In October, the Lansing area hosted Startup Weekend: Maker Edition, where teams from across the region came and competed, turning an idea into a business over three days. In the run up to that weekend, 12 local organizations celebrated their role in enabling people to bring their visions to life by being a part of the Maker Week Lansing. Food and fashion incubators, makerspaces, and everything in between hosted activities and keynotes related to making.
Lansing is a great place to be a Maker. Recently, there has been a progression of support services and opportunities for entrepreneurship at the local level (through institutions such as the Lansing Economic Area Partnership and on-campus resources such as the Hive) while at the same time technology has been progressing to lower the price point on inventing and carrying out business plans.
The MSU Library got involved by not only bringing in a guest speaker (Steve Teeri, maker-educator from Ann Arbor and formerly Detroit), but also by showing off their own Maker tools. At the Main Library, we are now offering 3D Printing, in addition to our established services of the Espresso Book Machine, where promising printers can create a fully bound book from their work or other available texts in around ten minutes!
We at the library continue to look forward to finding new ways to support the initiative of students and community members through all sorts of means, be they books or laser cutters. And if you’re upset you missed this Maker Week, don’t worry—we’re already planning another one for next year, and all of these great institutions are here year round. You can also watch videos from Lansing Maker Week, including Steve Teeri's keynote presentation, on the Lansing Maker Week website.
Questions? Contact Terence O’Neill
Written by Terence O’Neill
