​Librarians and Library makerspace leaders, join Johnnie Thomas from Microsoft’s Excel Development team for a 1 hour workshop. Explore different Excel features and learn helpful tips and tricks for getting work done faster! Topics will include working with data tables, summarizing for reports, and using charts effectively.

Register at: https://lu.ma/Excel4Libraries

A monthly virtual social hour for BIPOC Makers. This is a social event! Including some fun ice breakers, occasional special guests, and lots of show n' tell or just chillin' with other BIPOC makers. This event happens every last Friday of the month.

Please note: While Nation of Makers is an organization for makers of all backgrounds, this event is limited to makers who actively identify as a BIPOC maker.

Registration required. Register at: https://lu.ma/BMCSocialHour

A monthly virtual happy hour for BIPOC Makers. This is a social event! Including some fun ice breakers, occasional special guests, and lots of show n' tell or just chillin' with other BIPOC makers. This event happens every last Friday of the month. BIPOC Makers, register at: https://lu.ma/BMCHappyHour

Please note: While Nation of Makers is an organization for makers of all backgrounds, this event is limited to makers who actively identify as a BIPOC maker.

​Science Near Me is a is a NSF-funded free resource and directory to help quickly find opportunities to engage in STEM events, projects, programs, and experiences, both in person and online, including makerspaces and maker events. Nation of Makers is proud to partner with Science Near Me to curate a directory of maker experiences within this incredible STEM resource. Join Darlene Cavalier from Science Near Me on Wednesday July 27th at 2 pm ET, as she explains what Science Near Me is and how YOU can get visibility for YOUR makerspace and maker events through Nation of Makers' partnership with Science Near Me.

Register for the event at: https://lu.ma/MakersNearMe

Join us for the first NOM Libraries Discussion Session of 2022 from 4-5 pm ET on Wednesday, February 23! This session will include small breakout “speed networking” discussions where you can meet other library makerspace organizers.

The BIPOC Makers Collective* is excited to host our first Social on Friday, February 4th at 3:00 pm ET. Are you an artist, maker, technologist, innovator, or other creative who is Black, Indigenous, or a Person of Color? Are you seeking to meet other like-minded BIPOC? Join us to network, socialize, and envision the future work and goals of our BIPOC Makers Collective. Registration is required: https://lu.ma/BMCSocial

BIPOC makers, register today and tell your friends!

*Formed in 2020, the BIPOC Makers Collective is a group of BIPOC technologists, creatives, and thought-leaders focused on the use of culture, making, and technology for improving the quality of life of all people of color. Our purpose is to establish a vibrant, supportive, and collaborative community of BIPOC makers, leveraging our collective expertise to provide maker and digital fabrication-centered strategies and programs in service to social and economic justice for BIPOC communities.

Please note: While Nation of Makers is an organization for makers of all backgrounds, this event is limited to makers who actively identify as a BIPOC maker. We will have other events for allies and friends of BIPOC makers in the future.

Maker leaders, our Nation of Makers’ Maker Funding and Sustainability Roundtable is back for 2022 every other Wednesday night at 7:00 pm ET. Register for the February 2nd session at: https://lu.ma/MakersSustainFeb2

This interactive meeting uses the Makers’ EDGE Method to nurture makers and makerspaces seeking funding to be sustainable and resilient. It is open to all but particularly intended to help makers and makerspaces put ideas for sustainability and resilience into action.

Time: 60-90 minutes

Intended Participants:

Makers and Makerspace Leaders; Educators and Workforce Skills Specialists; Community, Governance and Business Representatives; Financial Advisors/Development Agents/Philanthropists. Young makers and international attendees are welcome.

Maker leaders, our Nation of Makers’ Maker Funding and Sustainability Roundtable is back for 2022 every other Wednesday night at 7:00 pm ET. Register for the January 19th session at: https://lu.ma/MakersSustainJan19

This interactive meeting uses the Makers’ EDGE Method to nurture makers and makerspaces seeking funding to be sustainable and resilient. It is open to all but particularly intended to help makers and makerspaces put ideas for sustainability and resilience into action.

In the January 19th session, we will have special guests from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory who will provide an overview of the American-Made Challenges’ new Inclusive Energy Innovation Prize. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) and the Office of Economic Impact and Diversity (ED) recognize that improvements are needed to make the clean energy innovation ecosystem more inclusive and accessible to disadvantaged communities and individuals from groups historically underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).

Now, as the nation invests in more clean energy technology, DOE has a responsibility to prioritize serving these too-often-overlooked communities. The Inclusive Energy Innovation Prize fits into President Biden’s Justice40 Initiative, which aims to deliver 40% of climate investment benefits to disadvantaged communities and inform equitable research, development, and deployment within DOE.

Join us to learn more about this exciting opportunity for a diversity of makers to innovate to make clean energy more inclusive!

Time: 60-90 minutes

Intended Participants:

Makers and Makerspace Leaders; Educators and Workforce Skills Specialists; Community, Governance and Business Representatives; Financial Advisors/Development Agents/Philanthropists. Young makers and international attendees are welcome.

Help us grow the Nation of Makers Community with Mentza

We’ve heard your feedback. You would love more opportunities to dynamically interact with other community members, host engaging working group meetings, share best practices, knowledge, and to learn from one another - everything from what access controller is the best, what maker project is best for a 3rd grader, to what CNC you should definitely avoid. While we actively encourage our amazing (and super knowledgeable) community to engage on our Slack and Facebook group communities, we realize these platforms aren’t for everyone. That’s why we’re excited to have partnered with Mentza, a new “real-time audio platform that enables learning-oriented people to seek and share experiences, knowledge, and wisdom with others like them.” Unlike other real-time audio platforms, Mentza will allow us to curate a special Nation of Makers’ community and empower maker leaders to create their own Circles (think affinity groups) within our NoM community, and also to record our content for future sharing. Even better, because they’re makers as well, they’re excited to work with us to build the functionality we need for our NoM community. Want to learn more and get involved with helping us to build the NoM Mentza community? We’re hosting an information session on September 8th at 9 pm ET. Sign up for the session and join us to learn more!

Curious about this year's NOMCON experience? Wondering what in the world "Gather.Town" is and how you get there? Join us for a Happy Hour Sneak Peek into the NOMCON 2021 venue on Wednesday, April 14, 2021 at 8p EST/5p PST. Register at: https://tinyurl.com/NOMCON21HH to get the deets about the event!

BURY2020 is a project taken on by Nation of Makers’ Champion, Joel Leonard, that invites us all to create a time capsule and literally and figuratively, BURY the unprecedented year that is 2020.

BURY2020 was created to provide guidance for individuals or organizations that would like to make a time capsule to help better prepare the future with lessons learned during 2020.

For more information, check out the BURY2020 FAQ at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qbs_xbsWmHJ9VSVpSQ78L4pBWObsv4Zvcw_eipZUlek/edit?usp=sharing

Register at: https://lu.ma/auu01j1w

The NOM Library Makerspace AMA is a drop-in conversation time where you can ask any questions you may have about makerspaces or maker programming in libraries. For the November 12th session, we'll discuss the continuing challenges that COVID-19 presents for library makerspaces, and how we're overcoming them. Join us as we chat, share ideas, and support other library makerspace organizers!

The role of the Federal government is to create and enact policies that support its residents. In the transition of power from one administration to the next, there is an opportunity to consider how current policies might be improved, or new policies introduced. The impactful work of our Nation of Makers on communities across the U.S. includes the unprecedented citizen-maker response to COVID-19, the strengthening of maker education in schools and as a part of workforce development, the development of the capacity for localized manufacturing to build resilient communities, economic development, the strengthening of local entrepreneurial ecosystems, and more. There is now a unique opportunity to showcase this incredible impact of our Nation of Makers, while advocating for Federal policies that support maker efforts.

Join us on Tuesday, November 10th for our Maker Town Hall to:

• Discuss current maker policy proposals and guidance

• Learn about the transition process and the opportunities for maker advocacy and policy work

• Find out how YOU can get involved, including getting involved in the *new* Nation of Makers Policy Working Group/Community of Practice

• Share YOUR local policy success stories

• Dialogue and discuss about how we can advocate for change that best supports our Nation of Makers and your organizational or individual needs

We hope you can join us for what will certainly be an exciting Maker Town Hall!

Please Note: This is not a political event. Nation of Makers remains a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that serves and supports all maker organizations, independent of political affiliation.

Join Make: and Nation of Makers in conversation with panelists Victor Hwang and Gina Lujan as we take a look at a bottom-up approach to economic recovery. Register to be part of the conversation on Zoom or enjoy the show on Facebook.

Kits enable making. They are especially good for beginners and young makers. They are also a convenience for parents who want to encourage children to start making but don’t have time to track down tools and supplies. The number of kits and the different types of kits by and for makers have grown from only a few to maybe thousands. There are kits for robotics, coding, electronics, wearables, During COVID-19, kits can be an important supplement to the education provided by schools. In this week’s Plan C: LIVE, we’ll be talking about the educational value and uses of kits, and our panelists are developers of kits.

Open Source Medical Supplies Local Response and representatives from Ace Monster Toys (Oakland, CA), GetUsPPE, and NWLA Makerspace (Shreveport, LA) host a discussion about strategies for discovering and serving PPE needs of underserved communities during the COVID-19 crisis and beyond.

Nation of Makers is partnering with Fab Foundation, Tikkun Olam Makers, Open Source Medical Supplies, Citizen Schools, Maker Ed, and Make: Community, to begin the long overdue critical internal reflection and work that we need to engage in to address the lack of support and representation of makers of color within the mainstream maker community.

We invite everyone in our communities (and those who have specifically chosen not to be, because of past failures on our part) to join us in this process of reinvention of the maker movement, starting with our facilitated Conversation about Race and Inclusion in the Maker Movement: Dialogue and Actions for Progress at 7pm ET/4pm PT on Thursday, July 2, 2020. We intend for this dialogue to be the starting point for open communication within our community about where we are at right now on issues of race and inclusion, and what actions we need to engage in to create an intentional inclusive maker community grounded in social justice and equity.

We hope that you will join us. We welcome all perspectives; please consider extending this invitation to another friend or colleague that could contribute to this conversation and share their perspective.