By: Nick Ashdown/The Media Line
[Istanbul] — The “Maker Movement”, described as a vibrant new business culture characterized by collaboration, innovation and creation, is emerging in Turkey.
Coined by American Dale Dougherty and heavily influenced by Do It Yourself (DIY) and Do It Together (DIT) culture, the movement emerged in the United States about a decade ago, characterized by an emphasis on learning and using practical skills to build unique — often high-tech — products, in an informal, collaborative, peer-led environment.
One year ago, after being inspired by the Maker Movement and hearing Dougherty speak, entrepreneur Ongun Tan founded Makers Türkiye.
“Everyone collaborates, everyone does something together. It’s all open-source. It is like a huge research and development team working together,” Tan explains. “The process is what matters, not the product.”
In the year since its founding, the Makers Türkiye website has grown to fifty-thousand unique visitors monthly, its Facebook page to more than 30 thousand likes, and various offshoots of the movement have taken hold throughout Turkey.
“My only aim is connecting people, connecting the community,” Tan says.
He is trying to spread the movement outside of Istanbul, regularly giving talks and holding “makers fairs” where people can display different projects they’re working on. He teaches people how to learn from open-source information such as YouTube and free online courses; how to raise money from online funding platforms such as Kickstarter or Indiegogo; and how to use tools such as 3D-printers.
Tan says the Maker Movement represents nothing less than a “cultural change,” especially for Turkey’s often uncreative business and educational sectors.
“It’s a shift from money to talent. From closed doors to open doors. From memorization education to hands-on education. From consume to produce,” he says.
This new way of operating needs workspaces where individuals can come together to collaborate. Enter co-working spaces and makers’ labs – permanent or temporary places that can be rented by individuals, often freelancers or small companies, to work and take classes in — or, in Tan’s words, “a collaborative, co-working, co-creation environment.”
One such space is called Atölye Istanbul, opened in 2013 in an artsy, central district of the city. Atölye, meaning workshop or studio, caters to freelancers from creative fields that compliment each other, such as photography, video, architecture and various forms of design.
“The idea behind this place is to generate a community where people from different fields can come together under one roof and hopefully […] cooperate with each other and work on new projects,” coordinator Ezgi Altan told The Media Line.
According to Altan, the main focus of the project is to foster a new culture of working together. “This isn’t just a place they pay for, do their work and leave. What we want is to generate a cultural community based on collaboration.”
Also part of the Maker Movement is design firm Beş Dakika (Five Minutes), run by husband-and-wife team Hakan Pakten and Zeynep Karagöz. Their studio is strewn with dozens of small plastic models, many of which were created by using a piece of technology that lies at the heart of the movement – a 3D printer.
Karagöz, wearing a smartwatch and 3D-printed jewelry, while surrounded by mini 3D printouts of herself, explained how technology is changing the way design and production are done. The Internet helped to democratize information, especially with free, easily-accessible open source data. 3D printers, which have recently gone down in price drastically to as low as a few hundred dollars, take it a step further.
“With 3D printing, the physical world is also changing,” Karagöz explains. “Now everybody can make ‘stuff.’”
While the Internet democratized information, 3D printing has democratized production. Anyone can now find open source designs online and have them printed in minutes for hundreds of dollars, or less, instead of thousands. Anything from jewelry with pieces already interlocked to industrial prototypes can be printed. “In China they even printed a house,” Karagöz adds.
Pakten demonstrates by printing a short plastic chain using a small table-top 3D printer. It takes just a few minutes, cools and dries almost instantly, and the chain links are already connected.
Meanwhile, Karagöz gives a famous example of “maker culture” in action.
“It all started with this South African carpenter who lost his fingers. He decided to make a new finger for himself. He said, why not print it in a 3D printer?”
The man, Richard Van As, collaborated with a puppeteer named Ivan Owen across the globe in Bellingham, Washington, to design an artificial finger for Van As. Later, the team ended up designing a 3D-printable prosthetic hand for a 5-year-old boy and shared the design online for free, calling it Robohand.
When Karagöz and Pakten discovered Robohand online, they printed their own and gave it to a friend named Mehmet who had lost four fingers.
“He called me and said, ‘I’m at Buyuk Ada [an island near Istanbul], I’m with my brother, and I’m riding my bike,’” says Pakten, smiling.
“Instead of buying a $10,000 prosthetic, this cost $150,” Karagöz says.
The group is looking for funding to mass-produce the prosthetic as a social responsibility project. Sharing is at the heart of the Maker movement, Karagöz explains.
“The idea of sharing is connected to everything. If you share a space, it is a co-working space, if you share an idea, it becomes open source, if you share material, it is a workshop.”
The ‘maker’ comes into play when someone produces a product from all this sharing and collaboration.
Karagöz explained what Beş Dakika does very simply, illustrating the maker movement’s desire to tap into a fundamental human quality.
“We’re curious and we make stuff.”