Hacking a Hackerspace: Introducing Dweeb Den!
When returning to Florida to visit family this Christmas, I lead a short Propeller class at the FamiLAB hackerspace in Orlando. It was my first visit to a hackerspace, and I fell in love. There was this an incredible vibe emanating all throughout the building and left me with a fantastic feeling that I can't quite put into words.
When you're in a hackerspace, you can't help but be inspired. You're surrounded by brilliant, enigmatic personalities who all seem to be working on incredibly cool projects. So I decided one thing when I got back on my plane to Sacramento...
I need to join a hackerspace - STAT.
However, that goal wasn't as easily attainable as I thought. Even though Sacramento has several tech companies in the area (Parallax, Intel, HP and Oracle to name a few), there isn't a single hackerspace. You see, Sacramento is a city often overlooked. With the San Francisco Bay Area being only 80-ish miles away, it's easy to just assume that's where all the cool tech projects are happening.
But it's just not true! And now my task of joining a hackerspace has morphed into a tougher, but far more rewarding task: I'm going to start a hackerspace.
So yesterday, along with my two other co-founders, we started laying the groundwork for Dweeb Den, a new hackerspace coming to Sacramento. You can follow our progress on Twitter (@DweebDen), through our website (dweebden.org), or voice your opinions on our forums (dweebden.org/forums).
As we're embarking on this epic quest, we're encountering a plethora of questions that need to be answered: Should we establish ourselves as a non-profit? How do you write bylaws? What membership do you charge? While the interwebs is a great source for these questions, there's not a whole lot of substance to those answers.
My goal is to help provide that substance here, through 'Hacking a Hackerspace'. Check back here as I chronicle our steps while we create Sacramento's very first hackerspace! Hopefully it will help inspire you to create a hackerspace in your city.
January 16th, 2012 - 06:32
hi Jen,
I’m a cofounder of Bloominglabs, the Hackerspace in Bloomington IN. If you have questions about getting started, a lot of Hackerspace wikis (including ours – Bloominglabs.org) have our laws posted. There’s also a group called Space Federation who are trying to aggregate all the important info and answers to common questions about getting started. (link below). In general the Hackerspace community is pretty helpful, so you can also get on say the Noisebridge list or otherwise reach out to nearby (not sure what’s near Sacremento) hackerspaces and you will find some people who can share their experiences. Or you can email me. Best of luck – hackerspaces are indeed a lot of fun and Im sure you will get a lot of interest.
http://schoolfactory.org/content/space-federation-overview
January 16th, 2012 - 09:10
Thanks for the links, they’re incredibly helpful! We have actually just started looking at individual hackerspace websites to read their stories and see what help they can offer. Writing bylaws definitely seem a little daunting.
So far any requests for help have been met with super-positive responses and we’re grateful for the support!
October 21st, 2012 - 14:57
How is the DweebDen going? Is it a parallel effort to the Hacker Lab in downtown Sac? I’m in Loomis/Granite Bay, so a hackerspace closer to home would be really convenient.