[hackerspaces] Establishing hackerspace and getting people actively involved

[Nick Farr (hackerspaces.org)]

On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 01:52, Jens Christian Hillerup
<jens at hillerup.net> wrote:
>
> In Labitat we had a general assembly with nine participants last year.
> Before that we had one or two meetings with slightly more people. At the
> general assembly we decided we wanted to make a hackerspace, so we set down
> a board and *all* worked towards raising money for workshops before we had a
> space.

This seems to fit in with the pattern.  However, as I've noticed it,
while 4-12 people sit on the "board" or are the core organizing group,
it ends up being 1-4 people who do the leg work of collecting the
money, filling out the papers, searching for a space, etc.  How did
Labitat end up dividing the work equally?

> Sometime in October last year we held an Arduino workshop paid for
> from some money ($3000) that we won in a "project battle" against ~20 other
> youth-related projects in Copenhagen.

This is definitely cool!  Do you have links or more info on this?
(Perhaps I'm running into language problems GTFAing my question...)

> In December we had sixty members that actually paid a monthly fee (>= $30)
> so we decided to sign the lease.

This is another good data point to have:  How many members did other
spaces have before signing a lease?  (HacDC had 6)

> January through March 2010 we were renovating ev-e-ry-thing and only last
> month we held our public opening with journalists and media people.

I think this is definitely unusual...while each space I know of does
some renovation, going from trashed-to-space seems a bit odd.  HacDC
renovated a new room that opened up in our building, but that process
continues to this day.  (We just got better power down there.)

Nick Farr