I've spent lots of time at Metalab, the hacker space in Vienna (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 ;)
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.
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.
So, if I understand correctly, there's basically no difference between "hackerspaces" and "coworking facilities". Except maybe that coworking facilities already exist and work.
Both hackerspaces and coworking facilities are kind of operating on the "gym membership" model, where a lot of membership fees are pooled to get something that is shared but no one could afford to buy for just their own use.
However the people there don't totally overlap, any more than they totally overlap with Gold's Gym, TechShop, a Country Club, Hunting Lodges, organic co-ops, or any of the other things that people do in the same pattern.
Co-workers are there to make money, mostly either by freelancing or by doing a startup. They have in common that they have rejected (or been rejected by) the large corporate organization, and that their work consists mainly of typing on a keyboard and looking at a screen (instead of shaping metal or cooking food or something), so they have similar facilities requirements.
Hackers might like to make money, but the primary goals of the endeavor are expansion of ability and knowledge. Thus, hackerspaces can succeed, and then completely disappear as people wander off; they tend to have more counter-culture type themes; people often live there; since the part of hacking that is typing on keyboards and looking at screens is easy to do from home, the stuff in the hackerspace tends to be the stuff that needed money and physical space, so there is more hardware crap all over; and a portion of the people are generally interested in hacking human society in various ways, leading to the political interests and "hacktivism" and etc.
Both hackerspaces and coworking facilities are not new. HQ and BusinessSuites and many hotels are essentially more expensive co-working facilities with less emphasis on community, and the insurers who agreed to do all their business at Loyld's coffee house in 1600s London or the lawyers who all worked from the Inner Temple Inn even before that must have been doing something similar. I am pretty sure that CoD had a loft hackerspace in Boston in the early 1990s, and I know of a few other shared apartments and houses that were hackerspaces for a few years.
The basic idea is, if you want to do something, and you can't drop the cash to do it yourself, see if you can find some like-minded friends. "Co-founders" is what they are called in the startup context.
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.
Here's what Jake Appelbaum, one of the Noisebridge founders, said about this discussion:
There are huge differences. Noisebridge, a 501c3 in San Francisco, is tangentially related to the so-called "hackerspaces" movement. Coworking is a gym, Noisebridge is a community. Coworking spaces are quiet places to do your day job. Noisebridge is a place to learn why your kernel module isn't working by talking to the person to your left. The person to your left just happens to be a kernel hacker and she is totally happy to talk to you; she's there for both social and technical reasons.
It's a safe space for asking questions and it's a safe space to find the answers together.
It's the kind of place where you drag a safe in off of the street and learn how to crack it. Because you're spending your spare time with ten other people interested in understanding mechanical locks, it will open.
A group of us had a space in Seattle and the cost ended up being $150 / month / person. That got us maybe 2000 sq feet of basement space. People used it as a project space, party space, and work space.
I think a few things in particular made it work:
- A bunch of people who wanted to work on projects together and could come down for weekly meetings.
- A few people willing to take on administrative responsibilities (collecting rent, thinking about organizational structure, etc).
- The cool-factor of having a hacker space (there weren't many others at that point)
We eventually closed it down when everyone's lives got busy but it was a great run.
It is awkward to carry your laptop with you to the loo. Sometimes you can trust someone when you ask them but think about what a frustration it would be if you came back and it was gone.
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).
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.
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.
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?
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 ;-)).
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.
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. ;-)
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!
If you're in the East Bay, there's Berkeley Coworking (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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
Indy Hall is especially interesting wrt the hackerspaces post because it has a fascinating project/LLC called Indy Hall Labs (http://labs.indyhall.org/) set up to handle collaborations between IH members.
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.
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.
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 ;)