[hackerspaces] Trenton NJ

[Simon Clark]

> On May 2, 2016, at 2:50 PM, Arclight <arclight at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> My experience is that getting one-time funding is not the problem you
> need to solve. "Build it and they will come" doesn't really work with
> hackerspaces.  What you need to do is "Get everyone to come and then
> build it."  Without a core community, there would just be a big, empty
> building that only sort-of serves the needs of those who show up.

This is somewhat contrary to our experience.  We tried waiting until we had enough members to keep the place afloat before signing a lease, but people would drift away as they lost interest, and we got not closer.  Finally we signed a lease with only 6 core members (we needed 26 to pay the bills). Now we have 118 active members, and a bigger space.  I agree, it’s madness to try and start out with only one person, but had we waited until we had critical mass, we’d still be waiting.

Simon