In September Tony Buser went to the World Maker Faire in New York to show off a 3-D printer he’d built. While he was there he heard about maker spaces places where people get together and create things along the East Coast.
“It’s also a place for people to collaborate, to share ideas, share what they’re working on,” he says. “A maker space is a place where you can be creative and make anything.”
Buser thought it would be great to have a place like that in the Reading area, where he lives. He envisions a workshop with tools like laser cutters, CNC machines and woodworking supplies, where creative people could have a place to work on projects even if they don’t have the space or money for that equipment themselves. Sometimes these workshops are called hacker spaces, and some already exist in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
Buser, who makes robot parts with his 3-D printer and sells them online, has gathered about 20 others interested in starting a maker space in the Reading area. For now the founders of Berks CoLab short for the Berks County Collaborative Laboratory have storage and meeting space at the Reading law office where Buser has a day job as a programmer. Their next steps are to secure status as a nonprofit and find a location for the maker space. Buser expects Berks CoLab to have its own home by midsummer.
“Reading has a lot of abandoned warehouses, and a space like that would be perfect for us,” he says.
Source: Tony Buser, Berks CoLab
Writer: Rebecca VanderMeulen