Ask HN: What happened to hackerspaces?
I remember when hackerspaces were in every major city, and quite a few medium sized cities also had them.
Now, most are gone, for various reasons.
What gives?
Now, most are gone, for various reasons.
What gives?
125 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 209 ms ] threadhttps://hackerdojo.org/
https://makernexus.org/
https://sudoroom.org/
https://noisebridge.net/
From their website, looks like they're doing quite well!
(for those who remember a previous incarnation of the space, with my partner and some friends we painted the 2 Dinos mural)
Hacker Dojo, as mentioned elsewhere, pivoted to something sort of like WeWork. $150/month. Mostly people slaving away at laptops, pre-COVID.
Maker Nexus seems from their web site to be doing OK. Pre-COVID, they were mostly sewing and kids classes, but now they seem to have more heavy metal tools. $150/month.
Humanmade, in SF, has government support, and is more oriented to training for trades. They ended up with much of TechShop's equipment. $250/month.
There's also the woke shop, Double Union.
What killed TechShop was that the gym model doesn't work for maker spaces. Gyms work because people pay but don't show up that much. Maker spaces get people whose day job is to be there making stuff.
Unfortunately Hacker Dojo daytime attendance nowadays is quite low, so they're not really attracting people as a WeWork space. I wonder how they're going to pick it back up.
The gym-type business model of pay by the month and get all the tool time you can use, just did not work out.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeanbaptiste/2017/11/15/techsho...
https://circuitlaunch.com/ (working hard to brand away from /makerspace/ or /hackerspace/, but serving a similar audience and purpose, in a professional/entrepreneur/business-building direction).
I do wish there was more of them though.
[1] https://pumpingstationone.org/
https://asmbly.org
But, what I think we need to do in Austin is figure out how to get the local school districts to open up the high school machine shops, electronics labs/etc on weekends/whatever. I've seen the insides of Anderson High, and more recently Vandegrift, and both of them have tooling that far exceeds what most hackerspaces can only dream about. They don't have much in the way of pictures of their lab space but there is one on this page https://www.viperbots.org/home of the cleanest lathe you will every see and in the background one if their vertical mills and another picture of a tormach 1100 MX (a ~$40k mill).Plus at least for 3 months out of the year the lockers/etc are basically vacant and there is a few thousand square feet of light industrial workspace along with electronics labs full of scopes, power supplies and soldering stations. Piles of 3d printers, and unlike libraries the noise of a big milling machine isn't going to be heard in the quiet spaces in the library.
So, there are natural hacker spaces all over town if one can figure out how to protect the tools from random idiots and convince the school districts that they can get more mentors/etc, and maybe even raise some revenue if people are willing to pay for access.
PS: In a state that tends to underfund their teachers its amazing how much money a FIRST robotics program can get from industry in the wealthy parts of town when the sponsorships are $5k-10k. Of course its peanuts compared with the football program in many cases. Ex that high schools stadium https://texasbob.com/stadium/stadium.php?id=1312
- TechShop and it's fall - I remember one person arguing hackerspaces may be better run as a nonprofit model.
- The rise of small-scale maker capabilities within public institutions like libraries. I considered signing up for a maker space last year and it made more sense to pay for a second library that happened to have a good maker lab.
- The rise of cheaper or more accessible prototype manufacturing (e.g. pcbway , sendcutsend, etc.).
- The other threads trying to save spaces, like this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32245086 (2022)
* Prusa 3D Printer
* Hic Top CR-10 3D Printer
* Ender-3 S1 Pro 3D Printer
* Brother ScanNCut
* Silhouette CAMEO
* Silhouette Vinyl Cutter
* EverSewn Sparrow X2 Embroidery Machine
* Brother PE900 Embroidery Machine
* Carvey CNC Desktop Fabricator
* Glowforge Laser Cutter
* Sawgrass Sublimation Printer
It also has a lot of audio recording equipment with soundbooths, and a bunch of lighting and photography/video equipment.
I have a Prusa Mk3S+ with MMU, head improvement, and Bear kit.
Also have maybe 40 rolls of filament from glow in the dark, UV reactive, and more or less every color and an Octoprint with cameras and a power shutoff.
The only problem is my electronics lab is 60 Hz equipment. ]:
https://www.americancommunities.org/who-owns-a-passport-in-a....
Part of the reason we bought a house here is because it was close to some nicer suburbs without being terribly expensive itself (our home was just reappraised and it was determined to still be under the average existing house sales price in the US of $410k, even though it went up like 40% since last time).
We can drive twenty minutes and go to the same nice stores and restaurants that people living there can, if we wanted to.
I'm aware our local library is an outlier. There are other libraries in the area, including in that wealthy neighboring city, that don't have anywhere near as much equipment.
That's my limited anecdotal experience, noticing there's also been libraries that might've initially offered 3d printing then stopped (possibly due to abuse, maintenance burden, staff changes, etc.)
If municipality governments had any common sense, they would find ways to manage the risks and benefits of opening fix-it and make community centers.
I currently serve as vice-chair of the board. I joined right before COVID and my focus has been helping get policies and processes in place to continue to help us scale. We've seen pretty rapid growth post COVID and are seeing ~10 new members a month.
Happy to answer any questions (when I wake up).
Be sure to stop and say hi If you're ever in Denver, CO!
https://denhac.org/
Plus makerspaces were just difficult to make viable and really you are probably better off spending that time on any other endeavor.
A group of us out here tried starting one in West Michigan and it sputtered along for a while. Financials and interest were never able to balance out. The Geek Group out here did a little "better" but the owners and volunteers there basically burned themselves out constantly. Then the founder got nailed for bitcoin crimes and that was the end.
I think in general it only works if there is a strong community / third place thing going. I always saw that as their biggest offering--a way to get out of the house without drinking or spending money. The making / hacking thing is just something to enjoy together.
I feel like I read a story about running one in the Bay that was just about having to deal with crustpunks and people having sex in the machine rooms.
Although I think libraries have equipment like 3D printers these days.
I'm looking for a 3000+ sq ft single-story house and workshop on cheap land without natural hazards within 15-20 minutes of somewhere with a Trader Joe's.
The LUGs I have been to are mostly social groups running off the inertia of old members which were around back when LUGs were relevant, an inertia which is slowing down with the age of the members.
I served on the board for a local LUG and there is still some interest from the community but not like back in the day when they could pull 100s of people in a meeting and IBM or Redhat would buy free pizza for everyone in the early 2000s.
At the same time that Windows was making inroads, Java, Apple, and Android have made significant inroads in their own ways.
Overall, linux has become more user friendly (reducing the learning curve); training has become common, and multiple companies have become more competitive with Linux. This has reduced the demand for less structured training of LUGs.
Over the past 15 years or so, property prices have soared in so many cities. It really makes it hard to afford space for quirky things. There are certainly plenty of examples of ones that still exist and enough determination and you can still make things happen, but I think the rising cost of real estate is putting a damper on things like this.
The first hack group I fell in with (2600) met in a restaurant, and it worked and evolved into other groups including a hackerspace.
If you can't find the kind you're looking for, you can make one!
One of my favorite spaces (though distant from where I live) - Metrix Create:Space - shut down down in 2018 in part because people didn't have as much of a reason to show up [1]
[1] https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2018/08/tech-junkies-and-...
Now that things have reopened they simply never brought it back.
It's not all bad. In my city it seems the hacker spaces organized by individuals were replaced by maker spaces funded and organized by the city. At least two that I know of, that are now basically free co-working spaces with 3D printers, meeting rooms, free wifi and such.
One is run by the agency that ran the ccTLD back in the early 2000s, called Goto10 in Malmö and Stockholm. Very nice space to work at.
The other is run by the city of Malmö called Stapeln and is in a basement.
Besides those I know of at least two hacker spaces run by individuals that were still going last I checked.
The pandemic hit them pretty hard of course.
The better way for a city to help is let the local library system manage the relationship or itself be the steward of the space.
My local library system offers a limited “makerspace” program[0] that does some of this stuff within the library, but I think something that should be more integrated is their Library of Things[1] program which allows patrons to take home all sorts of tools and equipment that are just not used very often.
I think more library systems should be granted the freedom and funding by their governing bodies to create a makerspace.
Footnote: The other option I didn’t address was to have schools/universities maintain them, but those are always reserved for student and faculty.
[0]: https://www.saclibrary.org/Education/Tech-Creation/Makerspac...
[1]: https://www.saclibrary.org/Books-Media/Specialty-Checkouts/L...
Unfortunately I think hackerspace on gov property are doomed to never be cool.
The label of hackerspace should really be earned and the spaces that fall into that 10% group demonstrate specific ethos, robust community engagement, and as a result can operate independently.
A makerspace is just a place where you make stuff in and can have or gain some level of access to tools and equipment. It is certainly not as cool as a hackerspace, but its very presence is the prototype for one.
Stapeln was organized by the city.
But all hacker spaces here can get grants from the government.
When I was involved with one, now defunct, we received teaching grants from the state. Anyone who holds workshops or educational gatherings can apply for these grants.
Hackerspaces require ongoing work and support. They aren't great businesses, but are great community spaces. To that end, you need an ongoing commitment of people to provide their time, resources, and effort.
We are extremely lucky in Ballarat that we have such a group of committed members, as well as very generous sponsorship. We've paid that back through ongoing community involvement and releasing many free resources, but we are lucky to be in that position.
Australia in general seems to have decent Hackerspaces in all the major cities, sometimes multiple, as well as good growing support from the Library network with their own makerspaces (including regular workshops for 3D printing etc).