[sudoroom] Meditations on Space / Place

[Matthew Senate]

Folks,

After last week's meetup discussion, I've spent a bit of time thinking
about Sudo Room's goals and motivations. It was really helpful, and I have
a few important suggestions, for which I would love ample feedback!

1. The purpose of the weekly Sudo Room meetup is to coordinate and open a
hackerspace, a room, in Oakland under a few minor conditions (BART access,
wheelchair accessibility, etc). There are many dependencies here, including
starting projects that exemplify the space's potential activities.

This is important because I'm suggesting that the need for such a space is
somewhat self-evident. That the diversity of interests of people in this
area necessitates the beginnings of a complex and robust set of
hackerspaces. Which leads into the next point:

2. There are some subjects, practices, and ideals the Sudo Room meetup has
begun to articulate that form the uses of such a hackerspace. Among them
are citizen science, digital citizenship, trans- and multi-disciplinary
practices, humanities (squishy stuff), public access, community support,
and social good. These cannot be met all at once, nor should they be--but
they are, indeed, ideals and potentials.

1 and 2 are made with one final suggestion in mind:

3. It should be the goal of the Sudo Room meetup to secure a room, within a
short time frame (proposed 6 mo. at this point), to hold business and begin
projects and collaborations. Further, the Sudo Room will be a launching pad
for the expansions possible in suggestion 2, which we could even name
(thanks to Jenny for inspiration here) Sudo Space ;)

This is motivated primarily by the sort of exciting potential we have
presently for many projects, the need to keep a consistent meeting and
project space, and lastly, the low cost for space in certain East Bay
locations. Further, the opportunity to create Sudo Room first and create an
artifact of our hackerspace organizing, freezing it in time, could be an
invaluable learning tool for others who want to build hackerspaces
elsewhere. Lastly, this does not mean it has to be our OWN space. In fact,
Anca at Techliminal has offered the possibility to pitch in to get access
to their space and store some of our stuff there, which would likely be
pretty affordable.

We have options, so this email is really about listing and weighing them:
http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/Sudo_room/open_a_space

Recap:

put spaces / places / plans / prices on
http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/Sudo_room/open_a_space
get Sudo Room soon, as Version 0.1
put time, energy, and love
get Sudo Space after some time, as Version 1.0

- Matt
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.hackerspaces.org/pipermail/sudoroom/attachments/20111228/117b4634/attachment.html>