Question: What if you break something?
This is the most important slide of the new member orientation presentation that I give at MakeICT, a makerspace here in Wichita.
It poses the question, and goes on to answer it, beginning with “Don’t dust it under the rug or hide it.”
Important, because it speaks to how a community should work– if you break something, what matters is that it’s broken, and letting someone know to fix it. And when they do, they can teach you how to fix it. Then you can teach others, and so on.
That’s true regardless of whether the community is based on where you live, what you believe, how you look, or what you do.
I’ve broken a lot of things. I’ve learned how to fix some things. Sometimes they’re even the same thing.
This is a website about how to fix things, even when the solution is vastly improbable. You might say that the solution would work if (insert extremely unlikely thing here). That’s a big if, everyone would say. That’s where the name comes from: if something very unlikely is a big if, what is a giant if?
Fixing some things is undoubtedly a giant if, but we still have to try. And when we do, we’re all better for it– even if we don’t succeed.