[hackerspaces] Differences between hackerspaces and fablabs

[Shirley Hicks]

That's interesting, Shawn. 

In our (still newish, got into a rental space last fall) non-profit hackerspace in Birmingham, Al, our founding group 
has been taking governance, information security and "making things work" fairly seriously, as we want to see the 
space continue to work in a self-renewing way long after we wander off or have to pull back due to work or other start-ups.

We've been closely following the "lessons learned" business section of the Make Magazine.
We have an approximate ratio of 2:1 of twenty-somethings and late 40s/early 50-somethings membership.

As we're going along, we're deliberately shoving decision-making down to the membership level (you want to do it? Great!
Start a project page, get in there and lead it!). Going forward, I think one of our main challenges will be to ensure that 
we develop an understudy system so that we renew group leadership every three to four years. All the standard stuff that 
comes into play with volunteer-run organizations. We're cheerfully stealing other best practices from outside the 
hackerspace/makerspace community as we using the organizational patterns identified on www.hackerspaces.org.

Makers Local 256 up in Huntsville, AL, OTOH, has been fairly relaxed. But they've also been around longer, and have
developed community connections and grown cash reserves. We're still in our empty-pockets, more guts than glory
start-up phase. :)

Several of our founding members have previous non-profit org experience and a couple run their own
businesses. We also need to be taken seriously by the local city leadership in order to do some of the 
things we want to do three years out, such as developing introduction to programming classes and programming 
and electronics project classes for neighborhood youth. So, that means making, as much as possible space
operations "simply work". We feel strongly that we are filling a gap in our local blossoming tech sector that badly 
needs filling, and have to be credible in order to access to some of the resources we want to plug into for tech 
education. 

This is in a region that is lagging the rest of the US significantly in mathematics and computer science 
education; we want to be the "candy store" of shiny objects begging to played with by local budding tinkerers, 
programmers and engineers/technical artisans, and to serve as a bubbling off-campus, post-graduate cauldron
of collaboration and technical play. This is still a heavily siloed city and we're having to work 
carefully and deliberately (and we hope, successfully) to bridge the city ethnic community and class structure. 

Shirley Hicks
Board member-at-large
Red Mountain Makers
Birmingham, AL

Email: redmtnadm at redmountainmakers.org
www.redmountainmakers.org
-----------------------------------------------------------
Home email: shirley at velochicdesign.com


On May 13, 2014, at 10:27 AM, Shawn Nock <nock at nocko.se> wrote:

> maxigas <maxigas at anargeek.net> writes:
> 
>> I will not dwell on the topic of governance because others pointed out
>> before me that hackerspaces would be run largely by hackers for
>> hackers while others would have managers, owners, directors and
>> bosses.  I would be actually very curious about the US experience
>> about this, because I read many times on this list mails from people
>> who claim to be "community managers" or "directors".  But I didn't
>> have time to look into this further, since European hackerspaces are
>> far too coplex on their own...
> 
> I started in a hackerspace (HacDC) and recently moved to a city with a
> Makerspace (Melbourne, FL)... I have been shocked by the political
> differences, specifically with respect to governance. It could be argued
> that it's a function of location (Florida / DC)... but my (admittedly
> limited) experience is that makers would rather forget that governance
> is required and readily accept heirarchical forms so that 'someone else'
> might worry about it.
> 
> Recently our space voted on a 'representative' system of governance
> where an Executive Committee has near total control of the space (save
> for elections of the committee members every 1 to 3 years) with no
> transparency baked into the rules as written. At HacDC there would have
> been a warmer reception to burning the space to the ground... Everyone
> on the committee has a title (Director or specific office), but it's too
> early to know if they will appear (or not) in email sigs.
> 
> Furthermore, while security, privacy, and free software (as topics of
> research, study, and hacking) where huge at my previous hackerspace; our
> makerspace seems to have little to no interest in a privacy policy where
> Windows (and proprietary software) have a 5:1 representation with free
> software.
> 
> I certainly feel that, in our Makerspace, political awareness has been
> completely divorced from making/hacking things... I, for one, don't
> appreciate this as it glosses over how interconnected they are.
> 
> Otherwise, the people are competent in similar areas and hacks/makes of
> the same genres occur with similar regularity. I'd say that in this
> specific case the hackerspace and makerspace are functionally identical
> (if, again, you didn't care about politics). I suspect that if I hadn't
> been a member of a more progressive space, I wouldn't notice or bemoan
> the differences.
> 
> -- 
> Shawn Nock (OpenPGP: 0x6FDA11EE 3BC412E3)
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