LUCY
ROGERS
Lucy Rogers
INTERVIEW
64
probably need an advertising person
and a marketing person and a logistics
person before you even started. Now you
can order stuff online, you can sell your
stuff on Amazon — most of the difficulty
has gone. You can remove a lot of the
dull, dangerous, and dirty bits of your
production. You can either outsource
it to a factory that has that kind of
equipment, or you just don’t have to do it
any more.
So nowadays you don’t have
to do every part of the process.
But you can still be in control
of every part of the process.
I think cottage industries
are coming back with more
people not having a job for
life, and more wanting to be
creative and actually realising
that they have a route to
do that.
So the Guild of Makers is for
professional makers and those who
want to be professional makers. That’s
how Makers’ Hour started [follow the
hashtag #MakersHour on Twitter every
Wednesday 8–9pm UK time]. Before I
go and set up the Guild of Makers as a
limited company, let’s try Makers’ Hour,
because setting up @GuildofMakers
was free. And it’s taken off. We’ve got a
queue of people wanting to host it, we’ve
got probably 30 or 40 regulars joining
in, there are probably 200 people who’ve
joined in at various times.HS You’re planning the launch at the
beginning of March, so anyone reading
this before then should check back on the
website after 1 March. How are things
going behind the scenes?LR: You’ll be able to join as a member,
which will be relatively inexpensive. It
doesn’t matter who you are, what you’re
doing, anyone can join. You will getaccess to a load of other makers, you’ll get
discounts at our conferences, workshops,
you’ll get discounts from (these need to
be confirmed) RS Components, Adafruit,
Autodesk training...
For the purposes of the Guild, a
maker is a practical person who takes
pride in creating physical items using
their imagination and skills. I know a
photographer could be a maker – artists
are makers – but the main focus of this
guild is for those who make practical
items, physical items. Computer
programmers, computer gamers, won’t
fall into that definition. If they want tojoin, they’re welcome to join, its just that
I’m not focusing on their specific need.
Its all practical stuff.
So that’s normal membership; you can
also become accredited, where you’ll be
peer-reviewed, so not only do you make
a lovely widget – that is, if you’re a wood
turner, not only are you an excellent
wood turner – but you can also make it to
time, to budget, make it so that you can
make a living out of it, so you’re not just
making pompoms and selling them on
Etsy for the cost of the wool.
The accreditation will be like a kite
mark, a way of saying “yes, we have
seen that this person can make a good
product”. If it’s an electronics thing it’s
not just a breadboard; they can make it
on a serviceable PCB, install it in your
factory and it actually works, and it will
work three months, six months later.
Then if a big company
approached and said, “We need
someone who can do this,”
instead of us saying, “Get Jane
Smith, she’s really good at that,”
the Guild of Makers can act as
a brokerage. Jane Smith can
invoice Guild of Makers and the
Guild of Makers invoices the
large company, so you take out
the thing that happens when
small people deal with big companies
where it takes six months to get set up
on their accounts system. That’s going
to be in the future. It’s not what I’m
launching with.
By 1 March I’ll have memberships open
and there’ll be a founder member perk
if you join before 1 April. So that’s for
the individual maker. Companies can
get involved too. If you’re a company
member you don’t get the discounts that
individual members get, but you do get
access to the makers, the directory of
makers, first dibs on sponsoring things at
the events.Left
The clock is made
from brass, by
Lucy’s grandfather –
a self-taught maker”
Nowadays you don’t
have to do every part of the
process. But you can still
be in control of every part
of the process”