Hi all! @ginatrapani and I have been working on Makerbase for a while, and we're excited to see what you think! The original idea came from looking at how useful IMDB is for the film and TV industries, and thinking, "how come I can know the cinematographer on a movie so easily, but can't find out who built that cool UI element on this app?"
From there, we built around a few simple assumptions:
* Lots of people are Makers, whether that's an app you build as your day job, or a website you put up as a little side project.
* The Projects we list aren't really about who our employer is, so much as what product we're trying to put into people's hands -- this is the point that folks here on Product Hunt will understand better than anybody.
* Listing all the stuff we've made, even the projects that maybe didn't succeed as much as we'd hoped, or perhaps didn't even launch, is meaningful on its own so others can learn.
* One great way to help people who haven't yet had access to the opportunities of our industry is to list the projects and connections that have made our success possible, so they can tap into that network themselves.
It's still super early, but we're really excited about the potential. Bonus tip for PH folks: If you are already in, just add a friend who worked on one of your projects (or add their project to Makerbase and then add them to it) and they'll get access to Makerbase as well. It's just temporary while we're getting started, but we thought it made sense to give first access to makers on Makerbase! :)
Stoked about this. I was going to sign up anyway and then realized it was made by @anildash and @ginatrapani which made me hit the sign up button extra hard.
How much time and energy is going into this versus thinkup.com? Is this a fun side project or a piiiiiivot?
@anildash@buster So far Makerbase has been a 20% project, and we refer to it as a side project. We started building it a few months ago when we were slogging through some tedious backend/platform projects for ThinkUp, so it served as a fun little distraction from that stuff when we needed a break. (Fridays were Makerbase days.) But we're open to that ratio changing, depending on what the response is like.
It's really cool to work on Makerbase in tandem with ThinkUp because the 2 products are so different (paid subscriptions vs free, sandboxed user installations vs centralized, user-generated content vs internally-generated insights) yet complementary (lots of code and lessons from ThinkUp went into Makerbase).
So the answer is: Makerbase is a side project for now, and we'll see where it takes us.
@anildash@ginatrapani super excited for this. A friend and I were playing with this idea a few months ago but decided not to pursue it. We were thinking about the project from the lens of resumes and LinkedIn being a poor or incomplete representations of your work history. Especially for engineers, designers, and creative people in general who have small sketches, hacks, or short-term projects mixed in with their full time jobs . It's all part of the story. All of that to say, I'm excited to check out Makerbase!
@anildash@zackshapiro Thanks, Zack, we really appreciate that. Like you, we know that LinkedIn is indispensable for lots of people, but as you say, it's not geared toward a particular kind of digital creative who works on projects often outside of the context of their dayjob.
We've heard from a few other people that they had a similar idea to Makerbase, and of course it's not original - there are several similar tools/communities that already exist. That makes us feel like we're onto something.
We want to differentiate Makerbase by prioritizing makers and projects (versus companies and titles); by making it user-editable like IMDB and Wikipedia; by defining "digital maker" as anyone who makes these products happen (not just coders).
Most of all we want to create a tool that's fun to use, encourages transparency, credit and attribution, and helps underrepresented folks find their way into our field by being able to see who has done amazing work and their path to that outcome.
Please do let us know what you think.
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