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Happy to see this article on the front page of hacker news, it feels like it ties together two important parts of my life. I help run one of Swedens biggest com

Happy to see this article on the front page of hacker news, it feels like it ties together two important parts of my life. I help run one of Swedens biggest communal workshops for artists and designers and its hard to underestimate the value of communal workshops of the sort highlighted in this article. Most of us who dwell here live in a world where the infrastructure is digital. Need to build a bigger thing? Just upgrade your instance or scale your cluster. Need stronger tools? Just find it and read the manual. For artists and designers working in the physical space it's not that easy. Got a commission for a large public sculpture that won't even fit in the door to your studio? Spend all the money you earn on it to rent a commercial space. Need welding machines, casting oven or a ten meter textile printing table? Contract it out and loose creative control. The ability to share resources and tools is essential for the creative professions and the fact that their purpose is highlighted in this article is a positive sign. Spaces like these are not guilds which restrict supply or inflate the price. They are more like docker containers which allow complicated infrastructures to be run and built on you local physical infrastructure.

AdamM12 7y ago
How do you deal w/ tragedy of the commons type problems? Use to go to a hacker space to use machinery for a project and it seemed that the guys running it constantly complained about stuff not being put away properly all the time. Another note... I've recently thought a communal food hall would be pretty interesting where people who are trying to start their own restaurant, food truck, etc. could have some base infrastructure at a low cost so they could build out their product over a few months. I'm sure these probably exist.
- spectaclepiece 7y ago
  It hasn’t been a big issue the past five years I’ve been there. It’s for professional artists and designers so they all have a common interest in taking care of it. It’s been going for almost 50 years. The bigger problem comes from what kind of production you allow. We focus on large scale production but it’s not a production line. Nobody needs permission to work on anything specific but some people have exploited the subsidized rates and then you need to step in.
  - AdamM12 7y ago
    Yeah I can understand the ethos of that but don't you think that part of the goal should be to allow them to build up the capital to expand out of the space? Do you have some type of progression to get them to scale up and out? It seems like it would be a tricky thing to navigate. You wouldn't want to artificially restrict them from growing. Then they'd end up staying in the space taking up room that could be used by one or more up and comers.

AdamM12 7y ago

How do you deal w/ tragedy of the commons type problems? Use to go to a hacker space to use machinery for a project and it seemed that the guys running it constantly complained about stuff not being put away properly all the time. Another note... I've recently thought a communal food hall would be pretty interesting where people who are trying to start their own restaurant, food truck, etc. could have some base infrastructure at a low cost so they could build out their product over a few months. I'm sure these probably exist.

spectaclepiece 7y ago
It hasn’t been a big issue the past five years I’ve been there. It’s for professional artists and designers so they all have a common interest in taking care of it. It’s been going for almost 50 years. The bigger problem comes from what kind of production you allow. We focus on large scale production but it’s not a production line. Nobody needs permission to work on anything specific but some people have exploited the subsidized rates and then you need to step in.
- AdamM12 7y ago
  Yeah I can understand the ethos of that but don't you think that part of the goal should be to allow them to build up the capital to expand out of the space? Do you have some type of progression to get them to scale up and out? It seems like it would be a tricky thing to navigate. You wouldn't want to artificially restrict them from growing. Then they'd end up staying in the space taking up room that could be used by one or more up and comers.