And I'd like to thank you and everyone else who's been working with legal to get us there.

I'm going to go explore my options on getting a matched donation, through Springboard, from my employer before the year is out. 7% be damned it'll still double the spending power of my dollars

Give to the max day is NOV 16 2011.

http://givemn.razoo.com/story/Twin-Cities-Maker

I think its great that there are more spaces opening up so close. I think the concept needs to expand as much as the area can hold. Personally I think we've only just scratched the surface. On that note, what is the current state of the lease and have we been looking at other possible candidate solutions for spaces? I know one of the most common comment is, we just don't have the space for that, etc etc. Would be interesting to look at a building that had things like some real office space to float things like coworking space and perhaps more class room space or the like.

I meant to respond to this, read it and spaced it, sorry.

I'm a firm believer that there are enough people in the twin cities metro to support multiple maker spaces. I think we have the potential to become one of the most "makery" cities in the country. We've got an awesome confluence of education, geek-centric employers, and 10 month winters that encourage projects.

I am under the impression that our lease is up again this summer, either in June or July.

I think the time to start planning for the future is now.

I'm going to be putting "discuss possibility of moving to a new space" on the agenda for our next board meeting, which should be taking place on Tuesday, December 13th (if my calendaring skills are correct).

In addition, The Mill now has its site up: http://www.mnmill.org/

There's some handy info there about gear and mission.

Riley

I know what you are thinking, why is he responding to a two year old post? I know I sure would be. Anyway, I just received my community newspaper with an article summarizing The Mill. I will bring this in on Wednesday for anyone who is interested.

I am new to the whole concept of this type of space so I find it particularly interesting and will have to take the opportunity to visit their open house on April 21.

In the first post on this topic it was mentioned: "Brian has said he'd like to figure out the best way to come up with some kind of reciprocity arrangement, where members of TCMaker could go to the Mill, and vice versa."

Did anything happen with that?

BTW, I see they now have a plasma cutter in addition to the laser cutter.

I don't think a reciprocity type thingy has been hammered out yet.

I do know that there's an open house at the mill, actually 2 of them, one on this Saturday, 21 April from 10 am to 2 pm, ane on on Wednesday, 25 April, from 5 pm to 8 pm.

This would probably be an excellent time to get this stuff answered right from the source.

If I hear anything in the meantime, I'll post here.

Riley

I stopped by this morning, they had the Laser Etching going strong, the CNC Cutting large number of The Mill logo cut outs.

Nice high end equipment, a ton of Rep Rap machines being demonstrated, and Professional Sewing Gear.

Clean space, decent location, looks like it will be a great space.

It also looks like to me that they miss out on the building of the CNC machines, and such, but they have nice equipment.