[hackerspaces] Dear hackerspaces, bad news

[matt]

IMHO Your space sounds like a clusterfuck.


On Sun, Mar 16, 2014 at 1:22 PM, Florencia Edwards <floev22 at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hello everybody, this week without being expected, they told us that are
> going to fire half of our team. Our makerspace unfortunately, is a company.
> We were all working paid with a symbolic wage, so we were sort of
> volunteers also, but the space is really huge, an ex factory in a really
> expensive neighborhood so we weren't making enough from memberships to
> afford rent, less wages.  . The owner , who has been absent the last 7
> months or so, wants to make an inversion in the space, machines, materials
> for artists to make decorations. He prefers to invert in the space than in
> the people who've been working because they love the community, who've been
> underpaid working extra hours because they just love being there, which
> makes me really sad, but I understand the circumstances are hard.
>
> Now it's going to be sort of self administrated by the members, they are
> going to have keys like in other spaces. Here where we live people don't
> have the culture of doing stuff by themselves and respecting someone else's
> space. They need someone watching them, telling them what to do... Maybe
> this will be a good change, so members can lear how to take care of the
> space.
>
> Also they want to administrate projects,  in the makerspace for big
> companies and brands that want to have new ways of communication and are
> willing to pay big. And they will hire in this case experts to make the
> projects in the makerspace. Like a sort of incubator.
>
> We also use to have scholarships for people who were ex staff, who do
> stuff like taking care of the space, or workshops, but he said that if
> people are not working in a cool project "maker style", they won't be able
> to keep coming to the space. This means they haven't offered the staff that
> was fired memberships to work on their stuff or to keep being part of the
> community.
>
> This is our new reality, we don't know what to make of it, we are in
> shock, and I would love to hear your opinions.
>
>
>
>
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>
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