I made the team! - The Make: Beta Team

I woke up this morning to a great surprise.  I received a letter from Make: magazine informing me that I’d been selected as one of the members of their new beta team. 

I’m honored and excited to be a member of this team of about 100 members worldwide that will have the privilege of building projects for the magazine before the articles are published as a way of beta testing the build instructions. 

Make: decided to start this team back in March and I thought it sounded very much in-line with what I do in my spare time anyway so I filled out the application.  Apparently, so did about 1100 other folks.  So, I feel very lucky to have been chosen.

What does this mean?  Well, I don’t fully know yet.  What I do know is that I’ll randomly be delivered a project and all it’s parts & pieces and asked to build it and discover if the instructions need to be improved and report back.  We get to keep all the projects and part of our job is to show them off to friends & family and get input back.

We’re allowed to blog about our experiences building the projects. So, be looking to hear all about it here and I’ll be looking for feedback from you.  It’s not clear to me yet whether we can blog while we’re testing or after the magazine has been published.  So, check back every day just in case ;)

Make: can be considered the handbook of the Maker Movement.  If you’re not familiar with this movement, there’s a good overview of it here.  I’ve been a Maker all of my life.  In the past we’ve been called tinkerers, hackers, warranty voiders, nerds, geeks….  I like this new name and the positive movement that it has created. 

Get up and go make something!