[hackerspaces] The hackerspace economic model....

[Mark Janssen]

Hi guys, I have a diagram that shows the dynamic we were trying to
create at the sf_x (sfcomplex.org) that might be interesting to the
community:  http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/pangaia/index.php?title=Hackerspace_Microcosm

It's a dynamic for solving the self-sustainable, economic, problem of
the hackerspace community.  What's equally important to cool projects
and people, is a **memory system** for the space.  Otherwise, events
and projects go in and out and there's very little record of what is
happening or has happened.   That is what made our hackerspace fail --
the people with the influence/money could never really see tangible
benefits when they visited the space.

A memory system could be as simple as a cork-board so that projects
can be posted and asynchronous conversations can occur.  This latter
is very important, because despite having mailing lists, the general
public doesn't see that there is actually meaningful *creativity*
developing.

Anyway.... all that is a preliminary to get people interested in
helping code up a self-organizing model that I call pangaia.  It's p2p
software, uses 3d for keeping everything beautifullly separate, and is
lincensed under the GPL!   It is very simple and very cool, despite
being very sophisticated and the product of over a decade of research.
 There is a working paper version of the simple ruleset if you don't
believe it.

The project is hosted at http://github.com/theProphet/Social-Garden
and the wiki is over at pangaia.sourceforge.net.  All feedback
welcome.

Cheers,

Mark Janssen,
Tacoma, Washington