<div>Talking to potential landlords, I settled on a few descriptions of our needs as a hackerspace. Choose analogs that will fit with what you're looking for. </div>
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<div>Sometimes I call it a non-profit workshop, since most landlords are familiar with that. Warehouse landlords around here are used to people leasing space for dance/ballet classrooms. We're not a dance school, but the facilities have things in common. Workshop explains what resources we are looking for, and what impact they can expect by having us as tenants.</div>
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<div>Since this Florida, and there are rich people who send their kids to art college and have this artificially inflated appreciation for modern art, I describe us as an Art Collective to some people. Especially to art students and art-focused potential investors.</div>
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<div>As a nonprofit seeking donations from large institutions, they pay more attention to what you call yourself than how democratic and wishy-washy your explanations are. </div>
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<div>Your hackerspace will be different things to different people. It fits into many categories, and it's nice to have a reference to give people who don't understand without handing them a copy of "The Hacker Ethic" or sitting them down for a 2 hour primer course. Have a good, concise, thorough explanation of what you think of it displayed on your website. I even thought maybe on each User page on our wiki we'd have everyone describe what they think the space is, a democratic collaborative definition. <br>
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<div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 4:24 AM, Koen Martens <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:gmc@sonologic.nl">gmc@sonologic.nl</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote style="BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; PADDING-LEFT: 1ex" class="gmail_quote">Hya,<br>
<div class="im"><br>On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 01:41:09PM -0700, Jerry Isdale wrote:<br>> So as a help to noobs like me, I'd like to discuss some of the terms<br>> used for various biz models for the generic term of 'Maker Space'.<br>
> Terms like hackerspace, fab lab, tech shop, and names for variants<br>> outside those.<br><br></div>I have been asking myself 'what is a hackerspace' a lot lately, because i'm<br>just starting one and need to explain this to eg. potential landlord. I don't<br>
think there is one single answer, this is already evident in the great number<br>of different hackerspaces: some nothing more than an office unit, others in<br>multi-story buildings with rooms varying in function, others not having their<br>
own space at all..<br><br>Ask anyone on this list what a hackerspace is, and you are likely to get<br>very different answers.<br><br>I, for one, would not want to come up with a single, fits-all definition of<br>the term, simply because that would deny the great variety that makes all<br>
these spaces so interesting!<br><br>Gr,<br><font color="#888888"><br>Koen<br></font>
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