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<DIV>nullspace labs los angeles.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>One guy picked a business model for the space and found the location. Had
enough reserve cash to pay rent as a buffer, have core members willing to pay a
keyholder fee each month, offer cheaper memberships and free use to others. It
is important to have long term plan and a few people who can see that thru. Most
of the other members knew each other from LA2600/defcon/layerOne etc so that
made it easier to find the right people.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Our space is a little different to some of the others I’ve been too, and
more in common with the European spaces that I grew up with and we’re definitely
more hacker than maker orientated. So far we’ve pretty much had a polar/absolute
split in the types of people who’ll come back. Which is good thing for us since
it makes it easier for people to choose and put their time and hard earned cash
into the right project/place. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>We allow non paying members for people who just can’t afford it and we
don’t limit where they can go or what they can do. We run classes, don’t
charge for them and if we can we will subsidise component costs. NSL is not a
non profit, we’re all for profit but just want to cover rent + overheads and buy
cool stuff from time to time.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Tuesdays are our official day for general public, since people seem to need
that sort of of thing.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Well stocked equipment and component wise, careful buying from ebay and
craiglist as well as member donations, so we have lots of soldering irons (20 +
metcals), a pick and place machine that we reverse engineered and rewrote the
software for), scopes, signal generators, logic analysers, two pcb mills, laser
cutter in progress, mini lathe, lots of tools, projectors, screens, party
lighting, and lots of development boards for cpus, fpga’s cplds etc. Our
component stocks are bordering on insanity, we often get members of other spaces
swinging by to find parts or use equipment.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>NSL tends to focus more on individual or small group projects and encourage
people to try their own rather than jump in a group project, but we do have a
bunch of kits and stuff we did inhouse for people to build as simple
introductions, starting off with the basic blinky led kits up to complex ARM
devboards. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Classes are things like pic programming, lockpick, malware analysis,
cadsoft eagle etc that sort of thing.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>We’re big on people using the space and resources to start their own
companies or products too.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>A varied approach such as use of advertising or how we appear as a space to
people and see what fits best, simple things like whether or not we announce the
Tuesday meeting, blogging, how we approach new people that come in.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>We don’t push for new members, since the core keyholders cover the rent.
It’s appreciated when people do sign up as members though , that also makes sure
we can manage the size of the space and what is available to whom, currently we
are doing a small reorg so that there is a dedicated area for public projects as
currently it tends towards members having their own spot. </DIV>
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<DIV>charliex</DIV>
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<DIV style="font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A title=deech@ninjacow.net
href="mailto:deech@ninjacow.net">Deech</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Wednesday, October 12, 2011 8:10 AM</DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=discuss@lists.hackerspaces.org
href="mailto:discuss@lists.hackerspaces.org">Hackerspaces General Discussion
List</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> [hackerspaces] New Hackerspace Encouragement - What are
your humble roots that got your space off the ground?</DIV></DIV></DIV>
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style="FONT-STYLE: normal; DISPLAY: inline; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri'; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: small; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; TEXT-DECORATION: none">I
looked back and found a few spaces mentioning this here and there, but nowhere
did I see a thread just for it... <BR><BR>So, we see new spaces springing up
pretty frequently and posts from folks saying "How did you do it??". I'm
thinking in this thread let's point out the humble origins and let new spaces
know that they are not unique in their problems! <BR><BR><BR>I'll start, but I'm
sure other AR folks can chime in with more details. <BR><BR>First, we are Arch
Reactor in St. Louis. We currently have about 2400 square feet in an awesome
building in the southern part of town. Our membership varies, but we have about
29 full dues paying members and anywhere from 3-15 supporting dues paying
members on any given month. (our dues are $30/month and $10/month
respectively)<BR>We have a lots of tools, tables and workspaces. A projector,
mame cabs, laser cutter (in progress), 3d printer, cnc routing table,
micro-lathe and a bunch of other great stuff. By most standards, reasonably
successful so far. <BR><BR>However, we started from typical humble beginnings.
The first group (I wasn't a part of) met in the food court at a local Pizza
World. They numbered around 8. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth over
what the hackerspace should be (grey hat or white hat), if there should be dues
or not, etc. etc. Money was collected in a coffee can each week. <BR>That group
finally split up over ideological grounds and they fell back to about 3-4 people
still talking about it. That's about where I came in. A member that maintained
apartments had an empty one that we were able to meet in for a little while. In
the end, we only had 5 core members who decided to bite the bullet and agree to
split the $500 a month rent for the first year to get off the ground. It was a
gamble that paid off, because once we had an actual space, we gained members so
rapidly we outgrew our first space in about 5 months. <BR><BR>The rest was the
easy part. We had enough members to pay the increased rent for a new space,
moved there, and kept pulling in new members as fast as we could. We currently
pretty much break even on the rent and bills, mainly because we charge such low
dues, but we're making it work. <BR><BR>So, how did your space get off the
ground? <BR><BR>-Deech<BR><BR>
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