[Noisebridge-discuss] hacker spaces forming around the world

[Mitch Altman]

Hi Everone,

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about tmplab, a forming hacker space in Paris that I visited while there (in between being video-ed by large French TV networks as me and other hackers and media activists turned off TVs around town).



Something really cool is happening on our bizarre little planet
causing a concurrence of hackers, makers, dorks, artists, and geeks of
all sorts to be coming together in clusters all over the world.  I
don't know what it is, but I'm excited to help it happen as much as I
can.  We are forming hacker spaces!  If we can all network with each other, maybe even cooler things
can happen!

On my month-long trip that I recently returned from, I visited with a few forming hacker spaces.  All of them want to collaborate with us and each other.  I think we can all learn from each other as we grow, each in our own ways.


I talked about this with some other folks on Off The Hook, a weekly
hacker radio program from the 2600 folks, aired on WBAI in New York City (and the
internet and short wave and other places) every Wednesday night:

http://2600.org/offthehook/plsfiles/2008/off_the_hook__20080116.pls

Here's just a little bit about some hackers spaces:

tmplab is the hacker space forming in Paris.  In my previous post I don't think that I mentioned that they consciously decided to not specify how they make decisions, deciding that they will do this on a case-by-case basis.
http://www.tmplab.org/

bootlab is one of the hacker space in Berlin.  I actually mainly hung out with mikro.fm, one of many projects of bootlab.  Starting a regular FM radio station in Germany is way too expensive and takes way too much red tape.  So they started a streaming radio station on the internet, passed out zillions of micro FM transmitters (and continue to pass them out), which are legal to transmit with, and ask everyone to broadcast the streaming content from mikro.fm, thus blanketing large areas of Berlin.  They broadcast a large variety of music, topics and news of interest to the progressive communities, and announce events of interest to the community.  bootlab has a space in a community building that started out as a squat.
http://bootlab.org/

DC401 is a forming hacker space in Providence, RI.  It is an outgrowth of AS220, a successful artist organization that started about 25 years ago by a group of artists that rented a space for people to hang out in, share ideas, work on projects individually and collectively.  Sound familiar?  They now own more than one building, are thinking of buying another, and have lots of community programs, including a bar, a restaurant, a recording studio, a darkroom, artist in residence, helping kids who just came out of juvenile detention, and now:  a hacker space.  They are a non-profit, 501(c)(3), and get donations from lots of individuals.  They have a really nice group of people who meet regularly, with new people joining all the time.
http://dc401.org/site/

NYC Resistors is a forming hacker space in New York City.  They formed an LLC (in Delaware, from a website that I'm told makes it easy to do so in a few minutes -- I'll find out more about this and post to the list), and are probably eventually going to become a tax-exempt non-profit.  They've been having microcontroller workshops every two weeks, and have already chalked up a lot of cool projects, all of which are on their impressive website:
http://www.nycresistor.com/
They have a core group of people who are members.  The micro workshops are used as a way for members to nominate new members.  Their method of decision making seems similar to what we've discussed so far:  consensus when possible, reverting to majority vote when necessary.  They are currently looking for a place to rent, probably in Brooklyn, where it is more affordable than Manhattan, and where more of their core members live.

The Hacktory is a forming hacker space in Philadelphia, which is an outgrowth of the MAKE-Philly meetings there.  They just got a space at NTR, a non-profit  (that refurbishes and sells computers inexpensively, thus making computers available to people and organizations who might not otherwise be able to afford them, and keeping these computers from becoming toxic waste in landfills) that gave them a huge raw space for free.  They've had meetings, are planning workshops, and have had a few work meetings where people have been helping fix up the raw space.  They haven't determined decision making or legal status yet.
http://thehacktory.org/

Adam O'Donnell, who is part of Noisebridge, told me about The Walnut Factory, also in Philadelphia, but I didn't get a chance to visit them.  They've been around for awhile, but they seem to be dormant now (?) but I'm not sure.  Here's their website:
http://www.walnutfactory.org/

I've been communicating with someone via email who I met at 24C3 in Berlin.  He is helping form a hacker space in Munich with other CCC folks.
http://kapsel.muc.ccc.de
He tells me that they are looking for a space now, have weekly meetings, and have 30 to 40 active members.



The above is only a very brief overview of some of the many hacker spaces that are forming around the world.  This is an exciting time to be a hacker!



Mitch.

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