5 ms·

Hackerspaces

69 points by nir 18y ago

c3o 18y ago
I've spent lots of time at Metalab, the hacker space in Vienna (http://metalab.at/wiki/English http://metalab.at/wiki/English) -- I initially met all my current startup co-founders there, made dozens of good friends, worked on several collaborative projects, held and attended workshops, etc. I'm sure there's lots of variety among all those spaces listed on the site -- apart from Metalab, I've so far only been to three others (C4 in Cologne, CCC-B in Berlin and Noisebridge in SF), but all of those would be excellent places to find likeminded people to work on projects together -- which is especially important in places that aren't otherwise known as startup or technology hubs, like Vienna. They're not necessarily the best places to actually work at (too much going on, people coming and going, using it socially rather than for productivity), but if you're in a city lucky enough to have one and you've never checked it out, you're definitely missing out. The only thing I dislike is when routine sets in and it starts turning into a hangout for a rather static group of friends -- openness is an extremely important property to prevent that from happening. So look up the one nearest to you and go knock on their door: I'm sure it'll be worth your time. And if there's none nearby and you got a year or so, consider starting one ;)
strlen 18y ago
Doesn't seem to be one in Peninsula/South Bay. Several coffee shops (particularly Coupa in Palo Alto, Red Rock / Dana Street in Mtn View) come close, but as others have pointed out coffee shops are less focused, aren't 24/7 and (to me this is most important) don't offer much of a chance to talk to people you don't already know. Is there an interest in an ad-hoc hack time for anyone in that area at one of the local places?
- kragen 18y ago
  What do you think about TechShop?
  - strlen 18y ago
    Looks promising, but a) it seems more of a hardware/mechanics/electronics organization, am I correct b) the membership fee seems somewhat high (or rather would be somewhat high if I only made use of this space for software/development, but it's very good deal for the machinery/mechanical/electronic hacking!). I'll check it out eventually - I've an interest in mechanics as well (car and motorcycle tuning) but it isn't as extensive as my interest in software hacking (as my alias suggests ;-)).
jackowayed 18y ago
That's a cool idea. A place you can go, hack, talk about your ideas, get help debugging, get suggestions, hear about new languages/frameworks/libraries, etc. The issue I see is getting it to happen. A hackerspace won't be cheap or particularly easy to setup. You have to rent (or happen to own) the space. You have to pay for power, heat/AC, and Internet every month. You have to buy seating. It's a cool concept, and I really hope that some people actually go to the effort and expense of actually making it happen.
- tptacek 18y ago
  People far, far dumber than us have pulled this off before.
  - noahlt 18y ago
    Forgive my ignorance, but: who?
    - catch23 18y ago
      probably all those people running coworking facilities. There are people who pay, and there are those who just show up and mooch. But somehow they're able to stay alive. In SF, there's the Hat factory & Citizen Space. I've only been to Citizen Space as a non-paying resident, but it amazes me how those places manage to survive in general.
      - noahlt 18y ago
        So, if I understand correctly, there's basically no difference between "hackerspaces" and "coworking facilities". Except maybe that coworking facilities already exist and work.
        kragen 18y ago
        I was a member of the first coworking space in San Francisco for a few weeks toward the end --- the one at Spiral Muse. I've also been to the (now defunct) hacklab here in Buenos Aires, to SuperHappyDevHouse (which is sort of an intermittent hacker space), to TechShop, to some classes at the Crucible, and gone to Wiki Wednesday at Citizen Space, and I'm considering signing up as a client of CoworkCentral here. So, given this broad but shallow experience, I think coworking spaces don't have much in common with hacker spaces; coworking spaces (IME) are a place where people go primarily to work (and aren't necessarily hackers, nor are they necessarily going to be happy with you interrupting their work to ask for help with your own), while hacker spaces are where they go to spend time with other hackers and work on fun stuff that you aren't getting paid for, in a fun collaborative setting. You might meet cofounders of a company at a hacker space and then go start your company in a coworking facility. I recognize that my experience on both sides is pretty shallow, though. noahlt writes: "Except maybe that coworking facilities already exist and work." I'm pretty sure hacker spaces have been around a few more years than coworking spaces.
martythemaniak 18y ago
Its a pretty cool idea, I should drop by and check it out some time. Toronto's HackLab also happens to be several stores down from the local pot cafe. A coincidence I am sure...
- st3fan 18y ago
  Well, the hacklab in Toronto is located in Kensington Market, so I am not surprised about it being close to a pot cafe :-) I'm more interested in the Moonbean Coffee Company though, which is around the corner. Delicious coffee and pastries made with love :-) I hang out at the toronto hacklab quite often. As a member I sometimes sit there during the week when I get bored of the home office. It is nice to have some company when you mostly work solo. I'm mostly doing software and it is nice to chat to folks about that in real life. On tuesdays there is open night and everybody is welcome. For me that is more a social thing. It is just great to hang out with people who have similar interests. Or even completely different interests! We are trying to do more stuff together but it is hard. There is a Python night for people learning Python and I am thinking of starting an iPhone night to get some people together there to work on iPhone stuff. Probably not a shared iPhone project. But even just having a bunch of iPhone coders in the same room will be lots of fun. Order some pizza, do demos and presentations, etc. Fun! S.
rtw 18y ago
I am not trying to be super cynical here, but... The problem I see with this kind of thing is that it looks like it would probably be against someone's self interest to make too much of an investment in (by hanging out there, possibly paying up for it). Because it could be a big time-suck. It is not possible to have a good or meaningful relationship with everyone, especially if you have a busy life already (non-computer friends, family, work etc.). So we discriminate. Not in the surface-sense, but the more you get to know someone you discriminate on future potential from the relationship. In the context of hacking on things together or shooting the shit about computer etc: some people are not in the same place at all. After talking with someone (sometimes, even for a minute or two) you could determine that they a) don't know crap about computers, b) seem to be good company, or c) are way more experienced than you. B and C are cool, but in this context I'd really worry about meeting a lot of people that don't program for a living, etc. It's all a question of balance, I don't mind "teaching" someone something at all, but I can't move forward if that is going to take up my whole day (unless I am trying to move forward as a teacher which I am not). I meet "computer people" at coffeeshops all the time (for three years I worked full time as a coffeeshop-inhabitating programmer). I always tended to like the people fine enough socially etc. in our "half-relationships", and even made a friend. But by far the majority of the computer conversations were not anything interesting to me because I was "beyond" that level. Hmm, "beyond"... I am trying really hard to not make this about any kind of hierarchy -- I fully appreciate that there is a rich world of ideas and concepts out there that I am a beginner in. But if someone's asking you how to do something that is answerable in a "I'm feeling lucky" google query... I tend to not try to go out of my way to be have lasting "computer relationships" with them. Online mechanisms allow you to have some control over who you spend time talking with and it's much easier to arrive at a good balance. I'm very interested in opposing opinions (especially from people with busy lives).
- the_goat 18y ago
  Newsflash bro: meatspace is messy and relationships take work.
  - rtw 18y ago
    I was talking about the specific plan to monetarily support such a place. Seems like it would be a time suck to engage in this kind of place a lot -- and therefore the self interest it takes to get people to "buy in" and help isn't there. Your comment, it doesn't address anything I've said. I'm well aware that relationships take work and that is central to my point: sometimes that work isn't worth it. Consider the "Grandma" in your life, the person you love to help set up their computer, come over to troubleshoot, etc. What a sweet lady. Now imagine there are ten of these people in your life. Now imagine they start loving computers and tell you all about the cool new stuff they found, etc. Now imagine you have no other relation to them other than these conversations. And they love starting such conversations.
tectonic 18y ago
I'm pretty excited about this.
sh1mmer 18y ago
This is awesome for me as I just discovered a Hack Space about 10 minutes walk from my house. HN continues to deliver :)
gaius 18y ago
The one in London seems to be for so-called "hacktivists", not people who just want to code. I'll pass.
- rw 18y ago
  If you "just want to code" then you fail. The reason to hack is to build, explore and fulfill your passions. From "the one in London"'s website: "The London Hacklabs Collective is a group of people interested in using technology to bring about social change. We establish, develop and run Hacklabs - political spaces used for independent media, the promotion of free software and other emancipatory technologies. Hacklabs are places to share skills, to learn and to teach." Are you scared?
  - enki 18y ago
    well, the one in vienna (metalab) is explicitly unpolitical, and nb in sf is exclusively about doing stuff too. obviously there are different interpretations of what hackspaces are about, ranging from "infrastructure for projects" to "political space".
- enki 18y ago
  so build your own - if their focus doesn't overlap with yours, there's a good chance you wouldn't compete with each other. actually i know people wanting to build a hackerspace in London right now, i can put you if you want.
- dcminter 18y ago
  Ack. What I'm looking for in London is really a late-hours coffee shop with a bit of a community. Hackers optional. Any suggestions?
arjunb 18y ago
surprised that there's only one space in sf (https://www.noisebridge.net/ https://www.noisebridge.net/) - has anyone been there?
- enki 18y ago
  yeah, nb is pretty cool, though more focused on hardware than i am. when i'm in sf i still hang out a lot there.
- antiform 18y ago
  I haven't been to noisebridge (yet), but from the people I've talked to at relatively large events like SuperHappyDevHouse, there's a quite a few smaller, informal groups of hackers getting together to work on stuff. It's just that most of these occur in peoples' apartments, so they're not open to the public. If you're interested in finding some place like this, though, I recommend you try and meet people somewhere like SHDH.
asnyder 18y ago
Just took a look at some of the New York City hackerspaces and came across ITP, "Membership fee approximately $60,000 over two years." Somehow I don't think it's worth it.
- noahlt 18y ago
  I'm assuming that's anomalous. ITP is part of NYU, and if you check their website you find that "ITP is a two-year graduate program located in the Tisch School of the Arts […]" so suddenly that doesn't seem so unreasonable. That being said, I'm not sure it belongs on that list. ;-)
nirmal 18y ago
I know there's a hackers group in Atlanta that meets on Tuesday nights in Midtown. Is there a new space or are people still meeting at Octane?
- alexrudnick 18y ago
  Still at Octane! Tuesday nights, come hang out :) (we likely won't be around this week, though) -- Alex from atlhack.org
RobGR 18y ago
I would be interested in talking with anyone who is thinking of forming a hackerspace in Austin, Texas or nearby. While I am interested in a hacking space for hacking's sake, I also think there is a lot of un-exploited economic potential in doing certain things in a "co-op" or similar structure. The "co-working" spaces such as Conjunctured are developments in that direction. I think another good example is the TechShop in San Francisco (I have never been there). All the people who are freelancing or contracting while trying to get some sort of start up off the ground, which includes a surprisingly large number of people even outside of this focused web site, have very similar needs and costs. A cheap place to work, possibly cheap hosting or a server room, a nice place to present to possible clients and investors, access to people with useful skills, etc. Anything that is a cost to you, that you can reduce, increases how far you can go self-funded and makes you minimally self-sustaining at a lower level. If those costs can be reduced by sharing in any way, you come out ahead. If you can take all those overhead costs and have them handled at least initially by a monthly fee to a co-op of a couple of hundred bucks, it should often work out for the better. Of course not everyone has the same needs, and finding a location that is cheap and located close enough to enough people might be tough.
arram 18y ago
For San Francisco people - noisebridge recently opened a few feet from 16th st. BART station. https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/NoiseBridge https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/NoiseBridge
shimon 18y ago
See also: http://blog.coworking.info/ http://blog.coworking.info/ These hacker spaces seem to be more hardware-hacker-focused (rather than webgeeks-in-an-office-focused) but it's a similar concept with similar challenges.
antiform 18y ago
If you're in the East Bay, there's Berkeley Coworking (http://www.berkeleycoworking.com/ http://www.berkeleycoworking.com/) near the Ashby BART station. It's not all techies, and not open all the time, but it's a damn good place to get some work done.
ahoyhere 18y ago
This has strong parallels to the coworking movement. Most of the coworking spaces offer drop-ins at a day rate, and the chief bonus is the support of the community (not just getting out of the house). All the prominent ones are self-sustaining. Linkies: http://coworking.pbwiki.com/ http://coworking.pbwiki.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coworking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coworking http://blog.coworking.info/ http://blog.coworking.info/ And two spaces run by two of my very best friends: Indy Hall in Philly (http://independentshall.com/ http://independentshall.com/) and New Work City in NYC (http://www.nwcny.com/ http://www.nwcny.com/). Indy Hall is especially interesting wrt the hackerspaces post because it has a fascinating project/LLC called Indy Hall Labs (http://labs.indyhall.org/ http://labs.indyhall.org/) set up to handle collaborations between IH members.
ahoyhere 18y ago
Also, as an American transplanted in Vienna, I am very much not surprised to see that Austria leads the list with per-capita hackerspace density. One of the interesting elements (that I suspect nobody here on Hacker News will mention) is government support. As somebody else said, coworking kinda follows the gym membership model and hackerspaces are by nature more transitory, ephemeral, and more likely to "just go away" if people "wander off." Austria, and the city of Vienna specifically, set aside a fairly significant budget for supporting local cultural projects and ones that advance Austria/Vienna in socio/economic/cultural ways. Thus, for example, metalab has a primo location right by the Rathaus (city hall) that they could never afford if the city didn't support them. And Net Culture Lab is in the MuseumsQuartier, the very apex of hip govt-funded culture.
- alphabet 18y ago
  True, there is a annual budget for digital arts and culture from the administration of Vienna and the Metalab gained some funding. Of course this helped/helps to GTD faster (e.g. renovation work) but our hackerspace was founded without this perspective and is designed with the idea of base financing by membership fees - and I can assure you that this is how we still handle it. The Net Culture Lab you mention in contrast to our community-drived space is financed by the biggest Austrian telco, a quite different approach but we believe in plurality and welcome alike initiatives.

69 points by nir 18y ago

c3o 18y ago

I've spent lots of time at Metalab, the hacker space in Vienna (http://metalab.at/wiki/English http://metalab.at/wiki/English) -- I initially met all my current startup co-founders there, made dozens of good friends, worked on several collaborative projects, held and attended workshops, etc. I'm sure there's lots of variety among all those spaces listed on the site -- apart from Metalab, I've so far only been to three others (C4 in Cologne, CCC-B in Berlin and Noisebridge in SF), but all of those would be excellent places to find likeminded people to work on projects together -- which is especially important in places that aren't otherwise known as startup or technology hubs, like Vienna. They're not necessarily the best places to actually work at (too much going on, people coming and going, using it socially rather than for productivity), but if you're in a city lucky enough to have one and you've never checked it out, you're definitely missing out. The only thing I dislike is when routine sets in and it starts turning into a hangout for a rather static group of friends -- openness is an extremely important property to prevent that from happening. So look up the one nearest to you and go knock on their door: I'm sure it'll be worth your time. And if there's none nearby and you got a year or so, consider starting one ;)

strlen 18y ago

Doesn't seem to be one in Peninsula/South Bay. Several coffee shops (particularly Coupa in Palo Alto, Red Rock / Dana Street in Mtn View) come close, but as others have pointed out coffee shops are less focused, aren't 24/7 and (to me this is most important) don't offer much of a chance to talk to people you don't already know. Is there an interest in an ad-hoc hack time for anyone in that area at one of the local places?

kragen 18y ago
What do you think about TechShop?
- strlen 18y ago
  Looks promising, but a) it seems more of a hardware/mechanics/electronics organization, am I correct b) the membership fee seems somewhat high (or rather would be somewhat high if I only made use of this space for software/development, but it's very good deal for the machinery/mechanical/electronic hacking!). I'll check it out eventually - I've an interest in mechanics as well (car and motorcycle tuning) but it isn't as extensive as my interest in software hacking (as my alias suggests ;-)).

jackowayed 18y ago

That's a cool idea. A place you can go, hack, talk about your ideas, get help debugging, get suggestions, hear about new languages/frameworks/libraries, etc. The issue I see is getting it to happen. A hackerspace won't be cheap or particularly easy to setup. You have to rent (or happen to own) the space. You have to pay for power, heat/AC, and Internet every month. You have to buy seating. It's a cool concept, and I really hope that some people actually go to the effort and expense of actually making it happen.

tptacek 18y ago
People far, far dumber than us have pulled this off before.
- noahlt 18y ago
  Forgive my ignorance, but: who?
  - catch23 18y ago
    probably all those people running coworking facilities. There are people who pay, and there are those who just show up and mooch. But somehow they're able to stay alive. In SF, there's the Hat factory & Citizen Space. I've only been to Citizen Space as a non-paying resident, but it amazes me how those places manage to survive in general.
    - noahlt 18y ago
      So, if I understand correctly, there's basically no difference between "hackerspaces" and "coworking facilities". Except maybe that coworking facilities already exist and work.
      - kragen 18y ago
        I was a member of the first coworking space in San Francisco for a few weeks toward the end --- the one at Spiral Muse. I've also been to the (now defunct) hacklab here in Buenos Aires, to SuperHappyDevHouse (which is sort of an intermittent hacker space), to TechShop, to some classes at the Crucible, and gone to Wiki Wednesday at Citizen Space, and I'm considering signing up as a client of CoworkCentral here. So, given this broad but shallow experience, I think coworking spaces don't have much in common with hacker spaces; coworking spaces (IME) are a place where people go primarily to work (and aren't necessarily hackers, nor are they necessarily going to be happy with you interrupting their work to ask for help with your own), while hacker spaces are where they go to spend time with other hackers and work on fun stuff that you aren't getting paid for, in a fun collaborative setting. You might meet cofounders of a company at a hacker space and then go start your company in a coworking facility. I recognize that my experience on both sides is pretty shallow, though. noahlt writes: "Except maybe that coworking facilities already exist and work." I'm pretty sure hacker spaces have been around a few more years than coworking spaces.

martythemaniak 18y ago

Its a pretty cool idea, I should drop by and check it out some time. Toronto's HackLab also happens to be several stores down from the local pot cafe. A coincidence I am sure...

st3fan 18y ago
Well, the hacklab in Toronto is located in Kensington Market, so I am not surprised about it being close to a pot cafe :-) I'm more interested in the Moonbean Coffee Company though, which is around the corner. Delicious coffee and pastries made with love :-) I hang out at the toronto hacklab quite often. As a member I sometimes sit there during the week when I get bored of the home office. It is nice to have some company when you mostly work solo. I'm mostly doing software and it is nice to chat to folks about that in real life. On tuesdays there is open night and everybody is welcome. For me that is more a social thing. It is just great to hang out with people who have similar interests. Or even completely different interests! We are trying to do more stuff together but it is hard. There is a Python night for people learning Python and I am thinking of starting an iPhone night to get some people together there to work on iPhone stuff. Probably not a shared iPhone project. But even just having a bunch of iPhone coders in the same room will be lots of fun. Order some pizza, do demos and presentations, etc. Fun! S.

rtw 18y ago

I am not trying to be super cynical here, but... The problem I see with this kind of thing is that it looks like it would probably be against someone's self interest to make too much of an investment in (by hanging out there, possibly paying up for it). Because it could be a big time-suck. It is not possible to have a good or meaningful relationship with everyone, especially if you have a busy life already (non-computer friends, family, work etc.). So we discriminate. Not in the surface-sense, but the more you get to know someone you discriminate on future potential from the relationship. In the context of hacking on things together or shooting the shit about computer etc: some people are not in the same place at all. After talking with someone (sometimes, even for a minute or two) you could determine that they a) don't know crap about computers, b) seem to be good company, or c) are way more experienced than you. B and C are cool, but in this context I'd really worry about meeting a lot of people that don't program for a living, etc. It's all a question of balance, I don't mind "teaching" someone something at all, but I can't move forward if that is going to take up my whole day (unless I am trying to move forward as a teacher which I am not). I meet "computer people" at coffeeshops all the time (for three years I worked full time as a coffeeshop-inhabitating programmer). I always tended to like the people fine enough socially etc. in our "half-relationships", and even made a friend. But by far the majority of the computer conversations were not anything interesting to me because I was "beyond" that level. Hmm, "beyond"... I am trying really hard to not make this about any kind of hierarchy -- I fully appreciate that there is a rich world of ideas and concepts out there that I am a beginner in. But if someone's asking you how to do something that is answerable in a "I'm feeling lucky" google query... I tend to not try to go out of my way to be have lasting "computer relationships" with them. Online mechanisms allow you to have some control over who you spend time talking with and it's much easier to arrive at a good balance. I'm very interested in opposing opinions (especially from people with busy lives).

the_goat 18y ago
Newsflash bro: meatspace is messy and relationships take work.
- rtw 18y ago
  I was talking about the specific plan to monetarily support such a place. Seems like it would be a time suck to engage in this kind of place a lot -- and therefore the self interest it takes to get people to "buy in" and help isn't there. Your comment, it doesn't address anything I've said. I'm well aware that relationships take work and that is central to my point: sometimes that work isn't worth it. Consider the "Grandma" in your life, the person you love to help set up their computer, come over to troubleshoot, etc. What a sweet lady. Now imagine there are ten of these people in your life. Now imagine they start loving computers and tell you all about the cool new stuff they found, etc. Now imagine you have no other relation to them other than these conversations. And they love starting such conversations.

tectonic 18y ago

I'm pretty excited about this.

sh1mmer 18y ago

This is awesome for me as I just discovered a Hack Space about 10 minutes walk from my house. HN continues to deliver :)

gaius 18y ago

The one in London seems to be for so-called "hacktivists", not people who just want to code. I'll pass.

rw 18y ago
If you "just want to code" then you fail. The reason to hack is to build, explore and fulfill your passions. From "the one in London"'s website: "The London Hacklabs Collective is a group of people interested in using technology to bring about social change. We establish, develop and run Hacklabs - political spaces used for independent media, the promotion of free software and other emancipatory technologies. Hacklabs are places to share skills, to learn and to teach." Are you scared?
- enki 18y ago
  well, the one in vienna (metalab) is explicitly unpolitical, and nb in sf is exclusively about doing stuff too. obviously there are different interpretations of what hackspaces are about, ranging from "infrastructure for projects" to "political space".
enki 18y ago
so build your own - if their focus doesn't overlap with yours, there's a good chance you wouldn't compete with each other. actually i know people wanting to build a hackerspace in London right now, i can put you if you want.
dcminter 18y ago
Ack. What I'm looking for in London is really a late-hours coffee shop with a bit of a community. Hackers optional. Any suggestions?

arjunb 18y ago

surprised that there's only one space in sf (https://www.noisebridge.net/ https://www.noisebridge.net/) - has anyone been there?

enki 18y ago
yeah, nb is pretty cool, though more focused on hardware than i am. when i'm in sf i still hang out a lot there.
antiform 18y ago
I haven't been to noisebridge (yet), but from the people I've talked to at relatively large events like SuperHappyDevHouse, there's a quite a few smaller, informal groups of hackers getting together to work on stuff. It's just that most of these occur in peoples' apartments, so they're not open to the public. If you're interested in finding some place like this, though, I recommend you try and meet people somewhere like SHDH.

asnyder 18y ago

Just took a look at some of the New York City hackerspaces and came across ITP, "Membership fee approximately $60,000 over two years." Somehow I don't think it's worth it.

noahlt 18y ago
I'm assuming that's anomalous. ITP is part of NYU, and if you check their website you find that "ITP is a two-year graduate program located in the Tisch School of the Arts […]" so suddenly that doesn't seem so unreasonable. That being said, I'm not sure it belongs on that list. ;-)

nirmal 18y ago

I know there's a hackers group in Atlanta that meets on Tuesday nights in Midtown. Is there a new space or are people still meeting at Octane?

alexrudnick 18y ago
Still at Octane! Tuesday nights, come hang out :) (we likely won't be around this week, though) -- Alex from atlhack.org

RobGR 18y ago

I would be interested in talking with anyone who is thinking of forming a hackerspace in Austin, Texas or nearby. While I am interested in a hacking space for hacking's sake, I also think there is a lot of un-exploited economic potential in doing certain things in a "co-op" or similar structure. The "co-working" spaces such as Conjunctured are developments in that direction. I think another good example is the TechShop in San Francisco (I have never been there). All the people who are freelancing or contracting while trying to get some sort of start up off the ground, which includes a surprisingly large number of people even outside of this focused web site, have very similar needs and costs. A cheap place to work, possibly cheap hosting or a server room, a nice place to present to possible clients and investors, access to people with useful skills, etc. Anything that is a cost to you, that you can reduce, increases how far you can go self-funded and makes you minimally self-sustaining at a lower level. If those costs can be reduced by sharing in any way, you come out ahead. If you can take all those overhead costs and have them handled at least initially by a monthly fee to a co-op of a couple of hundred bucks, it should often work out for the better. Of course not everyone has the same needs, and finding a location that is cheap and located close enough to enough people might be tough.

arram 18y ago

For San Francisco people - noisebridge recently opened a few feet from 16th st. BART station. https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/NoiseBridge https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/NoiseBridge

shimon 18y ago

See also: http://blog.coworking.info/ http://blog.coworking.info/ These hacker spaces seem to be more hardware-hacker-focused (rather than webgeeks-in-an-office-focused) but it's a similar concept with similar challenges.

antiform 18y ago

If you're in the East Bay, there's Berkeley Coworking (http://www.berkeleycoworking.com/ http://www.berkeleycoworking.com/) near the Ashby BART station. It's not all techies, and not open all the time, but it's a damn good place to get some work done.

ahoyhere 18y ago

This has strong parallels to the coworking movement. Most of the coworking spaces offer drop-ins at a day rate, and the chief bonus is the support of the community (not just getting out of the house). All the prominent ones are self-sustaining. Linkies: http://coworking.pbwiki.com/ http://coworking.pbwiki.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coworking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coworking http://blog.coworking.info/ http://blog.coworking.info/ And two spaces run by two of my very best friends: Indy Hall in Philly (http://independentshall.com/ http://independentshall.com/) and New Work City in NYC (http://www.nwcny.com/ http://www.nwcny.com/). Indy Hall is especially interesting wrt the hackerspaces post because it has a fascinating project/LLC called Indy Hall Labs (http://labs.indyhall.org/ http://labs.indyhall.org/) set up to handle collaborations between IH members.

ahoyhere 18y ago

Also, as an American transplanted in Vienna, I am very much not surprised to see that Austria leads the list with per-capita hackerspace density. One of the interesting elements (that I suspect nobody here on Hacker News will mention) is government support. As somebody else said, coworking kinda follows the gym membership model and hackerspaces are by nature more transitory, ephemeral, and more likely to "just go away" if people "wander off." Austria, and the city of Vienna specifically, set aside a fairly significant budget for supporting local cultural projects and ones that advance Austria/Vienna in socio/economic/cultural ways. Thus, for example, metalab has a primo location right by the Rathaus (city hall) that they could never afford if the city didn't support them. And Net Culture Lab is in the MuseumsQuartier, the very apex of hip govt-funded culture.

alphabet 18y ago
True, there is a annual budget for digital arts and culture from the administration of Vienna and the Metalab gained some funding. Of course this helped/helps to GTD faster (e.g. renovation work) but our hackerspace was founded without this perspective and is designed with the idea of base financing by membership fees - and I can assure you that this is how we still handle it. The Net Culture Lab you mention in contrast to our community-drived space is financed by the biggest Austrian telco, a quite different approach but we believe in plurality and welcome alike initiatives.