[hackerspaces] Hackerspace crisis plan

[Lisha Sterling]

How about doing some humanitarian hackathons in your space to start
bringing people in? There's the International Space Apps Challenge coming
up in April. There's the main RHOK in June, but I think that you can apply
to do a RHOK of your own at another time.

The process of organizing a hackathon can really help you gather people in.
You'll need to take the time to reach out to companies in your area to try
to get sponsorship so that you have things like prizes, food and drinks,
and (if you are lucky) t-shirts to give to participants. But, by getting in
touch with those companies, they will also have a stake in letting other
people know about the hackathon and your space. Bonus: You can get media
coverage of your space and the hackathon because you'll be doing some
positive things for the community and the world that people can actually
point their finger at.

I know that when GWOB (http://gwob.org) organizes hackathons, we use
Eventbrite to keep track of how many people we have signed up for the
event. You make the tickets "free", of course, but the system gives you a
good way to make sure that you don't over-fill your space, and it also
gives you a way to say to potential sponsors, "We have x number of people
signed up already. With your support we'll be able to get y people in here
to develop software for all these great and important causes."

Another idea along these same lines is organizing an unconference. Do an
unconference on a topic of interest to you. Get people from outside your
city involved, even. Again, this is a great opportunity to get some press
which can maybe pull more people into your space.

Que tengan buena suerte!!

- Lisha
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