User:Martind

Martin Dittus, martin@dekstop.de, @dekstop. Long-time member, LHS trustee since late 2011.

The Hidden Laws of Hackspace

• We're not a school, company, or sports club: we don't provide structured guidance and training.
• The organisation is designed for minimal overhead. Nobody is being paid to help fix your problems.
• There is no committee and little leadership. We're a social space that is heavily shaped by its interpersonal relationships.
• It is wrong to say: "there's no-one in charge". You're in charge. If you are unable, then find someone who can take over. And if that fails the trustees will take over; they would prefer you do it instead.
• A little bit of passion goes a long way. Most work at the Hackspace happened because someone was curious.
• We don't focus much on outreach, structured introductions, presentation. Consequently our "induction experience" sucks.
• If you come here unprepared: be patient and make time for a long learning experience. Observe and talk to the people around you.
• Don't be annoyed if you don't understand right away. Sometimes there's a good reason, sometimes it's simply a large group's path of least resistance.
• We're a community workshop. Your best first experience is when you come with a project in mind, and need a little bit of help or access to tools we may have.
• Making change is hard: it involves lots of initiative, and the patience to try again until you find the right way to make it work. This is by design. (And yes, it's not always good.)
• When coordinating group work: Involve your community in larger decisions, don't just do it all yourself; otherwise there's a good chance you'll get distracted by silly misunderstandings and oversights.

Recommended reading:

• Hacker ethics, which inform many of our key values: decentralisation as default organisation principle, the hands-on imperative, merit before status, mistrust of authority, etc.
• Jo Freedman's The Tyranny of Structurelessness, on the practical implications of running a structureless organisation
• Elinor Ostrom's design principles for common-pool resources, on means of managing and protecting a shared limited resource: the community, the space, and its materials
• A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy, on the need for barriers to entry and controlled community growth.
• etc.

Pages

• /LondonSpaces -- a list of misc other hackerspace-type organisations in London
• /Broken -- perceived LHS problems people currently complain about at the Hackspace.
• EMF 2012 (wiki archive, archived user page, old meeting minutes)
• Propaganda: The Cost of Hacking (github)
• Bitcoin Weekend 2011
• Pachube/Nanode evening at London Hackspace
• /Young Hackspace
• /Document Log Discovery Platform
• /LfmHardwareAuction
• /Spacewarming

Member Manual

Pages I'd include in a member's manual:

Welcome

• Guides/GettingStarted
• Membership
• Subgroups
• Weekly_Open_Evenings
• Laboratory_24/Getting_There
• List_of_mailing_lists, IRC

Howto

• Guides, esp:
  • Guides/Using_the_space
  • Guides/Bringing_items_to_the_space
  • Guides/Planning_an_event
  • Guides/Running_a_pledge
  • Guides/Filming_in_the_space
• Maintenance, Maintenance/Adopt-a-Spanner
• Faceplant

About us

• Organisation
• Organisation/Trustees
• Rules
• Grievance_Procedure

Useful resources/links

• Suppliers

Hackspace culture

• Other_Hackspaces
• Starting a Hackerspace

I don't think it's worth including pages like Infrastructure, Projects, OneHundredThings, Training_Directory, Equipment, Project:100_Paper_Cuts -- they're useful resources but very badly maintained and always out of date.

Spc Mgmt

There's a need for better tools to manage your highly successful hackerspace. Here are some free ideas. Get in touch if you end up building one of these!

Unsolved

• Pledge drive automation (it's possible to use Semantic MediaWiki and Wiki forms for this, see pledge drives at Technologia Incognita for an example)
• Registration and announcements for training sessions (e.g. Lasercutter_Training)
• Component ordering tool. E.g. a simple tool for re-ordering things we want to keep on stock (see consumables), a collaborative components shopping list for larger projects, a tool to group purchases of individuals to reduce shipping cost, etc.

In Progress

• Member decision-making tools: discourse and consensus testing (lots of people are working on such software atm, and there's our own OneClickOrgs. See also: [1])
• Tool access control linked to member accounts

Done

• (Is anything ever done?)

Trustee Induction

Things to go over with new trustees.

• Set up IRC with bouncer, add to directors channel
• Add to trustees@ email
• Share Dropbox
• Create OCO account
• Add their keys to the passwords file
• Have them read the Rules, the Grievance_Procedure, and at least skim the constitution
• Review current issues: member warnings, recent/current mediation efforts
• Let them participate in a few day-to-day tasks (e.g. member disputes)
• Add them to the mailing list moderators list (if desired)
• Add them to the uk-hackspace-organiser-comms list
• If available: hand over keys from predecessor