[Noisebridge-discuss] Greetings from Paris

[Mitch Altman]

Hello, Everyone,

Since I'm traveling around after 24C3 (a great experience!), I am visiting hacker spaces as I go.  I want to learn from others' experiences in forming their groups so I can share it with anyone interested in our group.

Last night I was at tmplab, the new hacker space forming here in Paris.  They just moved into a physical space, on the bottom floor of a building that needs lots of work, in a suburb just south of the city.  They get free rent in the building, which is an artist space, paid for by the government.  The group is already working on some interesting projects, including an open source, mesh-network, phone system.  The group consists of a diverse set of people with interests and skills that compliment one another very well, a mathematician, a philosopher, someone who is incredible at reverse engineering firmware in embedded systems, security people, people who have worked in industry in various capacities, people who never will, students...  They run themselves without formal procedure, coming up with agreements about process as needed.  One of their members is moving into their space -- they consciously made this decision after discussing the pros and cons (taking the Chaos "patterns" into account).  They are forming under a formal non-profit company, with a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation in the US (which helps them legally reverse-engineer, since that is illegal in France).  They want to have frequent "OneDayBlast" meetings, which are days that anyone interested comes together in their space to work on projects.  One of their goals is to help spawn new hacker spaces, as well as collaborate with other spaces around the world.  There is a lot more I can say, but I'll leave that for talking face-to-face.  Here is their website:
http://www.tmplab.org/

Next week I'll also be visiting DC401, a hackers space forming in Providence, RI.  They are forming under AS220, an artist space that has spawned many other artist spaces.  I'll be giving a presentation and a workshop there, as well as learning everything I can about how they have done what they've done through the years.
http://dc401.org/site/

I will also be hanging out at NYC Resistors, a hacker space forming in New York City.  They have meetings every two weeks, open to anyone.  They are looking for a physical space to call home.  Their website is pretty impressive:
http://www.nycresistor.com/

I look forward to sharing my experiences with anyone interested when I get back home at the end of the month.


Cheers,
Mitch.

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