Ask HN: Is my local hacker space unusually dysfunctional? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is my local hacker space unusually dysfunctional?

43 pointslegerdemain25 comments

I am fortunate to have a hacker space in my neighborhood, and I have been visiting it during the day, attending events, and even hosting a few community meetups now and again. I'm concerned that I have entered a socially unhealthy environment and surrounded myself with people who erode my excitement for technology and drain my energy.

- We have a tradition of weekly "nerd nights" with lightning talks, but the majority of presenters talk about vague business scams, motivational self-help programs, paranormal beliefs, and fringe science.

- We have a Sam Altman eyeball-scanning orb on site and it gets more use than our 3D printers and other maker tools. Some of our events hand out NFTs for attending them.

- Nowhere else in my life have I ever been approached more often about brazen swindles, from fee-based "insider" Discord servers, to "exclusive" pre-pre-YC prep programs, to "opportunities" to work for free for "well-connected solopreneurs."

- A number of our regulars are practically homeless and use the space to cook meals in the toaster oven, wash up in the bathroom, sleep on the lounge sofa, and live out of trucks and trailers in the parking lot.

Is my local hacker space unusually dysfunctional, or is this pretty much par for the course?

That sounds extremely different from my local hacker space.

Every time I visit, there's a crowd of people from high school students to retirees building stuff and most of them are happy/excited to tell you all about their new project.

Despite 5 Prusa, 1 Formlabs SLA and 1 SLS, you usually have to make an appointment or wait for you chance at printing. The laser cutter and CNC are mostly idle, though.

The talks that others offered were postmortems about building something and one guy gave a lecture on how he patented and commercialised his own milk frother design. Another project was CNCing the clips for leather bicycle luggage bags. After a while, the regulars added a really nice café corner so that you can comfortably gossip a bit away from all the machine noise.

Yes.

Our local space is pretty well run and we don’t have most of the things you mentioned.

Ours is run by a nonprofit with a board that manages to keep most of the riffraff out.

People basically being vagrants and living in the parking lot while working at the space is pretty common though.

The most annoying problem is people not cleaning up after themselves. I think that is a problem endemic to almost all maker spaces though.

First of all, I think you have a good material for writing a novel, or at least a tale about something I'd like to read, I mean, it sounds like a melting pot of characters what you have there.

Regarding your position, you need to assume what it is and try to stay positive about finding what you want to get, based on what you said, other people work on projects that don't require a permanent effort, and are not going to finish well, the kind of initiatives I think you're not interested in. If that feeling of being out of context continues it's better you leave or low your expectations. I assisted a couple of times to one of those places and never felt the motivation to being part of that. I think it's most effective when you go with a group of people already created

The last item, homelessness, is unfortunately common at hackerspaces, hence the widely adopted rule : "don't sleep in the space!"

The other dysfunctional nonsense you cite is more specific to your hackerspace in particular.

I've never heard of a local hacker space being a thing until now. But it sounds like you have nothing good to say about the place. So leave...

I can't leave, I have no other choice for cheap space to run events.

You may have discovered the reason that the low effort predators are there, as well.

Ha ha ha it really is full of creeps.

What about the local library? They usually have meeting rooms.

Yes, it's an unusually disfunctional hacker space.

Maybe rooms for individual study, but not meeting rooms for ~20 people. That shit costs hundreds of dollars per hour.

I can't tell from your post if this is something you checked or an assumption. My small town library not only has space for 20 people events, it has a dedicated tech space used for it-related education and events.

I'm sure not every town has that kind of facilities, but if you haven't actually checked yet, please do. Libraries are awesome and often overlooked.

Alternative idea: Some cafes that close in the afternoon are happy to open as a meeting space in the evening at not-terrible prices.

Trust me, I have checked. And I wish you had trusted me to be truthful without making me reiterate it.

What's the ownership / management structure?

If the point is for it to be used as a hacker space, and it isn't being used as such, are they interested in focusing it on that?

You have an email address form an expensive university. You make good posts and seem thoughtful. Why do you think that you have no choices in an event space? Question your assumptions!

Hack(er)spaces are reflections on the members.

Ours (Leighhack) is small in membership but moderately wide. We have textiles, fabrication (3d print & CNC), electronics, woodworking and infra/security in pretty constant flow. We're just finishing building a darkroom.

Yesterday was two members sewing (one dress, one stage props), one member restoring an old Mac and cutting on the CNC (me), one designing and printing a flower pot for a monitored garden. And that's what I know of.

We've just finished up a six week sewing course, and we're looking to courses on 3d design and printing and I believe woodturning.

Different hack(er)spaces have different priorities, dependant on the members and community it serves.

In my experience, 90% of everything is crap. There are plenty of dysfunctional hacker spaces. Most of them either die quickly or become self-sufficient; they're a way for hustlers to hustle each other.

There seems to be some cores. There's usually someone out there who's actually good at selling, even if they don't have a plan nor a product. You end up with legit YC alumni actually leading the pre-pre-YC prep programs. These are more dangerous and can sustain for years, especially with that whole cockroach surviving on ramen thing.

Smaller ponds have smaller fish. What a friend does (who I met on HN!) is to bring in an existing online community offline. That seems to work quite well, and it sustains until one of the dysfunctional communities collapses and swarms the popular communities.

I also find that being relentlessly helpful drives off some of the bullying types. HN-style guidelines seem to help. Assume goodwill. Don't talk down, educate. Don't assume someone hasn't read the article (or isn't educated enough), quote a part of the article or link to a tutorial. Time out the people who start a lot of fights; some are just passionate. But the unapologetic bad apples should be handled quickly.

Do someone has a list of hackerspaces in Berlin worthy to frequent for programming / electronic projects ?

I frequented CCCB in Berlin for some time, but I didn't find the experience unpleasant for a number of reasons:

1. is more like an office space where people go to work and are not so inclined to speak with you;

2. apartheid exists there: if you aren't a member you have no access to the "hackerspace", that in truth is very small. If you are lucky, you become friend of a member and you gain access to that place, but often , because it's near to the "relax area" you have to ask the permission to literally everyone to use a drill or other instruments producing noise, plus the place is considered some kind of "secret cave" for members so they have little tolerance for your presence even if you went there for months;

3. They don't like new members, they do they can to discourage you to became one. The process is based on the endorsement of senior members that you can't meet , in matter of fact, because they rarely frequent the area open to not members plus , this is my impression they are a little bit snob ...

So at the and I was tired of that place , chasing to avoid going there further and I'm actively searching for a new place. I'm interesting in system programming ( I use C++ but I know other languages ) , security, open source, electronic, telecommunication. I'm looking for an inclusive ambient ( I'm not German ) where I can talk with people with same interest and developing hardware is viewed favorably. I have necessity to specific tools, normally I have available all I need. Every suggestion is welcome, thank you in advance.

Checkout MotionLab. They are more focused on Hardware, are more international and you will find likeminded people there. I am a member myself and really can recommend it

It's easier to BS about non-technical things than it is to build something.

Set rules that kick out anyone who is not building something or learning to build something.

My space used to get a lot more of the crypto hustles etc. but we've kind of squashed them somehow. Still plenty of startups looking for free help from our members.

We had to spell out "you can't live here" in our membership agreement / orientation. Just too many issues there. We've had a few vanlifers and some van builders but as long as they're not primarily living in the building or our parking lot we're good. We also got rid of the couch.

Yep sounds weird. Not my experience of hackerspaces.

Think about the statistics… Less than 1% of startups succeed. Probably, a majority of this 1% is within an exclusive circle in some way, or are based in SF or NYC.

I fail to see the connection. AFAICT makerspaces aren’t really about startups…? Or am I missing something?

A makerspace is just a particular kind of startup. Not all will succeed. Indeed, one could argue the OP’s space is failing…

Yes, yes it is.

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