2010 Location Search

Start Small

A lot of the hackerspace how to's caution to start small and I personally subscribe to that idea. If we could just use someones garage and start compiling tools people could visualize what their member fees get them. 24/7 is also rather ambitious to start with. Many of the existing popular hacker spaces aren't 24/7 and they're proven and up and running. An interesting concept I saw was a doorman twitter account which people could follow at any point in the day to see if a keyholder was present and therefore the doors were open.

I may be talking out of turn but we may have an opportunity to use an unused condo in Tempe as soon as December. More if we hear about this.

Go Big

The infrastructure pattern

Things I would like to see in a leased space include public transport, ventilation, garage space, kitchen/cafe space, lounge space.

I know others have expressed a 'safe location' as something that is important, but here too some of the hackerspace how-to's recommend explicitly looking for sketchy and therefor cheap neighborhoods. We also want the space to be friendly to all night traffic and all night machine noise.

Please fill out this Survey to help us determine the best location

If you think you know a good location please fill out this survey

Plan for your vision

Picking a long-term home can be difficult. On the one hand, there is the set of current members who are attending meetings. On the other hand there are all those other people who you would love to have come attend meetings, but who may be hindered by the current location.

Surveying current attendees includes a selection bias: Many people currently attending may want to keep the current location because it's convenient. Meanwhile there may be a good number of people who do not currently attend, but would if the location were different.

Decide what the long-term goal should be and try to get a location that fits that. The downside is that, short-term, this may end up being a poor location for people currently attending. The upside is that the group is better positioned for its long-term goals.