Real Estate. So many quirky things are viable when there's cheaper rent, cheap buying opportunities, or underutilized space. If I could buy space for $150/sq ft, I might have some extra cash, like the idea of investing in real estate, and like the idea of having a cool community hackerspace. If it's going to cost me $1,000/sq ft, I'm barely going to be able to afford the space I want to live in. If a group of us can rent at cheap prices we're saving money on our housing and paying for a shared second space doesn't cost that much.
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.
Community spaces are always on the move. So I don't think it's rent so much as the core members not keeping up with the inevitable need to move on.
One I used to attend now gets space from a University http://hackerspace-adelaide.org.au/
There are lots of community spaces if people can find and network with them. But it takes work and dedication. Money is nearly always a second.
The first hack group I fell in with (2600) met in a restaurant, and it worked and evolved into other groups including a hackerspace.
So now that commercial real estate is being underutilized due to work from home does that mean the hackerspaces and artist collectives will return due to cheap real estate prices?
A big lesson from running a hackerspace is that you can't apply logic like that to commercial real estate. They'll let it sit empty for ten years rather than reduce the price.
Most hackerspaces I've been a part of couldn't or barely could afford their rent. Memberships were already too expensive, and they were constantly just getting squeezed between membership revenue and hard costs. Ultimately it doesn't add up.
I think a lot of what used to happen at makerspaces has transitioned to libraries. Lots of libraries have 3d printers, et. Now, are free, and don't have the problem with affording space.
From my knowledge of and participation in hacker spaces - I would say this is it. My understanding is hackerspaces like the L0pht were not paying exorbitant real estate prices, and had a core of founders making decent enough money to pay for the place. On the other hand, some hacker spaces start out very ambitiously with a large space in the center of an expensive city, without as much of dedicated, close, core team to sustain it, and those did less well. Also - when you have a small core team and expenses are too high, it causes friction and stress in the core team, and people want to participate less.
other examples of a successful maker spaces are Springfield Telescope Makers in VT and Amateur Telescope Makers of Boston. Both specialize in telescope making and observing. Both clubs have a pool of people will to teach, a core of people maintaining and developing observatories and the clubhouse, and best of all, cheap real estate. Now if we could just get that Harry Potter light putter-outer when it is clear.
Hackerdojo isn't a Hackerspace in the early 2010's meaning of the word anymore. They converted to a more startup incubator kind of place (and so I stopped going).
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.
No. What killed tech shop is the owner of it took the money to fund an extravagant lifestyle, living out of hotels, causing the fees to be out of line with what was offered. It could have worked if the owner didn't want to live like a billionaire.
Hacker Dojo recently fired its executive director and has been running mostly rudderless in terms of the management of the social space for several months. They're been looking to hire a community manager.
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 makerspace I am a member of(Freeside Atlanta) manages to survive by the skin of its teeth by moving to a new and bigger space right before the pandemic shutdown and seem to be growing ever since.
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).
Saw this with a bunch of niche things here in LA. There was this cool welding non-professional welding space that closed down due to covid. I hope something replaces it soon
Noisebridge came pretty close to going under too. At one point the landlord was asking for an increase in rent to something like 20k/mo before backing down.
Maybe you'll get as many answers as there are hackers here but from my own perspective it seems it went the same way as all other communities. Internal strife, odd personalities, personal differences tore them apart slowly.
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.
It can get messy, especially because the very thing the city can offer (real estate) ends up being a political pawn. With no provision in the city’s charter to protect it, anything the city provides is going to be quick to the chopping block.
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.
I'm simplifying. Goto10 is ran by Internetstiftelsen which was a state run agency back when they were managing the .se ccTLD. I haven't really kept track of what's going on with them. Knowing Sweden it wouldn't surprise me if it's some sort of hybrid between privatized and state run.
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.
Many undergraduate-focused higher ed institutions have copied the makerspace/hackerspace model, primarily as an amenity for students. These are, in some cases, clopen to the public (sic). Public libraries have also copied the model.
Reviewing the data, AFAICT:
1. The hackerspace-as-business model largely didn't work.
2. The community-run 501(c)3 model remains viable in mid-sized cities.
3. Organizations like hacker spaces have a really hard time of it in larger cities, mostly because of rent.
4. In places that are too rural or too expensive to support hackerspaces, other institutions often provide partial solutions which are not hackerspaces per se but offer similar amenities.
Given that the primary barrier seems to be real estate, I am honestly mildly surprised that major donor hasn't tried to seed a legacy by copying the Carnegie Library formula but for hackerspaces. Seems like a much better legacy-building project than adding an extra half bajillion to a university endowment or starting yet another charter school experiment.
- 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.).
Yeah, my local library has a pretty decent makerspace in its basement, at least if you're making smaller things. These are the machines that are currently there:
* 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.
Yeap. Might be better not to have the expense and expectations of a brick and mortar that get in the way of associations of like minds. Dinner gatherings once a month and larger fairs once a year would probably suffice.
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.
For the last six years or so, our local Makerspace has hosted a weekly electronics and technology meetup on Thursday evenings. The electronics lab is pretty quiet most of the week, though as an arts/crafts-focused space, the fiber arts and stained glass spaces are much busier. On Thursday evenings, though, there normally 5-15 people who show up and hack on hardware/software, show off projects, or just chat tech. electronicsnight.com.
Aside from community (which is incredible important), Hackerspaces are a method of tool-sharing. In the last decade, many of the popular tools that used to live exclusively at a Hackerspace can be now be found in schools, libraries, and homes: 3D Printers, lasercutters, electronics toolkits, etc. And 3 years of pandemic isolation meant that people weren't able to show up anyway.
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]
Readit News
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.
Deleted Comment
Most hackerspaces I've been a part of couldn't or barely could afford their rent. Memberships were already too expensive, and they were constantly just getting squeezed between membership revenue and hard costs. Ultimately it doesn't add up.
I think a lot of what used to happen at makerspaces has transitioned to libraries. Lots of libraries have 3d printers, et. Now, are free, and don't have the problem with affording space.
It lagged behind the library of the next town over, but is now comparable.
https://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.
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).
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.
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.
St. Louis: https://archreactor.org/
Pittsburgh: https://hackpgh.org/
Boston (albeit bummed they left their Somverville location): https://www.artisansasylum.com/
Many undergraduate-focused higher ed institutions have copied the makerspace/hackerspace model, primarily as an amenity for students. These are, in some cases, clopen to the public (sic). Public libraries have also copied the model.
Reviewing the data, AFAICT:
1. The hackerspace-as-business model largely didn't work.
2. The community-run 501(c)3 model remains viable in mid-sized cities.
3. Organizations like hacker spaces have a really hard time of it in larger cities, mostly because of rent.
4. In places that are too rural or too expensive to support hackerspaces, other institutions often provide partial solutions which are not hackerspaces per se but offer similar amenities.
Given that the primary barrier seems to be real estate, I am honestly mildly surprised that major donor hasn't tried to seed a legacy by copying the Carnegie Library formula but for hackerspaces. Seems like a much better legacy-building project than adding an extra half bajillion to a university endowment or starting yet another charter school experiment.
- 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.
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.
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-...
The two big reasons I and my friends don't run them anymore: rent costs and COVID.