New Hackerspace Advice
We get a lot of emails asking us how to go about starting a hackerspace. This is what we send them:
Hello there,
The first steps we recommend for people attempting to start a new space are the following:
- Set up a mailing list, anything will do, a lot of people use google groups.
- Set up some form of web presence stating your goals, again a lot of people just use the header area of google groups for this.
- Spam the hell out of every local (or semi-local) geek mailing list with a stirring "We will fight them on the beaches" style email about the need for a hackerspace. We can give you examples if need be!
- If you can't think of any groups to contact, look harder, they're always there. Good places to contact are local schools (talk to the I.T. and D&T teachers, even if there are no interested students then the teachers themselves might be up for it), get in contact with societies at nearby Universities, and see if the departments at the University might let you send and email to all the students in their dept. You want to target the Computer Science, Chemistry, Maths, Physics and Engineering departments. Look for local sci-fi/gaming groups, they always tend to be a good source of Hackers.
- Don't push any specific angle, eg electronics or software, just be open to people learning, making and breaking things.
- It's a good idea to set up an IRC channel, most groups use Freenode and also hang out in #hackspace, the inter-uk-hackspace channel. The realtime aspect of IRC creates relationships between members who have not even met yet.
Once you have a fair number of people on the mailing list you should organise some meetings:
- If you can (and you think you have enough people) I would announce that you have meetings either once a month or bi-weekly. I prefer bi-weekly as it'll get the community going faster, but either will do. Try and stick to a regular day if you can, and make sure that day doesn't clash with anything obvious...
- Get a pub back room - most pubs will give them to you for free on quiet evenings, and in the worst case you'll have to drink enough to make it worth their while (which generally isn't a problem). Back rooms are great as you can generally whip out the soldering gear without them minding too much, and you won't get weird looks from other people in the pub when loads of laptops appear.
- When you have meetings, pitch them as "come and hack/socialise, we're a group of people who want to do this in a hackerspace one day", not "come and plan how we'll build our hackerspace" - planning meetings for hackerspaces get boring and repetitive very quickly. Build the community and the space organisation will happen naturally as long as everyone there wants it.
That last point is REALLY important, focus on the _community_ first and foremost, the space cannot exist without it. Spend several months building up a group of people who want to hack together and it'll work brilliantly. Don't even start planning the space until you have enough people to make it viable, I can't stress this enough!
When it comes to setting up mailing lists/blogs/websites, getting it done quickly and in an easy to use manner matters MUCH more than doing it properly on your own servers. E.g. a google group is fine for the first few months, as is a tumblr blog and everything else. When you have a group and you're not spending all your time evangelising the hackerspace you can migrate! (It's a bit controversial this one, but I've seen so many people waste time setting things up and writing code that I think it's worth saying)
When you get to the stage of taking donations/membership fees and looking at spaces - we can help with the formation of a non-profit and organisational structures you can adopt.
If you'd like a subdomain of .hackspace.org.uk pointing somewhere, let us know.
Can't wait to see how it goes, get in contact if you have any questions or need help with anything!
Cheers, --jonty
