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Concept
Hackerspace
Summary
A hackerspace (also referred to as a hacklab, hackspace, or makerspace) is a community-operated, often "not for profit" (501(c)(3) in the United States), workspace where people with common interests, such as computers, machining, technology, science, digital art, or electronic art, can meet, socialize, and collaborate. Hackerspaces are comparable to other community-operated spaces with similar aims and mechanisms such as Fab Lab, men's sheds, and commercial "for-profit" companies.
In 2006 Paul Böhm came up with a fundraising strategy based on the Street Performer Protocol to build Metalab in Vienna, Austria, and became its founding director. In 2007 he and others started Hackerspaces.org, a wiki-based website that maintains a list of many hackerspaces and documents patterns on how to start and run them. the community list included 1967 hackerspaces with 1199 active sites and 354 planned sites.
The advent of crowdfunding and Kickstarter (founded 2009) has put the tools required to build hackerspaces within reach of an even wider audience. For example, Bilal Ghalib (who had previously worked on a hackerspace documentary) and others used such tools to bring the hackerspace concept to the Middle East.
Worldwide, a large number of hackerspace or makerspace facilities have been founded. Nicole Lou and Katie Peek reported that from 2006 to 2016 the number of active or planned spaces increased to 1,393, fourteen times as many as in 2006.
The US federal government has started adopting the concept of fully open makerspaces within its agencies , the first of which (SpaceShop Rapid Prototyping Lab) resides at NASA Ames Research Center.
In general, hackerspaces function as centers for peer learning and knowledge sharing, in the form of workshops, presentations, and lectures. They usually also offer social activities for their members, such as game nights and parties. Hackerspaces can be viewed as open community labs incorporating elements of machine shops, workshops, and/or studios where hackers can come together to share resources and knowledge to build and make things.
Official source
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