{"688948":{"#nid":"688948","#data":{"type":"event","title":"PhD Defense by Mizan Rahman","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ETitle\u003C\/strong\u003E: Sustaining Innovation Communities: Understanding Socio-Technical Factors that Drive Organizational Sustainability of Makerspaces\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EMizan Rahman\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EPh.D. Candidate in Human-Centered Computing (HCC)\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESchool of Interactive Computing\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EGeorgia Institute of Technology\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EDate: Monday, March 16th, 2026\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ETime: 10am - 12pm EST\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ELocation: TSRB room 204 (IC Collaboration Space), or\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/us02web.zoom.us\/j\/87983717236?pwd=zPXaDmaKgHaw8p9aoMEjDIuBWWFvbU.1\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022 title=\u0022https:\/\/us02web.zoom.us\/j\/87983717236?pwd=zPXaDmaKgHaw8p9aoMEjDIuBWWFvbU.1\u0022\u003EZoom\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ECommittee\u003C\/strong\u003E:\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cul\u003E\u003Cli\u003EDr. Rosa I. Arriaga (advisor) \u2013 School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology\u003C\/li\u003E\u003Cli\u003EDr. W. Keith Edwards \u2013 School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology\u003C\/li\u003E\u003Cli\u003EDr. Richard Henneman \u2013 School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology\u003C\/li\u003E\u003Cli\u003EDr. Judith Odili Uchidiuno\u0026nbsp; \u2013 School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology\u003C\/li\u003E\u003Cli\u003EDr. Udaya Lakshmi \u2013 Xbox Research\u003C\/li\u003E\u003C\/ul\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EAbstract\u003C\/strong\u003E:\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EMakerspaces are community-operated innovation centers that promote creativity, learning, and entrepreneurship. Despite their growing role in local innovation ecosystems, many of them struggle to survive, and closures can disrupt communities, dissolve volunteer capacity, and halt public programs. This dissertation examines how makerspaces achieve organizational sustainability. Drawing on three and a half years of ethnographic fieldwork across multiple U.S. makerspaces involving interviews, participant observation, and analysis of digitally mediated interaction, I present four studies that together characterize how socio-technical factors drive organizational sustainability of makerspaces\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EStudy 1 defines sustainability in this context and develops a multidimensional framework that conceptualizes it as a dynamic system of interacting elements: people, community, culture, management, finance, and processes. The framework\u2019s central insight \u2014 that \u201cpeople come for the tools but stay for the community\u0022 and that culture holds the community together. Study 2 examines the \u201cpeople\u0022 dimension of this framework, identifying socio-technical factors that broaden membership. Study 3 and Study 4 examined culture, the factor that emerged as the most critical for sustainability, analyzing how\u003Cstrong\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/strong\u003Eit is perceived through interviews and how it\u003Cstrong\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/strong\u003Eis practiced through analysis of the digitally mediated interaction.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBuilding from these findings, the dissertation contributes design implications for communication systems that support makerspaces as volunteer-run commons. I propose design guidelines that reduce friction in core cultural practices and outline how AI can function as cultural scaffolding by providing structured prompts, surfacing relevant community memory, and routing requests while keeping members in control. Together, these contributions offer theory, evidence, and design directions for sustaining makerspaces through socio-technical practice.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":"","format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003ESustaining Innovation Communities: Understanding Socio-Technical Factors that Drive Organizational Sustainability of Makerspaces\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Sustaining Innovation Communities: Understanding Socio-Technical Factors that Drive Organizational Sustainability of Makerspaces"}],"uid":"27707","created_gmt":"2026-03-16 12:18:03","changed_gmt":"2026-03-16 12:18:43","author":"Tatianna Richardson","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","field_event_time":{"event_time_start":"2026-03-16T10:00:00-04:00","event_time_end":"2026-03-16T12:00:00-04:00","event_time_end_last":"2026-03-16T12:00:00-04:00","gmt_time_start":"2026-03-16 14:00:00","gmt_time_end":"2026-03-16 16:00:00","gmt_time_end_last":"2026-03-16 16:00:00","rrule":null,"timezone":"America\/New_York"},"location":"TSRB room 204 (IC Collaboration Space), or Zoom","extras":[],"groups":[{"id":"221981","name":"Graduate Studies"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[{"id":"100811","name":"Phd Defense"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[{"id":"1788","name":"Other\/Miscellaneous"}],"invited_audience":[{"id":"78771","name":"Public"}],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}