Hackerspaces Design Patterns
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The Hackerspaces Design Patterns are a list of suggested solutions to common (operational) problems of hacker spaces, collected during the 2007 hacker space tour: "American hackers visited hacker spaces in Germany and Austria. They wanted to know how our European hacker spaces work. After the Camp they visited a couple of hacker spaces. Every hacker space did a presentation about their history". Jens Ohlig and Lars Weiler (CCC Cologne) created the design pattern presentation.
| Problem | Solution | Pattern | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Start with infrastructure or with projects? | Make it infrastructure driven | Infrastructure Pattern | I doubt this is the best advice /trox |
| Should we start or should we wait | Start | The Grace Hopper Pattern | |
| How should your group communicate | mailing list + wiki + IRC | The Community Pattern | that's before 2.0 ;) |
| Start on your own? | Rule: 2+2, aim for 10 | The Critical Mass Pattern | probably the best bit of advice in there |
| It's so hard to get off your asses | Look for strong personalities with experience | The Strong Personalities Pattern | Need at least 1 who really, really, really wants it; someone who just does it and takes others with them |
| Weird landlord, picky neighbours | Choose wisely (unusual lifestyle and projects of hackerspaces need cool neighbours) | Landlord and Neighbourhood Pattern | |
| Minimize rent/sympathy: someone lives at the hackerspace | Guests: fine. Don't let anyone live there | The Roommate Anti-Pattern | |
| Need for chill, discuss, small group work | Have smaller, separate rooms | The Séparé Pattern | |
| Need for food and coffee | Have a kitchen, cook together, fridge, dishwasher, freezer | The Kitchen Pattern | |
| Need for space to relax/play | Bring couches, sofas, video game consoles etc. | The Coziness Pattern | |
| After long hacking sessions, you will start to smell funny | Bathroom with shower | The Shower Pattern | |
| Need to cover regular expenses (rent, utilities, ...) | Collect fees regularly. Make no exceptions, ever | The Membership Fees Pattern | Open access = free, but not necessarily gratis |
| Meet at a company or university | Never ever depend your space on external sponsors. | The Sponsoring Anti-Pattern | A valid point, but... |
| Resolve internal conflicts | Regular, structured meeting, with all members, minuted; once a week | The Plenum Pattern | Once a month would work for grown ups, too |
| Problem of finding a day when everyone can be at the meeting | Meet on Tuesday | The Tuesday Pattern | Essentially: pick a day and go with it, so people can start to fit it into their schedules |
| How to bring in new people | Have a monthly, public, open lecture/talk/workshop | The Open Chaos Pattern | |
| Older members graduate or get married, need of fresh blood | Recruiting mechanisms: a challenge in form of a course | The U23 Pattern | This is not the only typical student related problem they've got... |
| Enthusiasm goes away, projects are stagnating | Enthusiasm has a cycle of 4 years | The Sine Curve Pattern | I wonder if that's empirical? |
| Group decision | Discuss until everyone agrees | The Consensus Pattern | see next ... |
| Discussion does not lead anywhere | Vote and go with strongest minority | The Democracy Pattern | There are better solutions to deal with disagreeing minorities |
| Nobody does the dishes | Order people to do the dishes, yell, if necessary, but always participate | The Command Pattern | |
| You find yourself in a dictatorship | Use leadership temporarily, don't have a single root | The Sudo Pattern | |
| Volunteers feel an urge to slack | Remind volunteers of responsibility for the community and to hand over tasks | The Responsibility Pattern | |
| Plenum: everybody is yelling, nothing gets done | Make people with actual social skills lead the discussion; teach/learn social skills | The Debat Culture Pattern | |
| Long discussions about details of a solution | Identify pointless discussions and end them | The Bikeshed Anti-Pattern | |
| Someone causes a problem that cannot be resolved in the group | Let some experienced member talk to the trouble-maker in person. Listen. | The Private Talk Pattern | |
| No space left and the room filled with junk | Pile old stuff, let everybody take from it, dispose of the rest | The Old Hardware Pattern | Holds equally for scrap material etc. |
| Access, keys | Hand out keys, have a good lock, collect deposit | The Key Pattern | |
| Stay up long and make a good impression without drugs | Buy a pallet of Club-Mate | The Club-Mate Pattern | And the Germans literally stick to [Club-Mate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_mate], a |
table end
(For details see: http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/Design_Patterns)