It will be soon 2 months since the soft launch of our cafe and co-working space. And our team has been pretty busy lately, so much that we’ve been a bit slow on updating the latest months’ news here. So much has happen than it’s hard to list them all here, so let’s go straight to the highlights.
On the very bright side, we are really excited to have started again the monthly makers meetup on biomedicine and agriculture. The spirit at these events is great, people actually network, getting excited about projects. It’s still a challenge to run the “pay what feels right” model, but this is what “feels right” to us. Building the community, it should be open to all, and everyone can contribute in different ways and at different levels. Makers is about consuming and producing differently. Events are no different.
We are also very excited that we now have a laser cutter! This is thanks to Nam Son Ltd, who is lending us the machine. We met them a few months ago, and really enjoyed talking with them, makers to makers. It’s not the most modern machine, but it’s functional and our team of fabmasters are taking real good care of it! It’s a really important milestone for us as a fablab, it opens a bunch of new possibilities.
Our recent introduction to 3D printing workshops were also pretty popular and that’s very encouraging for us to run them more regularly. So stay tuned, all our events workshops are listed here. Our team has grown with new very dedicated members, and we are still looking to fill some positions, especially for a house master to take care of security and building maintenance. We look for a maker who loves to take care of a building.
You’ll also notice a lot more activities and blog posts in Vietnamese: this is something we actually want to make sure we are “accessible” to Vietnamese makers. Especially for brainstorming sessions like the Makers hold-up that was run with Makesense Vietnam and Change.vn, or activities specifically for children, like the one we run for the Mid-autumn festival. But we don’t forget our non Vietnamese speaking friends, and we’ll try to keep a good ratio of English/Vietnamese content and activities.
On the less bright side, we’ve been caught up with the reality of running a business. But well, nothing new in the world of startup. The renovation took longer than expected, there are actually still a few things the contractor should take care of, but it’s unlikely to happen now… Growing the team takes time for people to learn to work together, cash can quickly become an issue.
That’s all for the news! Note that our co-working space still has 5-6 seats to be taken, either by freelancers either by a start-up team. Contact us if you’re interested. We are still working on our menu as we want to promote affordable and healthy food (no MSG, locally produced, etc.). Don’t hesitate to come, try and feedback, contribute your own recipes. That’s also the makers way.
In the coming months, we will work on consolidating our operations and focusing on our objectives which we’ll share soon in another post!
