[hackerspaces] A new HackerSpace is coming to life.

[Pedro Umbelino]

Hi Deech,

First of all thanks alot for your support words. The feedback that we
get from your comments and all the other guys that send us emails and
that we personally talk to is very encoraging.

The simple statment that many of you started the exact same way as we
are now makes us believe that we are not so off target. And I completly
understand your advice, "Go Forward" is the way to go :)

Thanks for sharing (and for actually reading the blog btw :)

Cheers,
kripthor

On 05/05/2011 07:57 PM, Deech wrote:
> Congrats and good luck! I love how your elaborate democratic process
> failed so completely that you ended up with a name that wasn't even on
> the list in the first place. :)
>
> The only advice I can give to aspiring Hackerspaces (and what worked
> for AR) is "Go Forward."
>
> If you want to be a group of guys meeting in a cafe somewhere and that
> makes you happy, then by all means, continue. But, if you want to be a
> thriving space full of awesome, someone has to make it happen and keep
> going forward. Find a space. It can be a crappy space, but find a
> space to call your own. We started with a relatively small group of
> guys who committed to the vision and to make things go forward
> committed to split the rent bill 5 ways (or so). Once we got the
> space, without even doing anything to it, people suddenly realized we
> were "real" and not people just talking about doing something. We got
> more members almost immediately. We then started to make our
> admittedly shitty room in a old brewery complex as cool as possible
> with salvaged carpet and furniture, building work tables out of
> whatever we could find (like a giant door we found in our space that
> was too heavy to get rid of). We brought in our toys and projects and
> finally staged an open house to show the community we were there and
> we meant business. We expected 50 people to show up. We got 300
> walking through that night. In four months, it became painfully
> obvious that the space we were in was inadequate (serious metal
> fatigue in all the load-bearing members, the wiring is substandard,
> it's completely inadequate for our power needs, and the neighborhood
> is like a demilitarized zone). Once again, we had to decide if we were
> going to go forward or stay pat. A few more people stepped up and
> again agreed to foot the bill for a better space. Again, our gamble
> worked. We've been in our current space for a year. We are still
> hovering about the "break even" point as far as monthly dues are
> concerned, but we have money in the bank, around 40 members (or so),
> have been consistently able to pay for rent, heat, insurance and
> internets, and next month we start work on shooting a satellite (of
> love) into low earth orbit.
>
> The point here is, many of us started as "Five guys in a pizza place"
> (fun fact, yesterday was the 2nd anniversary of our first meeting at
> the pizza joint), but we pushed forward, went outside our comfort
> zones and made something awesome happen.
>
> You can too. :)
>
> -Deech
> President and Chief Scruffy Nerd Herder
> Arch Reactor
> (yes, a title block. Pfft. I throw it on occasionally...haters, etc.)
>
>
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