Was very inspired by a hacker space on a trip to Seattle. In Sacramento CA where we used to have an amazing enormous space "Hacker Lab". We still have one but it's more crafts oriented which is fine but trying to think about a more computer-oriented one for kids specifically. Thinking about overhauling our garage to be a space for my kid's / kid's friend's little nascent computer club and feeling it out from there. Just wondering if people have any wisdom / advice.
This book is the "Gold standard" in starting a successful makerspace / hackerspace. Highly recommend. Covers tool organization, to staffing, to standard operation procedures, agile, entrepreneurship, funding and more.
" Covers tool organization, to staffing, to standard operation procedures, agile, entrepreneurship, funding and more."
Oh, I must have misunderstood what hacker space means. I imagined a place full of gizmos to tinker with and hardware/firmware/software wizards doing all sorts of crazy coding and circuit-boarding stuff, like in the demo scene.
I also am interested in the boundaries of the term. It seems pretty inclusive / flexible but I'm realizing it probably has more of a historical definition. Maybe this book covers that but would be curious if there's any other resources out there on covering the history / definition of the Hacker Space concept.
From experience founding and running Droplabs out of download LA for 5 years, get all official members, whatever their official-ness is, written down in a public shared document that includes expectations and boundaries for all behaviors in the shared space, and all financial obligations to the space and between members outlined with boundaries too, with penalties/teeth for non-compliance. Org and general space member behaviors also need boundaries, one of which is to include group decisions, votes, or whatever made as an official decision are closed when a decision is made, and is not forever a talking point until the relentless get their way. Shared anything brings out the worst in people, and your organization needs to expect it, because the stubborn and mentally ill fail to be entertaining when real finances of multiple people are on the line every month. It's amazing how many normal people are downright crazy when group responsibilities and financial commitments are on the line.
This. The best comedy clubs are the ones that protect the experience by showing troublemakers the door, not the cheapest one or the one with the absolute best location.
> "Shared anything brings out the worst in people"
> "the stubborn and mentally ill"
So on point... thank you for the reminders on these realities... Not sure how many times I'm going to need to learn my lesson with all this... (happens in the art hippie world too, and elsewhere I'm sure)
There's got to be some better way to keep it simple and break out of all that though right? Like keeping it a benevolent dictatorship? That doesn't seem great either obviously...
I only do benevolent dictatorships anymore. Mine or someone else's, committee management drains all energies when even one person is difficult or slow.
Whenever you are in leadership position my opinion is that one should adopt a public and private persona. You can do cheery whatever BS to keep people feeling like they “psychologically belong” and whatever woke lingo is hip in HR.
Behind the scenes, you need to ensure single responsibility principle applies to everyone. They need to do one or only a few things, but each thing they do should be what they’re good and capable at. Just fire or kick out people who are annoying. If you think they’re a huge stinker on social media who might ruin things more, adapt and put them doing something else. If they are really hopeless then hopefully they fuck up in that role and you can fire them, or you can just let them organically drop off.
You can’t let feels get in the way when you’re in charge. A follower operates on feelings.
When running a commercial "hacker space" you have a ton of problems with strangers, it sounds like you're focused on a community hacker space which can be much smaller scale with fewer rando issues. I was on the board of a successful commercial/community hacker space for a while and our problems were not around money (we had a great community of paying members who also volunteered to maintain the space) but more people not using the space in ways that were acceptable to the community (mentally ill members trying to live there, people doing stinky projects, people abusing the tools, major disagreements about how to organize scrap wood, plumb the dust collection, etc). You probably want to avoid this complexity (at least, for now, until you start running into scaling limits) and stick to the "computer club" community.
You will probably want an onboarding process with liability waiver. This is partly materials for parents to help them understand what their kids will be up to at your house. You're going to host other people in your place and there is liability that comes along with that.
You will need to figure out how to keep your computer club from devolving into a lan party (unless that's what you want) and focused on learning opportunities by providing guided learning opportunities. LLMs are really good for helping you develop these activities based on an idea, including digging down into the details. Some things that kids might be into: building adder circuits in Minecraft with redstone (requires a basis in binary math and logic gates, which you can teach on paper and in minecraft). Scratch programs to fulfill certain goals (build a gravity model and get a spaceship to orbit; make a clone of a simple platformer video game they like; etc).
After you have some ideas for projects/classes, you're going to want to write up a schedule so parents can help their kids get there. You should also provide volunteer opportunities so kids (and possibly their parents) can help out - maintain the website, fix the computers, etc. This not only helps lessen your workload, it also gives them a sense of community, that they're not just coming to hang out, they're responsible. Make sure to have community standards around cleaning up after yourself and enforce them.
So, maybe after having a couple of scheduled classes, put out a call for donation of old computer hardware, and maybe have the kids try to assemble some working systems from whatever you get. Good luck!
As one of the founders of the hackerspace you've visited out in seattle & a fellow recurser that you might've heard about the space from, I can drop to you some of my notes & learnings from two years in of devhack.
the biggest piece of advice by far that I pulled from a bunch of european-style hackerspaces (& HacDC, my formative hackspace) has been: Just do it. Find a physical space, start doing meetups, promote it a bit and cool folks will find you.
We at devhack took a very word-of-mouth based approach to promotion and that has prevented what a lot of comments here are trying to mitigate in terms of attracting the wrong crowd too quickly -- although I think there's lots of value in creating a space which supports eccentric folks / ppl with diverse backgrounds.
Founding a hackspace is a very learn-as-you-go experience, has been very fulfilling and has had plenty of hiccups that we've had to react to as they come. The most important part is to have fun and create a fun space for you and your friends.
Also, put a roller rink in your space. very important and wish we had that
They're both a far cry from what you're describing. But a lot of it is just putting the work in to build and foster a community around such a thing. Maintaining positive vibes among all members and making it a "third space" for those that want one
Devhack, actually didn't realize they had a site thank you! Definitely not super similar to what I'm describing but yeah inspiring nonetheless for sure.
Kids often get extra benefit from the process of salvaging and reusing parts. Getting free or extremely cheap stuff to take apart might be a good thing to look into. ewaste recyclers or landfills with an ewaste area can be awesome
If it's a computer club for a small group of kids in a garage there's not much that needs to be thought out. This isn't like a hacker space where you need to learn how to run an actual org. I mean, how big can your garage get?
Yeah good call, I'm thinking it can really just be a club meetup space that can expand to workshops or whatever organically. We also have a huge annual open studios event down here in Sac that I think we could use as an opportunity to showcase stuff and invite people in.
You might be able to hook up with your local library. You could donate a major tool or two if they already have one - many do, at least in large towns and up.
Direct link: https://www.maker-works.com/operations-book
Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Intentional-Makerspace-Operations-Dal...
Oh, I must have misunderstood what hacker space means. I imagined a place full of gizmos to tinker with and hardware/firmware/software wizards doing all sorts of crazy coding and circuit-boarding stuff, like in the demo scene.
> "Shared anything brings out the worst in people"
> "the stubborn and mentally ill"
So on point... thank you for the reminders on these realities... Not sure how many times I'm going to need to learn my lesson with all this... (happens in the art hippie world too, and elsewhere I'm sure)
There's got to be some better way to keep it simple and break out of all that though right? Like keeping it a benevolent dictatorship? That doesn't seem great either obviously...
They need to be programmed.
Whenever you are in leadership position my opinion is that one should adopt a public and private persona. You can do cheery whatever BS to keep people feeling like they “psychologically belong” and whatever woke lingo is hip in HR.
Behind the scenes, you need to ensure single responsibility principle applies to everyone. They need to do one or only a few things, but each thing they do should be what they’re good and capable at. Just fire or kick out people who are annoying. If you think they’re a huge stinker on social media who might ruin things more, adapt and put them doing something else. If they are really hopeless then hopefully they fuck up in that role and you can fire them, or you can just let them organically drop off.
You can’t let feels get in the way when you’re in charge. A follower operates on feelings.
You will probably want an onboarding process with liability waiver. This is partly materials for parents to help them understand what their kids will be up to at your house. You're going to host other people in your place and there is liability that comes along with that.
You will need to figure out how to keep your computer club from devolving into a lan party (unless that's what you want) and focused on learning opportunities by providing guided learning opportunities. LLMs are really good for helping you develop these activities based on an idea, including digging down into the details. Some things that kids might be into: building adder circuits in Minecraft with redstone (requires a basis in binary math and logic gates, which you can teach on paper and in minecraft). Scratch programs to fulfill certain goals (build a gravity model and get a spaceship to orbit; make a clone of a simple platformer video game they like; etc).
After you have some ideas for projects/classes, you're going to want to write up a schedule so parents can help their kids get there. You should also provide volunteer opportunities so kids (and possibly their parents) can help out - maintain the website, fix the computers, etc. This not only helps lessen your workload, it also gives them a sense of community, that they're not just coming to hang out, they're responsible. Make sure to have community standards around cleaning up after yourself and enforce them.
So, maybe after having a couple of scheduled classes, put out a call for donation of old computer hardware, and maybe have the kids try to assemble some working systems from whatever you get. Good luck!
As one of the founders of the hackerspace you've visited out in seattle & a fellow recurser that you might've heard about the space from, I can drop to you some of my notes & learnings from two years in of devhack.
the biggest piece of advice by far that I pulled from a bunch of european-style hackerspaces (& HacDC, my formative hackspace) has been: Just do it. Find a physical space, start doing meetups, promote it a bit and cool folks will find you.
https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/attach...
We at devhack took a very word-of-mouth based approach to promotion and that has prevented what a lot of comments here are trying to mitigate in terms of attracting the wrong crowd too quickly -- although I think there's lots of value in creating a space which supports eccentric folks / ppl with diverse backgrounds.
Founding a hackspace is a very learn-as-you-go experience, has been very fulfilling and has had plenty of hiccups that we've had to react to as they come. The most important part is to have fun and create a fun space for you and your friends.
Also, put a roller rink in your space. very important and wish we had that
I like the Tuesday Rule.
There's https://devhack.net/ in Seattle's U-District as well as Black Lodge Research https://www.blacklodgeresearch.org/ over in Redmond
They're both a far cry from what you're describing. But a lot of it is just putting the work in to build and foster a community around such a thing. Maintaining positive vibes among all members and making it a "third space" for those that want one
Please feel free to drop in again whenever you're in Seattle!