tl;dr: Come this Friday to Bonnevoie and celebrate the Hackerspaces new home. $link
When I decided in 2002 to found my first ever company I was 21, had no degree and just decided that buying an appartement in London is a really stupid idea.
I am not really sure why it took me over 5 years to think of starting an open and 24h accessible physical space but one thing I am sure is that we still have not got enough of it.
My main motivation was self-driven, some might even say ego-centrical. I needed a place to dump my shit because it seemed ridicoulous bunking it in my place instead of sharing it with the world.
As I was mostly interested in electronics (read: ready to solder kits), gadgets and misc. tools you wouldn't normally have at home, the theme was pretty soon set.
Without going through a prosaic blob of memory lane I just want to share my lessons learned:
- start small [1] (too much spoils people and they only come and loiter around. Nothing wrong with that but sometime you want to get shit done.)
- have a non-technical theme
- ignore bikeshedding and just do it
- yes the geo-physical space matters
Whilst a lot has changed in all those years, and me only being involved in kicking the thing off, I am happy to see that we are still around.
There would be countless successes I could list (as well as failures) but that needs a seperate time in space.
This Friday 12th of September we will celebrate awesomness on all levels. From 17h00 until we are all tired of Hacking around we will be together in one happy family.
Stay awesome and have fun.