Maker Pro: Essays on Making a Living as a Maker - Paperback

by John Baichtal (Author), Wendy Jehanara Tremayne (Author), Andrew 'Bunnie' Huang (Author)

Maker Pro is a book of essays by more than a dozen prominent and up-and-coming professional makers (Maker Pros). Each essay includes advice and stories on topics such as starting a kit-making business, taking a hardware project open-source, and plenty of encouragement to "quit your day job." This book is a reference for anyone who dreams of turning a hobby into a small business, and features stories from well-known professional makers; it will turn aspiration into inspiration.

Author Biography

John Baichtal is a contributor to MAKE magazine and Wired's GeekDad blog. He is the co-author of The Cult of Lego and author of Hack This: 24 Incredible Hackerspace Projects from the DIY Movement.

Wendy Jehanara Tremayne is interested in creating a decommodified life. She was a creative director in a marketing firm in New York City before moving to Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, where she built an off-the-grid homestead with her partner, Mikey Sklar. She is founder of the nonprofit, textile repurposing event Swap-O-Rama-Rama, which is celebrated in over 100 cities around the world, a conceptual artist, event producer, yogi, gardener, ultra runner, backpacker, and writer. She has written for Craft's webzine, Make:, and Sufi magazines and, with Mikey Sklar, keeps the blog Holy Scrap. She is author of The Good Life Lab: Radical Experiments in Hands-On Living (Storey), a memoir and tutorials. Publisher's Weekly named it best summer read for 2013 and the book was awarded the 2014 Nautilus Book Silver Award for Green Living/Sustainability.

Andrew "bunnie" Huang is an open source hardware designer, Xbox hacker, and creator of the Chumby. He lives in Singapore. In 2012, he received an EFF Pioneer Award for his work in hardware hacking, as well as his advocacy of the open source philosophy.

Sophi Kravitz has been creating interactive works since the completion of her first animatronic project in 2004. Sophi is a formally trained engineer whose first career was in Special FX makeup for film and theater. It was then, while creating works that were seen on small screens or large, that she realized the great fun in creating works that can easily satisfy an audience or group of participants. Although her art-engineering pieces have a technical aspect, such as electronics or code, participants interact with them as simple and beautiful playthings. Photo credit: Sophi Kravitz.

Though most known for inventing the wildly popular TV-B-Gone, a keychain that makes it fun to turn off TVs in public places, Mitch Altman is an inventor with a reputation for creating intriguing devices that amaze and delight, such as the Brain Machine, Trippy RGB Waves, and the Mignonette Game. Mitch co-founded 3ware (a Silicon Valley RAID controller company), and co-founded Noisebridge (a San Francisco hacker space). Mitch has written for MAKE Magazine and 2600 Journal, and for the last few years has traveled the world teaching people to solder and how to make cool things with microcontrollers. He is currently writing a book to teach total beginners how to make cool things with microcontrollers.

Jimmy DiResta is an experienced television personality as an on-camera designer/builder host. Jimmy combines his charisma, his innate ability to solve problems with found objects, and a wide variety of tools and techniques, with sweat and brute force. He has appeared on the Discovery Channel, HGTV, DIY, and FX Networks as a host and co-host.

Eri Gentry is cofounder and President of BioCurious, the world's first hackerspace for biotech, and Research Manager at Institute for the Future, a futures think tank. In 2013, Eri was named a White House Champion of Change for Citizen Science and made the Techonomy Top Ten list by nudging out Additive Manufacturing.

Tito Jankowski is cocreator of OpenPCR, the DIY DNA copier, and cofounder of BioCurious, the world's first hackerspace for biotech.

Alex Dyba was born in Moscow, Russia, while it was still the former U.S.S.R. and currently resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His hobbies include playing music as Talking Computron, constantly inventing new products, and drinking whiskey with friends and family. His favorite football team is the Vikings.

Michael Krumpus is a software engineer and hardware designer in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He has a master's degree in computer science from the University of Minnesota and has 25 years of experience in software design.

Susan Solarz is a sculptor who focuses on simple furniture for homes, businesses, and public spaces. She is drawn to projects that offer an opportunity to problem-solve, such as designing an outdoor bench that is dry almost immediately after a rain, or a single piece of furniture that can serve as either side table or stool. Whenever she can, she up-cycles scrap industrial materials such as steel conduit and PVC. All of her work encourages human interaction in a safe and comfortable environment.

When he's not working at his day job selling cloud software to large companies, Rob Klingberg moonlights as the Chief Enthusiast for Brickstuff, a company he founded in 2011 that manufactures lighting and automation products focused primarily on the Adult Fans of LEGO (AFOL) market worldwide. Rob grew up programming his Atari 800 in BASIC, but fell off the technology wagon in college, where he majored in English. He continues to be flattered by the number of people he meets through his work with Brickstuff who assume he is a formally trained electrical engineer--he won't tell if you don't. Rob lives with his wife and three children in Eagan, Minnesota.

Joe Meno is the founder of BrickJournal, a print and online LEGO(R) fan magazine. He has organized and run LEGO fan events, acted as an advisor on LEGO projects, and helped design LEGO sets.

David Gauntlett is a professor in the Faculty of Media, Arts and Design, University of Westminster, UK. His teaching and research is about self-initiated everyday creativity, and cultures of making and sharing. He is the author of several books, including Creative Explorations (Routledge), Making Is Connecting (Polity), and Making Media Studies (Peter Lang, will be published in 2015). He has worked with a number of the world's leading creative organizations, including the BBC, the British Library, and Tate. For almost a decade he has worked with the LEGO Group on innovation in creativity, play, and learning.