Update: Hacker Space

I have officially canned the NH Hacker Space idea for the foreseeable future. My personal view of it is that this type of organization is probably better off establishing as a NPO, unless the organizer/s can put their own money in. Privately self-sustainable was what I was drafting up and interested in. I think this is possible, but unfortunately for me, privately sustainable hackerspace idea is only really practical as a "labor of love". Basically meaning my current un/underemployed stature is not applicable. A good bit of initial investment needs to be put in and the ROI is foresee-ably slow to possibly negative.

The one idea I see as putting a creative space in the black is through job placement. The idea is simple, Hackerspaces and the like attract creative types & creative types are capable of creative/progressive jobs. This idea responds to a simple wide-spread job market demand. More often then not creative/progressive projects within companies are side-lined as one-off jobs. Regular employees get caught up in "what needs to get done" and those projects fall prey to a sort of organizational procrastination. Even task that would have immediate benefits to a business fall into this behavior. Task example might be mundane like "reorganize the warehouse", interesting like "building a staging device" or maybe even something as simple as to "start a facebook fan page". Creative Space members can do these things and coincidentally need the resulting money for things such as....paying their membership. Spaces tend to attract students or recent students who probably need better references & potential job opportunities. Setting up these opportunities would provide more incentive to join. I think the solution reliably getting membership fees is self-explanatory with mentioned factors. Starving students have no money but businesses do. The method of follow through is up to the space organizer/s. Organizing temp work deserves many other considerations too numerous to go over here, such as competing (or fitting alongside) with established temp agencies.

There were many other ideas that I had drafted up but the temp-to-member idea seem to be the most conceptually simple and effective and worth mentioning for others interested.

If your interested in being part of a hackerspace in the NH area the closest is Makeit Labs in Lowell MA. They have open houses on Thursdays 6-9PM. Definitely worth checking out, they are a friendly bunch.

For more info about Hackerspaces check out Hackerspaces.org

If you are interested in more of the ideas I had for a NH space feel free to contact me or leave a comment below.