Presentations, discussions and thoughts about Hackerspaces in FSCONS09

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Presentations, discussions and thoughts about Hackerspaces in FSCONS09

I visited last weekend Göteborg at FSCONS-conference which is yearly Nordic conference on Free Society and Software. One of the most memorabliest moments for me were the presentation and talks with Karin Kosina from Metalab Hackerspace, Wien, Austria. This report mixes my own previous views with assimilation of Karin's views.

Kyrah is young, eager and have a look of Geek, who loves what she does. (=> My definition of true Hacker). She started her presentation "Hackerspaces - ftw!" by making some obvious definitions. Hacker:: (distinct of cracker) is a person who is devoted to hacking. That term probably was clear for all of us listeners in that presentation. Spaces:: Physical place, where one can learn new skills, skills not necessarily new as themselves, but new for actors using them.

In Hackerspaces you explore new ways of living together and find if there are ways to survive better world by trading knowledge and sharing your ideas. Important factor for learning in Hackerspaces is that "I made this" feeling. (ftw! was not explained. I got impression it was wtf mirrored, but it could also mean 'For The Win')

So Hackerspaces wants to bring groups together. In the past there were isolated groups of media artists, computer programmers, hobby-electronicists and ham radio user groups, all sitting on their own groups. If those groups happened to meet on same table, ideas would boil and you got amazing things done.

Physical Space in Vienna Metalab: 'a place to do stuff'

Hackerspace in Wien, Austria called Metalab has central location in the city. Nearby building are Rathaus, Parliament and University. Address is Rathausstrassse 6, if anybody is planning trip there, visitors are always warmly welcome.

Physical place of 200 square meters consists of rooms available for different purposes; recreation, lab experiments, workshop, kitchen, library. Of those rooms kitchen is regarded very important place. The term food-hacking describes what you can do with open mind and imagination. For example, local energy drink called Club-Mate can be mixed with many different foods as spice and probably as bringer of speed for late night hack-sessions. You can also rise funds by selling it. Fridge has of course an IP-address and you can send messages to its display via web interface. On other rooms there are tools available for your projects.

"Heute die welt, morgen die sonnen system" (Today the world, tomorrow the solar system)

Hackerspace is more than infrastructure of mailing lists, IM and web pages. It needs to have physical place where people meet. But that virtual backbone helps when planning and building Hackerspaces and by starting with virtual presence it can be called Hackerspace constructing. Building Hackerspace to the point where one has paid first months rent and the community has its own place to meet has proven to take months, even years to form. It took 2 years to form physical space in Metalab. Similar things happened in Hackerspace NoiseBridge of San Francisco. There it took 1,5 years, but they had earlier connections with Metalab, one of forming members of Metalab did help building NoiseBridge. When the physical space is ready, everything starts from its users. "Place is just infrastructure, projects comes from individuals and groups who use it.", says Kyrah.

Activities in Metalab

Talks and presentations are given regularly. Workshop themes in near past include arduino micro controller, electronics, subversion, vim, podcasting, lisp, opengl. There are monthly metadays where themes like hacking biometric systems, bluetooth hacking, led throwies, self made EEG and RepRap which is 3D printer capable of cloning itself occur. Metalab has just started project with local ham radio group, where youngest member are 50+ years old, but when combining with Hackerspace also younger generations get to know this culture.

Cost of living

Keeping physical space up and running costs real money. Metalab has 110 paying members, each paying 20euros monthly. To attend to workshops you don't have to be member. Traditional beverage selling and party organising also give some of revenue, but that is not a cold mine itself and is not meant to be. Sponsors are not wanted except for occasional projects like renovierung or bigger events. Dependency to university or company would keep Hackerspace becoming independent. If you do something for community it strengthens the bind to own Hackerspace, says Kyrah.
Not very new idea, but true.

OK, but now something not so old: Who has the power to act in community? Decisions are made there after rule which is called actocracy. "Who does, he is right" is a strong method which has proven to work on Metalab's case. People who act and are there when decisions are discussed may have blessing to do the work without late comers opposite disputes. In Finland we usually add to complaints of already done work "..do it better yourself [if you can, sucker..]" This means that members are equal and are not divided by amount of money they pay, but by doing (acting) you get things done (GTD).

Hints for us still planning our own Hackerspace

- -registering as association is important, might as well start now as one project.-giving educational courses -> city likes to have Hackerspaces.
- -actocracy works with Metalab, but they also have had problems with it, seldom
though. Others may have strict rules and hierarchies.
- -it takes time to build Hackerspace.
- -keep in touch with Finnish and European Hackerspaces.
- -Kyrah is available for more hints.
- -there is danger in situation when space stays "one group only"-place, for example only for Free software users.


Post notes:

We have activity toward Hackerspace here in Tampere. Keep looking for ##the5thwave on Irc (FreeNode) and upcoming webpages. Now there are couple of placeholders at hackerspaces.org/wiki/The5thWave Our search for people started on August 09 and we are gathering now critical mass. Please feel free to join!

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