The Story of a Picture

In early March 2010, just before the UK Maker Faire in Newcastle, four hansom young men met in a Nottingham pub. It was a heady time for hacking in the city with another group, LAB just starting up in the very same week! Having met up on MEETUP.COM on the now defunct Nottinghack Meetup page they decided to start a sort of club with the idea of meeting and making things. It would be like a hackspace but in a room somewhere behind a bar no doubt.

JP (front right) and myself went to the Maker Faire in Newcastle driving up so early that it wasn't open when we arrived. We had a pretty good time meeting all the makers and it only fired our enthusiasm for Nottinghack all the more. The four of us in the picture above met up at The Art Org cafe in the Hopkinson Building on Station Street to plan a meetup at the Navigation pub. It wasn't much later that we had that first meetup, the show and tell when we met other founders of Nottingham Hackspace like Matt Lloyd and John Crouchley.

The picture above was taken at the Nottingham Hackspace 2.0 BIG OPEN DAY event on the 28th May 2011. It shows Me (front left) Matt Little (back left), David Hayward (very back right) and JP Hastings (front right). Matt, David and I are all now trustees of the Hackspace, JP next did become a member but remains a supporter of the space and a good friend.

It's been an amazing journey and it's getting better all the time. I've met so many great people and good friends through Hackspace and I hope it continues for a very long time. We've some super things coming up like the BIG OPEN DAY II which will be on the 5th May 2012 and the Derby Mini Maker Faire which is on Sunday 3rd June 2012 at the Old Silk Mill Museum.

Next week I hope to tell you a little more about Bristol Hackspace and also about my visit to Cardiff Hackspace planned for Tuesday 20th March.

What is Hack-the-Space day?

On Sunday 11th March 2012 we had (what I think was) our 5th Hack-the-Space day at the Nottingham Hackspace. A Hack-the-Space day is a day dedicated to the larger project of making the Hackspace more awesome.

Nottinghack (as ever) is in need of a good tidy and sort out. After months of cold weather making the Hackspace occasionally less than pleasant to be in and after a few good large hauls of donations we have virtually no clear space left in the workshop.

The area between the metal working bench and the bike repair/storage area in particular needs attentions. Part of the problem is one that every Hackerspace probably faces. The sort of people who like Hackspaces are the self same sort of people who like to hoard stuff... I'm not sure if there is an anti-pattern here but I always think of it as "Don't Touch the Precious Things!" Basically it's a large amount of junk that is both at the same time completely useless and potentially useful. We try and address this problem at the Nottingham Hackspace by having several rules which include:

The 35L Rule which is probably the worst enforced rule we have. The rule basically says that every member should use one or more 35L jelly boxes to store their projects in and no more. However in reality lots of members have much larger projects and WIPs that need stashing about the space. I'm probably as guilty of that as anyone is!

Probably the better rule to help us is the No CRTs Thank You rule which pretty much says what it is in the name of the rule. At London Hackspace (I think) this has been stretched to include PC tower units and laptops. At Bristol Hackspace there is a shelf literally piled with about 60 laptops circa 1990 and of a type we recently threw 2 away of! Stuff that is just a little too good to throw away but that NO ONE WILL USE any more........ usually.... but that is the

problem. Sometimes WE DO use these obsolete items and where else would you expect to find them but in a Hackerspace?

Jake Howe spent a considerable amount of time and effort on the donations boxes, putting up signs as well as slips to be filled in when items are donated. As a Hackspace we've been fairly soft on the donations box. The idea is that items are put in it for a limited amount of time, and if members what the items they take them and use them. Anything that is in there for a month or more gets thrown away. The items is considered to have had a long enough amount of time to sit and wait to be appropriated. Items will then either be stripped for useful parts for the Hackspace parts bins or taken for appropriate disposal.

Filling the parts tubs and bins is an ongoing

ordeal and to help with this David Clarke has provided two milk cages so we can remove the plastic and metal for hacking from the large

shelving unit behind the electronics bench. As the milk cages have 3 shelves it should be easier to retrieve items, we also sorted through and took out anything that could go in a storage box of it's own.

I was pleased to be able to sort out the laser cutter area making it a lot clearer and further from the woodworking area. I've set up an area where the materials for sale are much easier to find and much more straightforward to see what the prices are too. The shelf consists of an area with a black bin for large off cuts of various materials at 50p each as well as a rack I hacked out of a VHS tape holder from Ikea which holds individually prices sheets of perspex, birch ply and MDF. The prices are written on the top left corner of each item! There are 2 black bins on the floor with scraps of material that you can use for small parts or cuts for free. Please do save any useless scraps of ply or MDF waste for me to put in the wood burner on my boat as kindling! You can put this in the small pink trug-tub that is under the desk.

These Hack-all-the-space days are always enjoyable though we may have made more mess than we cleared up! We did however make a start of organising and sorting. Over the next few weeks when possible we can try and finish the job.

Thank you to all involved!

A tale of 2 Hackerspaces

In February I moved from Nottingham to Bristol. Though I will miss Nottingham Hackspace very much I am delighted that there is a Hackspace in Bristol. I visited them on Thursday 23rd February. They are located in Bedminster just close to the Asda and unwittingly I'd walked past their door about a year earlier without knowing it. It's just 15 minutes walk from my work and new home down by the harbour.

You can become a member from as little as £10 a month, though they say it's 24hr access you can not get keys without having to be approved by a particular member who *might* give you the keys *if* they feel it's right!?

The Hackspace itself is not large, but is well appointed and well equipped with an emphasis on electronics and test. There are a number of scopes, bench power supplies and the like. Additionally there is a band saw and a bench pillar drill. They have *A LOT* of junk taking up the shelving. Additionally they have a good amount of bench space and some table top space to work at a laptop or on a project.

The space is in a room shared with an artist and some architects who work there in the daytime. It has access to a kitchenette and a very remote toilet. There is WiFi for all (not just members) and they occasionally run workshops.

The natives seem friendly but isolated from the rest of the UK movement I think perhaps because they feel a closer kinship to the Dorkbot movement. They have recently re-elected their directors and this could be a time of great change and growth for Bristol Hackspace as myself and Barney (a director from Build Brighton) join the membership with perhaps a greater Hackerspace world view? Bristol is a vibrant city and I am looking forward to running some

workshops there.

On Wednesday 29th February I visited FizzPop for their show-and-tell which they have on the last Wednesday at the end of each month. I did a

talk on Nottingham Hackspace and how we got started and the Hackerspace movement in general. This started a debate about how to increase the membership of FizzPop which is the Birmingham Hackspace as well as how to go forward and get a space for themselves available 24 hours a day like that of Nottingham, London, Bristol and others.

In the last few weeks I've spoken to folk all over the country about Hackspaces and size. It's interesting to hear why some larger cities think they have smaller Hackspaces than other smaller cities. I've been amazed for instance by the amount of traffic and interest in the Reading Hackspace mailing list which has well over a 1000 posts and the list itself has more than 100 subscribers. It offers an interesting model in Hackerspace building and I will be watching them with interest!