[hackerspaces] A New Hacker Has Joined Your Party!

[Ron Bean]

Koen Martens <gmc at har2009.org> writes:

>I don't agree with that at all. Especially since you're making such a hard
>division between 'hackerspace' and 'makerspace'. That's an arbitrary line
>you're drawing there. When does hacking turn into making, when does
>making turn into hacking??

I didn't intend it to be a hard line (that's why I put quotation marks
around the names). My point is that a lot of activities work OK in a
small space, but a lot of other activities don't.

For example, it was important to us to find a space that could be used
to convert gasoline vehicles to electric (several of our members have
already done that). That meant we had to look for a space with a
ground-level garage door (a truck-level loading dock doesn't help, and
anything above the ground floor is useless-- we were offered a really
nice space on the 2nd floor, but we had to turn it down).

Other spaces don't have that restriction, because that's not on their 
list of anticipated uses. That means they can be viable with a smaller 
number of members, which means less time thinking about whether they'll 
have enough members to pay the rent.

In fact, our space branched out from a robotics club that met at a
guy's house-- no rent, no dues. But they wanted to do things that 
required more space.