One of the conditions to create an NGO is to build a team of 7 persons, forming the “board of directors”. Interested by the idea of makerspace pitched by Matthew Hotsko, his sister and 5 people he met in school took part to his adventure. More than a friendship collaboration, they all put their complementary skills to make it successful : a lawyer, artists (clay, carpentry, sculptor) looking for space, a marketing specialist and an architect. During the first 4 years without a space, Matthew was always fully dedicated and he was joined during full time period by funders depending on their availabilities, interests and competencies.

During these years, they made their reputation and network. As a consequence, they were joined from the beginning by experts in jewelry and metal. The team progressively increased with new experts or teachers looking for a space to develop their activities. They teach courses to users and guides them in their project. Since the space opening, Matthew continued his volunteer full time position and the associates were either using the lab to develop their activities for their profit and to broader the lab offer or they punctually support Matthew depending on his needs. Students from Panama universities, such as Igor Gonzales or Juan Hayot, joined Matthew as volunteers for the communication and coordination activities. They were looking for such place to work on personal project and Ecostudio enabled them to be trained and to develop their personal projects while working for the lab. For the first time in 2018, they hired a digital fabrication expert for 6 months, Montse Ciges, 50% as a FabAcademic teacher, 50% as a project coordinator and maker.

If you push the fablab doors, you can come across team members (the fab manager, students volunteers and experts) but also one to three users developing their project. These are regular days. But if you choose a specific day in their calendar event, you can find 15 students enjoying a summer camp, 6 up to 10 users attending a course, a group of visitors doing a tour to discover the potential of the space… And soon be prepared to see their calendar becoming fully booked. In fact, in order to animate their growing community, the team tested different formats of events, from an open door day during the weekend to a special day dedicated to an expertise area and their success was beyond their expectations.

But it was just the beginning. Since 2 years, the team built the foundations of the fablab: a space, a machines park, a great team of experts, a network. Now they are ready to welcome a larger public to guide them into the making world. Because of the place location, 20 minutes from the city with huge traffic jam in the main road, they mainly focus on reaching people working and living in the campus of “City of knowledge” where they rent the space. This former US military base of Clayton gather more than 200 buildings rent to NGO, companies, university working in social innovation to transform society. For them, Ecostudio are designing new range of weekly courses. Different format will be tested. If you are employees, you will enjoy a « get blastered » course. It’s an afterwork workshop design to relax while learning ceramic, followed by a drink shared with the community. If you are a parent, teacher or student, come to enjoy an after school course. You can come to develop new skills, produce your academic project, transform your way of teaching or spending quality time with your children. The first step is to give it a try! The ministry of education has already identify the potential of makerspace. Once they get enough results, the next step will be to close a partnership with them to finance educational programs for giving access to digital fabrication to more students.

From the beginning, the founder made a strong choice by creating a NGO. The example of Techshop made him think that a makerspace cannot only rely on profitable activities, it should be at the service of the population. However, after few years looking for grants to buy machines, he adapted his vision and started developing a more hybrid model.

His great idea was to create partnerships with experts (craftsmen in jewelry, foundry, teachers in clay, mechanical engineers of national railroad, …) who had specific machines but were looking for a place to have space and resources to develop their activity. This approach brought 70% of the park machines but also human resources to give dedicated workshops. Thanks to the NGO status, retired manual workers of Panama Canal and few companies gave 15% of the machines park as donation. The rest was bought progressively by Matthew.

After 2 years, the Fablab isn’t sustainable yet. Revenues are mainly generated by the services provided to clients. 2 schools started to work with them on pedagogic program. They pay for workshops and it brings students with 20 annual memberships who pay to use the machines : as regular users, they pay 15$ to use the machine as annual members otherwise it would have cost them 20$ per day. Annual memberships also provide advantages to users (special events, support provided by experts, …). The experts in residence also pay a rent for the space they used. Ecostudio also benefit from the workshops organized with this expert by taking a percentage of the incomes (which depends on the agreement made with the teacher).

The increasing revenues covers the running costs (energy, rent, maintenance, website, …) but doesn’t include the salary of the team members who work as volunteers. The remaining income is invested to expand the space and to buy new machines required by users. An exception has been made with a FabAcademy teacher which has been paid during 6 months to train 2 team members and to develop the activity.

The objective of this 3rd year is to benefit from the machines park, the expertise of the community and the network to develop weekly workshops as a regular income. To make it possible, investment in the space will stop and remaining revenues will be invest in people to develop an education team, in marketing to reach more people and in interior installation to make it more functional. The recognition that will be earned through this new step should benefit to the public funding campaign for the biolab creation.