Did you have a workshop in your parents’ home ? You should be prepared to answer this question if you attend a recruitment interview in Hacedores. For the fondateur and director manager, Antonio Quirarte, the most important quality for his team member is the making spirit. That’s why is he offers position to users of his lab and stay tuned to local makers network. Curiosity, social skills, eager to learn are the complementary qualities that fit with the spirit of the place.

Since 3 years, the team has grow from 3 to 19 persons and they expect to open new positions in education. At the beginning, members were multidisciplinary but with the growth, even if it remains necessary, dedicated position has been created to gain in efficiency. Now, you can find a pole of 6 persons for pedagogic courses, 3 members dedicated in makerspaces creation, 4 in design, event and communication and 6 in administrative positions such as human ressource, accountability, etc. During events, it’s not rare that users of the lab, teachers and students who attend the pedagogic workshops are lending their support during Hacedores’s events to share their projects or testify about their experience.

Their motivation to participate in the story of the lab was the non recurrent task and the freedom to make. For the director, it is essential to let member create and experiment their personal or professional ideas. It maintains their creativity and make them share their different background (former employee in big company, artist, scout, …). Team building day, celebrations (birthday, new contract, …), boarding game evening are frequently organized to foster the team spirit.

Antonio Quirate, founder of Hacedores Makerspace, created Hacedores to help makers with their projects but he didn’t predict the growing interest of teachers and educational organization who came by to discover the place and offered him to create similar makerspace in their school. Nowadays, the community of makers are mainly composed of teachers and students (80%) and makers (20%) from different backgrounds (engineers, retired, designers, craftsman).

The community of teachers and kids are animated by pedagogic and maker courses designed and performed by Hacedores educational team within different programs. The core program of the lab is called “From Zero to maker”. It consists of a series of workshops divided in different specialities (carpentry, electronic, textile, etc) and levels. Depending on the time available and their objective, teacher selects projects and organizes sessions himself or with Hacedores members (up to every week during a year) to cover all the skills and knowledge required to achieve them. Meanwhile, in collaboration with Jacaranda Education, they developed 2 programs sponsored by US and UK Embassies : one called “Meterito” to teach around 120 kids from 20 schools about physical principles around climate change, and one called “Chrysalis” to learn to the teachers how to produced interactive content during their courses. Last but not least, the team is involved in non profit actions such as PiTop, to improve educational conditions in poor areas. Through these activities, Hacedores gathered a growing community including existing ones such as edukre@tivos which consists of active teachers in mexican maker mouvement.

Even if the director adapted its activity to fit the educational needs, the makerspace stays a reference for the community. Along with its first mexican lab status, the objective of Antonio is to create a maker trigger in the mind of most Mexican. The objective is to increase and strengthen the existing maker network. To achieve this goal, he hires a member dedicated to events organization and often communicates in TV and magazines. Curious people can then come in Hacedores to discover a makerspace and attend workshops for a symbolic fee. He also helps to reveal makers and develop their activity by connecting them with his network. It is not rare to see makers from different makerspaces in Mexico pushing the doors of Hacedores place to find advices about their activities and projects.

One goal of the lab is to be open to all makers whatever their resources. Thus the lab did the choice that memberships and revenues from workshops would be accessible at low fare. It attracted users and allowed the lab to understand where were the needs.

As more teachers and school directors were coming into the lab, Antonio, founder of Hacedores, decided to orient its strategy to education. Today 70% of the recurrent revenue come from the services provided to this sector. The main part of it is the creation of Makerspaces for private school. As an extension, the lab provide training for teachers to know how to teach in the created makerspaces. It even created a book for that purposes. Also, the lab do consultancy when needed and helps the schools to find fabmanagers.

In addition, Hacedores helps schools by giving courses to student on specific makers topics like Arduino, 3D printing, etc. It also developed on demand school programs like the Meteorito project financed by the US embassy. This part of the business represents 20% of the revenue.

Finally, 10% of the revenue is generated from the online store where one can buy an electronic kit, a cardboard and their educational book.

Today, the lab is sustainable as it earns as much as its recurring cost: 15000$/month. 90% of the cost are the human resources (Team of 19 people). The rest is the rent (1250$) and the maintenance, electricity and materials.

The next step is to be profitable. For that Antonio is thinking about an offer that allows the lab to earn recurring revenue like a service & support 3 years warranty.