Brief call-to-arms for the London Hackspace: We just moved to a huge new space on Hackney Road and are now scaling up membership to cover our outgoings.
I had terrible experience meeting people from London Hackspace back at Cremer Street.
I do software. When I lived in Vienna, I frequently visited Metalab, which truly embraces hackers of any sort -- doesn't matter if you're into robotics, cryptography, Linux kernel or Ruby. I met great people there and after moving to London hoped to get into hackers community through London Hackspace.
Well, on my first visit, someone wearing white lab coat with London Hackspace logo told me that (literally) "software people are not welcome here -- they may as well work at Starbucks! We would prefer having more members who do hardware stuff because they require access to hardware tools and we provide this to them". Needless to say, I never came back. Starbucks, yeah.
So, great to hear you've moved, hope that now you are more tolerant towards software people.
Oh for goodness sake, that is complete nonsense. The two co-founders (of which I am one) are primarily software people - as are about 40% of the membership.
The problem is that with over 700 members opinions of what the space is differ widely. The person you spoke to was almost certainly not someone who usually gives tours, and if it was known they were saying idiotic things like that they would have been corrected.
Saying "software people are not welcome" in a hackerspace is especially idiotic given that much hardware development requires custom code in the first place.
Honestly, I apologise for a bad first impression. Take me up on my offer of a personal tour and I'll show you around the new place.
Interesting experience, as a "software person" coming to LHS while being based at TechHub my experience couldn't be any more different. It's important to note that the experience you've had was with that specific member, and not the hackspace as a whole. My guess is whoever you talked to had a gripe about the influx of members at the time, who came to the hackspace purely for cheap desk space, without engaging with the community or helping around.
As somebody who's worked with volunteers quite a lot, there's always a risk that the people that end up interacting with the public aren't necessarily ideal representatives of your project. I wouldn't necessarily assume that one person's opinion is a fair representation of organisational policy.
I've wanted to join the London Hackspace for a while now so should probably look into freeing up a Tuesday to attend an open evening. You're even closer to where I live now!
Edit to add: Also, TechShop. Menlo Park apparently has fewer crowds than SF, but it's further from you. And I've also heard good things about Hacker Dojo.
If you click the unfortunately named "List of ALL hackerspaces"[1], scroll down and click on "further results"[2] then adjust to show all 500 results[3] and finally search the page you will not find Null Space Labs (but some references to Queensland). That doesn't mean NSL isn't on the site... just that the site fails.
Not practicable in Germany. A few weeks and the police would raid the hacker space and take everything that looks like a computer (for a very broad definition of computer) with them. End of hacker space - even if your equippment is returned (which happens usually after 6+ months) when the charges are dropped.
Haha, as if we didn't get enough folks coming around wanting to hack the gibson! But really, the challenges around retaking the hacker term to mean tinkerer/maker/understander-or-things is enough without us getting cease & desist/DMCA/strike letters.
Is this an attempt to have them all shut down? The police don't care if you're an exit node or a child pornographer, if you start transmitting that stuff you're going to have a bad time.
Our local hackerspace, the Warpzone in Münster, NRW, Germany is currently in the process of renovating new rooms (>100m², whoo!) with a magnificent view and then moving into those. Y'all are welcome to come around for the grand opening that will hopefully take place some time later this year. :)
I wanted to add our local hackerspace but the site wants to "confirm my email" which requires account. Oh well. If anyone wants to be helpful and already has an account, here's a link: [1]
I myself can't wait until computers are cheap and small enough to be disposable to the point where you can carry a few around with you and leave them behind. At that point, hackers around the world can install bandwidth throttled exit nodes on open-wifi signals around the world.
It looks like the nearest ones to you are Manchester and Leeds, both of which are excellent. If they're too far away then you should start a new space!
This is the guide we give to people when they ask for advice on how to get going:
As they note, the traffic from HN has meant that their main page isn't a full list. There's dozens when you look at the UK category http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/United_Kingdom
http://london.hackspace.org.uk
If you're interested in joining as a member please drop by and have a look around. Drop me a message and I'll give you a personal tour!
If you're interested to see how much 13,000 sqft of space costs in London, this is our live-updating "Cost of Hacking" page:
https://london.hackspace.org.uk/cost-of-hacking/