
Yeah, yeah.
00:45:53
Michael Koenig
from my experience with the Idea Shop is kind of what you talked about, buying the newest, coolest piece of equipment.
00:46:01
margalus
Yeah.
00:46:02
Michael Koenig
Because some people are like, Oh, because it comes into like, Oh, I've got this budget. I'm told I have X amount of money, $100,000 to go spend on stuff. I'm going to go and buy the newest newest coolest thing, because I've been given a blank check for this.
00:46:19
margalus
Right.
00:46:20
Michael Koenig
And What we ran into is a lot of the stuff we had, our J55, they were Stratus. That Stratus J55, we had a Stratus F370. Again, very cool 3D printers, but very hard to maintain, expensive to maintain as well, because it was all... I can never get this word off. Um, but basically restricted material where you only could buy it from them so they could jack the crisis up.
00:46:51
Michael Koenig
All that other fun stuff proprietary.
00:46:51
margalus
Oh, proprietary. Yeah.
00:46:53
Michael Koenig
There we go.
00:46:54
margalus
Yeah.
00:46:54
Michael Koenig
Um, things like that, where it's like one having that it's hard to work with because now all of a sudden you're locked into one vendor. You have to use their service plans. They're this wide, like you can't necessarily do your own maintenance on it as a shop. So now you're relying on someone else to come in and do that.
00:47:13
margalus
Right.
00:47:13
Michael Koenig
Um, But then we had the other aspect of we got this, we had a huge, it was a two foot by four foot laser cutter that we had. It was some new, big, whatever, and really cool, large format could cut like quarter, like it was like a 90 watt laser could cut like quarter inch pieces of wood if everything was working right.
00:47:37
margalus
Great.
00:47:39
Michael Koenig
But we ran into an issue where it broke. And pretty much my entire, for almost an entire year, we couldn't figure out what was wrong with it.
00:47:52
Michael Koenig
So, and we had been like, because you got it through a vendor, so the company itself that sold it doesn't do the maintenance on it, you the people like that you couldn't get services to come out and like help you repair it basically.
00:47:53
margalus
Yeah.
00:48:05
Michael Koenig
Um, and you had to go through your vendor. So, and then if the vendor didn't do that, you had to then find a third party organization or someone else that could come out and fix it. Um, so, and the person that we found that does repair work on it, like our headache was we would call them and leave messages, send emails, and they would never call us back.
00:48:15
margalus
Yeah.
00:48:27
margalus
Right. Yeah. So, kind of, yeah.
00:48:30
Michael Koenig
So buying, like it's that aspect of buying that. new cool thing or buying it from an up coming in like studio person like for a new shop that's very hard to do because again it runs into that if it breaks can you fix it
00:48:49
margalus
Right, yeah, I mean, bookending that thought a little bit, it seems like, you know, and we'd run into this before too, where, you know, I bought some tools which were good and then machines which were not so good from Bosch and Dremel and the laser cutters and 3D printers that they produced were good to start and then over time failed and eventually Dremel kind of fell apart as well and getting support on some of those machines was nearly impossible. and to kind of go back to what you're talking about with the, for instance, with the Elegoo machines where they're inexpensive and they're, you know, they're basically, not really, but basically straight out of the factory from China. There's a bigger community of people modifying them and using them. And so when you do need support, you can go to the community and you don't have to rely on a company and it being around. I'm thinking of the same thing with now, and it's, I'm kind of, this is a,
00:49:41
margalus
This is a thought that just kind of popped into my head, but you know, same thing with the inexpensive laser cutters. They're called K40s. They cost $400 or $500, but there's a massive community around those. Inexpensive FDM 3D printers that are $150 or $200. And it might be that they're not like the newest, fanciest thing, but it is true that they have a community around them of people who you can get support from.
00:50:05
Michael Koenig
And it's also like, I very much love those open source machines because you're not reliant on the company itself to maintain your equipment because they sell the replacement parts that they know break or get damaged from improper use.
00:50:17
margalus
Right.
00:50:24
Michael Koenig
So they sell you the parts that you need to maintain your own equipment.
00:50:28
margalus
Yeah.
00:50:29
Michael Koenig
that are just like on Amazon that you can just buy a new 3D printer head or a new bed or whatever it is that got broken damaged or just wear and tear.
00:50:29
margalus
So, yeah. Yeah.
00:50:38
margalus
Right.
00:50:40
margalus
So I have I have one question I want to start wrapping it up because we're running up on the hour and you're in Kuwait, Michael, as I'm sure you're
Future Trends in Makerspaces and Education
00:50:50
margalus
aware of. But but I don't want to eat up more of your time and the time of the United States, I suppose, with too many more questions. But
00:50:59
Michael Koenig
Okay, I'm off duty at this point, so...
00:51:01
margalus
Okay, well, I did not know that. So, but I suppose of course you are. So, you know, as we're talking about open source technology, and, and like other trends, I'm wondering what trends you're looking at that will significantly or in some way impact the future of these centers? What's coming on the horizon that people need to be looking forward to or thinking about in order to continue to create that kind of community and space and the abilities that we're talking about for people to make different things? What's coming up that people should be focused on?
00:51:42
Michael Koenig
Yeah, do you mean by machines or technology?
00:51:45
margalus
Any of the above. Yeah. Machines, technology. You could say AI, but I'm sure everybody would say AI. But there's all sorts of things that are evolving. I think things are getting smaller, faster, more multipurpose.
00:51:59
Michael Koenig
Yeah.
00:52:01
margalus
There's a lot of stuff.
00:52:02
Michael Koenig
I think the biggest thing that I see for spaces is building it around Well, one, a community, but also having not just people that know how to use the machines, but also having some kind of curriculum to teach someone how to design things from machines. Because from both the spaces, one of the biggest things I've always seen lacking is people love 3D printers, but not as many people know how to make the models for 3D printing.
00:52:32
Michael Koenig
So you're reliant on finding things from other people. and building an all-inclusive space, not just something that has a machine or a university aspect where I only teach the classes, you have to go find the machines somewhere else, having that all-inclusive, all-in-one space, that I think is kind of the future of these spaces to provide both the backend software training to learn and make stuff, but then be able to actually physically print that out.
00:52:33
margalus
Right.
00:52:36
margalus
Right.
00:53:03
Michael Koenig
And that was one of the things that I wanted to move towards prior to coming out here was to providing those multi-tiered classes through our space, through the university, try to actually build and get professor participation to have them come utilize the space that their curriculum built on that aspect. Kind of what we did with some of those industrial design classes that you taught at DePaul that were built in the space, not just, oh, we have the space on the side as well, but that actually built those into curriculums to encourage people to learn both sides of the tool.
00:53:34
margalus
Right. Yeah. Yeah.
00:53:41
margalus
Yeah, I 100% agree that having a number of curricula that are tied into a space helps people get beyond that phase of imitation, which is great. The way I've heard it, and I'm not going to get this exactly right, is that people start out in these spaces by imitating, and then they move on to modifying, and then eventually innovating. And that's the general process or template that they follow. And having curricula tied into the spaces help people move beyond imitation and into modification and then eventually into their own innovative things. I absolutely think that's important. I do see a challenge there that you're talking about, though, of getting people beyond that form of imitation.
00:54:25
margalus
And, and it is, it is a challenge. And, and yet if that that can be solved for I think that helps with all sorts of ways in higher ed too, because that gets people outside of the. outside of that uncomfortable space that we were talking about earlier. Or rather, into the uncomfortable space. You want them to feel uncomfortable. And that's right when you move beyond the imitation and into doing your own thing. Yeah. Well, that left me with a problem that I have to think about now, Michael. I like that. I'll have a long bike ride to go on later today, and I'll be thinking about that the whole time. So thank you.
00:55:02
Michael Koenig
Yeah.
00:55:03
margalus
So Michael, I appreciate your time doing this. It's good to see you. When do you get back? What are you going to be working on? What's going on with you? And is there anything you want other folks to know about?
00:55:16
Michael Koenig
So for me, yeah, so I'll be back kind of end of the year timeframe.
00:55:22
margalus
Yeah.
00:55:22
Michael Koenig
So. And it's kind of then trying to figure out where I'm going to go from there. So I might stay and do something else with the army, try to do more stuff like that.
00:55:28
margalus
Yeah.
00:55:35
Michael Koenig
Basically get a chance to travel and just experience things that are very unique to this line of work.
Michael's Future Plans
00:55:44
margalus
Right, right.
00:55:45
margalus
Well, yeah.
00:55:47
Michael Koenig
And then it's then figuring out where I want to go from there.
00:55:50
margalus
Yeah.
00:55:51
Michael Koenig
I do plan to go back and get my master's at some point. Don't know what I want yet, but do that as kind of my next kind of education step.
00:55:56
margalus
Yeah.
00:56:02
margalus
Super cool. Well, we are recording the day before the 4th of July and, uh, or I don't know what day it is for you. I don't know if it is the 4th of July.
00:56:10
Michael Koenig
It is still the third. It is seven o'clock in the evening here.
00:56:12
margalus
Okay.
00:56:14
margalus
Okay. Well, happy almost 4th of July. Thank you for doing this, for your service as well. I think that's important to acknowledge, especially as we're coming around to the 4th of July here. And it was great to have you on and to catch up with you.
00:56:30
Michael Koenig
Yeah.
00:56:31
margalus
Cool.