Technocopia Celebrated It’s 10 Year Spookaversary!
By: Ariel Amasifuén
This year on October 21, we celebrated out 10 year annivesary! It was a lot of fun, and we got to connect with our partners and local community for a full day of fun before Halloween🎃When we sent out the bat signal for support from our membership to pull this together, our members decided to create a party themed after a carnival, complete with carnival games, a robot fortune teller, escape puzzles and demos throughout the space to show our community what they could make at Technocopia!
Our metal shop steward Carlos Torres did an amazing job being the primary person in charge of building out our carnival games, which included a fun house mirror, a maze game, a giant Connect 4 game, and a photo op area for folks to take pictures in front of. Our Operations Director Eric, our stewards Riley and Ariel, and our interns from Dynamy worked to paint all of the carnival games, design and develop laser cut filligree, and design and develop a damn near impossible escape puzzle challenge that in the time of our event, was only solved twice!
Check out our highlight reel to see some of the fun we had- it was so lovely to see adults being creative and supporting youth who came into the space to play, make art, and watch demos running! We had a community black light room where people can cut out art pieces and paint on the walls, especially to talk about what things they like to make and what they want to learn someday.
Before the 10 Year Anniversary party, we held a Donor Appreciation Brunch hosted by Board President Lauren Monroe and Operations Director Eric Sutman. We were very grateful to our community for coming together to have this brunch, as it was a lovely opportunity to hear from our leaders, and people who experienced Technocopia in it’s infancy to talk about what the space was like then versus now. Kevin Harrington, Technocopia Co-Founder and board member, talked about the inception of Technocopia, how we chose our name, and what our mission back then looks like compared to now. Ben Cline, member at the space since almost the very beginning, talked about the impact of the space on his craft, livelihood, and how the community impacts and supports him. And [INSERT NAME] talked about her time in the youth program that Technocopia started with, and the experiences that helped her forward.
Finally, Eric and Lauren talked with the group about how the space has changed in recent years after the pandemic, and the impact of our community on the different projects we’ve taken up, and the work done to expand our reach past just our space out to our local community. After mingling and eating food, the group headed downstairs to see the party set up, and starting to get busy!
We were very grateful for our turnout, despite limited resources for marketing ourselves, and the day turning out rainy. We had over 150 guests come through the space, including members who came to support us throughout the day to guide guests, give instructions, and provide support to staff. Guests included partners and supporters in our community, including representatives from United Way, [INSERT OTHER NOTABLE PEOPLE]
At the event itself, everyone had a lovely time cycling throughout the space, chatting, asking questions about the makerspace, and making things in the shops that had demos set up. Our escape puzzle design was chosen as one that was fairly difficult, much to the chagrin of many guests at the space. One of our members, Ethan, ended up staying past the run time of the event and became the first person to solve the puzzle after working on it for 3 hours!
Thank you to all of our guests from the day, our members who supported us in prepping, designing, setting up, and volunteering all day, Carlos, Eric, and Riley putting in so many hours to making the bulk of the games, and our partners and donors for helping us with food, logistics, and supporting the space from the beginning that allowed us to make today happen! Happy Birthday to Technocopia, here’s to many more years!!
