Q+A: Downtown Syn Shop founder talks Las Vegas makerspaces, benevolent hacking

Suz Hinton, a software engineer at Zappos, poses by a 3D printer at the SYN Shop in downtown Las Vegas Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2014. The SYN Shop is a “hackerspace” but not in the negative connotation of the word hacker. The SYN Shop is a “collaborative space for people share tools and knowledge and make cool stuff,” she said.

SYN Shop Hackerspace

Brian Davis works in the SYN Shop classroom in downtown Las Vegas Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2014. The SYN Shop is a Launch slideshow »

The jury is still out on whether Sony did the right thing in initially canceling the release of “The Interview” after hackers leaked private company emails and threatened terrorist attacks against theaters showing the film. But one thing is certain: If hacking had a bad name before, it’s even worse now.

Las Vegas local Suz Hinton wants to change that. A software engineer at Zappos by day, Hinton is co-founder of the Syn Shop, a downtown Las Vegas “hackerspace” filled with 3D printers, a laser cutter, loom and an industrial-size sewing machine.

It’s here where local techies and gearheads with an eye toward the future can attend classes on sewing and robotics or work on their own innovations.

VEGAS INC recently chatted with Hinton about all things hacking, including how flexible — and sometimes problematic — the term can be.

Her responses have been edited for length and clarity.

What’s a typical scene like at the Syn Shop?

The first thing you would see is a classroom full of people learning something. There’s always something going on in the classroom. There’s always somebody cutting something out; the 3D printers are always going. We have classes on how to use the equipment in the shop. We have chocolate-making classes and a class on how to solder your own power supply. There’s an introduction to electronics. There was another meet up that went over cosplay and how to produce costumes and make things for cosplay-related endeavors.

How do you define hacking?

Hacking originally meant a clever or alternative way of solving a problem. That concept was used back in the Steve Wozniak days when computers were first really being invented and used. Obviously early computers were very bug-ridden, so being able to figure out how to get something to work using a slightly unconventional solution was hailed in the industry. You got street credit for doing that. That’s what it originally meant: Doing something that you normally wouldn’t expect to solve a problem.

Does that kind of hacking happen at the Syn Shop?

I remember there was a woman who was trying to build a robot, and she didn’t have all the parts. You think about robots and you think they’re super slick and they have metal parts and they have custom circuitry and stuff like that. But because she didn’t have access to the hackerspace at the time, she was making the robots with things like plastic spoons. It was very difficult for her, but she was still able to cobble all that together. The happy part of that story is once she discovered the hackerspace, she was like, “Oh my god, you guys have 3-D printers! I could probably design specialist parts for my robot rather than using found items around the house.” She was pretty ingenious at seeing things around as robot parts rather that what everyone else sees them as, but we’ve also really helped her come along in the invention of her robots.

What kind of tools can you find at the Syn Shop?

A big laser cutter so people can cut paper and wood. You can also engrave things. We’ve had people come in with a wooden box that they engraved with a special message for their loved ones before sending flowers in them. We also have a shopbot — it’s essentially a giant computer-controlled router. You can also carve 3D shapes with it as well. We also have an entire room of woodshop tools, everything from manual saws to mechanical saws. We have a vinyl cutter, so you can cut out vinyl signs and shapes. We have a loom and soldering items. We have an industrial sewing machine that takes a quart of oil to run because it’s oldschool mechanic.

How did the Syn Shop come together?

Syn Shop has always been a meet-up in one of the founding members’ garages. That person went to a Maker Fair event in San Francisco and learned about hackerspaces and was like, “We don’t have one in Vegas, but we should do it. So everyone come to my house.” He basically grabbed a few friends and was like “just come into my house and hang out in my garage. I have some tools, and we can get together and talk about things and I can teach people how to solder things.”

That was before I moved to Vegas. But the plans to make it bigger than someone’s garage kind of happened in April 2011. That’s when someone else at Zappos came up with the idea of getting funding to open a bigger space in a public space with better equipment and run it as a nonprofit. Nine of us formed a board to build that place.

How much does it cost to join the Syn Shop?

$40 a month.

How many members does the Syn Shop have today?

We have over a hundred paying members that frequent the shop. We have more people drop in and out to attend classes.

People have criticized many hackerspaces for lacking in diversity. Do you think you’re helping to shift traditional hackerspace demographics?

I’ve been pretty proud of the Las Vegas hackerspace. Although there's still a high demographic of middle-aged white men, our board is pretty diverse. I think right now we have two women and not all of the men are white. We also have a lot of members that show up to our board meetings that are diverse. We’re seeing a steady increase of women members to the point where whenever I’m in there, they mention it to me, because they’re super proud. A lot of the men are also happy that the community is much more diverse.

How do you deal with hacking’s bad reputation?

That is very difficult. There’s definitely a divide in the community about what I’m about to say. Some people entertain the idea of exchanging the name “hackerspace” with “makerspace.” And that sometimes helps dull that image. Some people say we don’t have to change our name and that this is a process of education. But I definitely support the use of “makerspace.”

What’s the difference between Syn Shop hacking and the hacking Sony suffered?

What’s happening with Sony is hacking with malicious intent. The terminology defining what’s technically going on is very similar. Someone is finding an alternative way around security. With Sony, they’re trying to break through the firewall of the company. They’re trying to exploit vulnerabilities for their own gain.

In a hackerspace, we generally discourage that. We want people to focus on hacking their own toaster or their phone, taking in an old piece of technology and trying to make it do something different. We’re more about the non-malicious hacking. We want to respect everyone’s property. We don’t use something unless we ask first. Our hacking is more of an educational experience and almost a way of showing off to your friends, like: “Hey, I managed to get this thing to do this other thing that it normally can’t do, and now it’s even better.” It’s more of a hobbyist’s show and tell.

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