Norn Iron Hacker Scene
Hackerspace, revisited
We’ve been giving a lot of thought to NI’s potential hackerspace and how to get the project moving. TJ came up with a good idea on using the model that kickstart.com uses. Basically a project is setup, with a goal (i.e. the amount of funding needed) and a deadline to meet that goal. This can be weeks/months, whatever. If the goal hasn’t been reached by the deadline, then no money is charged, the project is canned and we go back to sitting by ourselves drinking beer. However, if enough money is pledged before the deadline, then money is charged from these people and the project goes ahead.
To set up this project we have to have an idea of how much is needed each year. If we go on the basis of renting a space in Belfast (we’re assuming this is were the majority of people will use the space) then you are looking at between £250-600 per month, depending on size and location. Then there’s electric, heating (for the winter), internet access, rates (do we get discount for non-profit organisation?), insurance, general maintenance, bog rolls 
We’re basing it on a year as rent/insurance etc all need to be signed up for a year and we dont’ want people bailing out 1/2 way through and leaving the others to cover the costs!
Here’s a rough tally of costs:
| Item | Cost |
|---|---|
| Rent | 4800 (400 x 12 months) |
| Electric | 600 (50 x 12 months) |
| Heating | 600 |
| Internet | 300 (25 x 12 months) |
| Rates | 1200 |
| Insurance | 300 |
| General | 1000 |
From this we reckon it’s going to cost £8800 per year to run a space. To generate this sort of money we’re thinking of setting a guide of £300 per year for members. This seems a lot (and it is!) but if you break it down it’s only £25 per month. If we can get 20 people to cough up £300 then that’s a good part of the costs covered (in principle)!
We’ve also thought about going to local tech companies for a “donation” to help fund the space. If we got 10 companies donating £250, that’s a good chunk of the goal met. What to they get for their money? The chance to help local guys meet, come up with ideas, work on project and learn new skills. Skills that they might be able to call upon.
We’d also thought about selling items, t-shirts, recycled hardware etc, but this might be something we have to put on hold until after the “goal” is reached. If you go back to the theory – the goal has to be reached within the time limit, or no money is taken.
So, we’ve started a plan, we need your comments/suggestions/corrections. This is the part where we need your feedback. If we don’t get enough feedback from you guys, we’ll not even bother setting up a project and a goal. If you think the costs are too small/big, let us know. If you think that £300 for the year is WAY to much, let us know. We need your feedback.
TJ & A
well.. how i see it… i could prob rarely get there.. so an investment of 25 quid a month would seem wasteful… and consider the current 2600 meet attendance etc.. its so low that the meets are cancelled half the time.. that doesnt bode well to a regular space thats paid for..
Id need to get down.. at the minimum every other weekend t make it worthwhile.. and with the commitments most of us have with family and children etc.. this seems unlikely..
so.. my summary is…. prob wouldnt/couldnt work.. and ppl wont pay either.. everyone is skint/making ends meet.. sorrryyyy
Honestly, I completely ok with this level of costs. I’d gladly commit to £25 a month. I’d aim to use it around once a week during working weeks, and 24/7 on any holidays.
I’ve been working under similar assumptions, but one additional addition would be to register as a charity/non-profit and approach local estate agents and say ‘we’ll save you rates’. I’ve got a meeting next week with the guy who administers the BIH building across from the hospital and we’re ballparking it at 60 quid per sqft per year, and technically you could just pay for a hundred sqft and use an entire floor without much concern.
Might be worth trying to get a ‘big’ meet up to bring everyone together and show that there’s actually a decent crowd of folk interested (I’ve got between 10-30 folk of varying ranges of committment).
I’ve been chatting to a load of the InvestNI / NISP people and they’re gagging for the type of people who come out of spaces like this (Although I’m not keen on the idea of taking ‘investment’). Anyway, drop me a line if theres anything we can do
To be fair i would possibly go along with it but it would be depending on what the space is actually like if its actually nice to go and spend an afternoon hacking in just to get out of the house, i could be persuaded but it depends on everyone else i guess
You don’t actually need to be a registered charity to get that rate relief (and it’s proportional to the area of the building used for the purposes of the “charity”) so if we use 100% of what we rent for that purpose we’re claiming then we’d technically get 100% rate relief. To apply you need to have a building in place first though and it sounds like we’d have more luck being a registered charity.
I read your article Andrew on why Belfast needs a hackerspace but I don’t think it’s in alignment with my vision. I think your vision is more corporate than mine with talk of innovation and incubating geeks for the local industry. I’m keen to avoid InvestNI / NISP. The more corporate buy in there is attached to this the less appealing it is to me as I think it will destroy the atmosphere and reasoning behind the space, this won’t stop me participating but the more industry led it is the more I want to take a back seat and just pay my membership fee.
I have some questions:
- Can we do it without significant industry involvement?
- Do we WANT to do it without their involvement or is it just me?
- Do we need a front man/board to drive some of these things and actually get some traction on some of our decisions?
- Are you all willing to name it Pharos Labs or P-labs as I’ve been calling it that for about a year now ! :-p
So… did I just kill the thread?
lol
*returns to the corner*
I’d second ak (no not that the thread is dead
). Perhaps http://www.tog.ie/constitution/ would be a starting point. So what is the next step ….?
I think some of the figures are too high
I’d say:
Rent 3600 (300 x 12 months) (see below)
Electric 600 (50 x 12 months)
Heating 600
Internet 300 (25 x 12 months)
Rates 1200 (this may be covered if the place I have in mind is still up for grabs — i think it is! & it ticks most boxes!!)
Insurance 300
General 1000 ??? –>
Does general cover kitting the place out? If so maybe is it better to concentrate on getting the space open first if cost is an issue?
I can supply for free some shelves, book cases, a couple of desks, possibly chairs, a few Weller soldering stations & tons of hardware to hack. etc.
So that takes it closer to £5500 but let’s say £6k
30 people = £200 per year all covered
I’m not always about on #2600ni but I’m trying to resolve this.
Anthony.
Hi,
Being a member of TOG Dublin this is what we found worked:
1) Have 2 or 3 people 100% comitted with lots of time
2) Organise monthly meetings (in say a quiet hotel reception) and advertise the meetings through every mailing list you can find. Also the Amateur Radio Clubs are good for members (out of 30 paying members in Dublin 4 are hams) (2 or 3 are ubuntu members) (4 or 5 are 2600 members) Making the aims of the space vague (Technology, Art, Craft, Social) helps.
3) Set up a bank account and start collecting £40 per person per month to collect a rent deposit. Those who don’t pay don’t get any say at meetings and this seperates the talkers from the payers. When you have 10 payers then you have a group! Those who start paying earlier don’t get extra benefits, it’s just a means to an end.
4) Define what the space must have and then what “would be nice” (non essential) We found city centre and cheap were most important. Internet, insurance, heating was not essential for first couple of months (we used 3G)
5) Start off with a place a bit too small, non ideal, with a short term lease (month to month) Many hackerspaces are 1 room.
6) Once you have a place more people will come on board but keep advertising and hold cool events and talks.
Work one step at a time. As mentioned by someone else a first big meet of everyone interested, well advertised, is a big start.
Remember not everyone needs to be paying members. We have lots of non members that visit once a month and contribute to specific projects without the commitment to pay. Payers get keys, non payers get to visit when someone else is there.
Regarding payment amounts I would plan for 10 initial members paying £45 per month, aiming for 15 members after 6 months. Dublin only has 30 members for a big city. The more members you get, the more you can drop the cost for everyone. We would all like to pay £20 per month but it’s unrealisitc to expect dozens of members in the first year.
So I would recommend setting a date a month or two in the future to have a big meet. Go to all the Belfast radio clubs and try to gain support. Spam all technical/software/ NI mailing lists and forums.
We also got a newpaper article in a main national paper very early on, which helped get more members. Contact the technical/computer journalist from NI papers.
If you want come down for a day trip or overnight to Dublin please come along. We have social nights twice a month and the hackathons are 2 days of weekend activity. We can organise beds.
If you hold a meeting at say 8pm on a Friday then some Dublin people could visit to answer questions and help solve problems.
You could try kickstarter, they key to getting funding is a good clear pitch, and lots of advertising. It might to better to have public meetings to answer questions and see what the payers want. It might be very hard to answer peoples questions via a kickstarter page.
I would avoid getting tech companies to fund the space, it’ll taint it for potential members. I certainly would not fund a space with corporate backing.
I’d also agree with Dan and say make the goals vague, because in reality you actually want loads of different people with different skills to create unique projects.
Good luck! I hope to visit the space some time soon.
Hi, I’m a bit late to the game on the whole hackerspace thing, but I’d really like to be involved.
I gotta say I think corporate funding is a good idea. Its great for them, looks good for them to say they help out a local group. They give basically peanuts (to them) and they get to know people who could be future employees bypassing costly recruitment agencies. It would also look flipping awesome to take a potential customer/visitor down to the local hackerspace for the evening. If the company is interested in freelancers then there’s potential to have a broad talent pool of people they know and trust.
The benefits for the hackers are much much better:
Money, what’s peanuts to a company could pay our rent/heating/electric/internet.
Connections, NI is a small place, meet the right people and your prospects of a job go up.
Equipment, companies change their hardware, be it laptops, cables, desks, soldering stations or old dev boards, it goes to be ‘recycled’, I can’t see why they wouldn’t give them to us instead.
They are hackers! they’re just like us, they just get paid to do what they love, they can share their experiences. I’ve learned more in the first 2 years I’ve been working than the 5 years studying.
Job opportunities! I dunno what age you guys are or if you’re employed or students but if you go in for a job interview and say you hang out at hackerspace and you have a wee project going the interviewer will be interested. Hell if the company is involved then you may even know the person interviewing you.
Freelancers, if a company gets a request for a job that’s too small for them or they’re too busy or they just don’t have the right people, what do they do? advertise for a contractor to do it? tell the customer to take their job elsewhere? or pop down to hackerspace and ask can someone there help them?
Talks/Demos, I don’t see why companies wouldn’t bring in their kit once in a while to show the hackers and give a talk about it and a demo.
Open source, some companies don’t sell their software, they spend thousands creating it because their hardware needs it. They could benefit from others using it and making it better and we could benefit by getting to play with professionally written and proven software.
If we had the right man/woman involved they’d help us with the admin stuff, stuff I’m not ashamed to admit i know nothing about. These people have companies because they’re good.
I don’t see what we have to lose by having a company involved. Why would money, experience and expertise taint hackerspace?