[hackerspaces] Another registry?

[William Macfarlane]

Yeah.  I don't want to start an argument about the realities and
fantasies of insurance and liability, and certainly YMMV with your
insurance company, but I think that the perception that liability with
minors is an impossible nightmare is very prevalent, but I think that
this perception isn't totally accurate.

But we run what is explicitly a hackerspace for kids.  We don't have
all of the nasty dangerous tools some hackerspaces have, but mostly
that's budgetary, not safety considerations.  We've got a band saw, a
mini-mill, mini-lathe, sometimes we borrow a stick welder -- there are
dangerous things around.

We get insurance from a provider of summer camp insurance (in part
because one of our big programs is a summer camp).  It's good enough
insurance that we can rent space and get the child care provider
licensing (which we need because we run afterschool programs and a
summer camp -- we wouldn't need nearly so much licensing if we didn't
run these formal programs).

We haven't had any catastrophic injuries, so we haven't really tested
whether the insurance holds up in practice, but we are, in theory,
covered for injury, liability, etc.

Hacking with kids is great.  Providing a space where they can hack on
their own is maybe even better.

On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 11:04 PM, Will Bradley <bradley.will at gmail.com> wrote:
> Our insurance hasn't mentioned anything regarding minors, and we just went
> thru an audit... our liability waiver is even pretty liberal when it comes
> to minors.
>
> I mean, high school wood shop and summer camp still (mostly) exist; I think
> we're in that category.
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 8:59 PM, Willow Brugh <willow.bl00 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> If the main issue with bringing in minors is that of insurance, what would
>> go into making our own insurance co-op? Because being an insurance agent is
>> what I always wanted to be when I grew up...
>>
>> Willow Brugh // willowbl00
>> Schedule a meeting with me
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 18:02, Ron Bean <makerspace at rbean.users.panix.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> >It's always freaking the hell out of me to see how crazy the US is
>>> about
>>> >these things.
>>>
>>> We're not thrilled about it either-- most of us would have benefitted
>>> from access to a hackerspace at that age. But we have to live with it.
>>>
>>> >And I consider teaching to be one of the, if
>>> >not the most important goals of "hacking".
>>>
>>> I consider "learning by doing" to be different from "teaching". We're
>>> constantly teaching each other how to use the tools, and we give demos
>>> of various things, but we don't have any formal curriculum, which we'd
>>> need to have in order to be considered an educational group. In many
>>> cases we don't know what we're going to learn until after we've learned
>>> it.
>>>
>>> I wouldn't want to spend so much time on formal teaching that we don't
>>> have any time left for hacking.
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Discuss mailing list
>>> Discuss at lists.hackerspaces.org
>>> http://lists.hackerspaces.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
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-- 
-Will
www.partsandcrafts.org