For Dale Dougherty, the Maker Movement is about creating a community around skills that have often been practiced in isolation.

Since founding Make Magazine in 2005, Dale has sparked a broad conversation about the place of making in 21st-century culture. Through programs like Maker Corps, Young Makers and Maker Faires around the world, he has fostered interest in STEM careers and the importance of broad access to the tools of making.

Maker Faire Bay Area is now in its eighth year, hosting 900 exhibitors in 2013. Other Maker Faires have grown up around science museums like the New York Hall of Science in Queens and the Henry Ford in Detroit, creating rich communities of experimentation and informal education.

“I wanted to celebrate makers. I wanted to flush them out of the communities and bring them together at events like Maker Faires so they could meet each other and see that they weren’t alone, that they could learn from each other and, more importantly, begin to do things that they might have not thought they could do on their own.”