View source for Hackerspaces Design Patterns

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 [http://www.scribd.com/doc/9897224/1003Building-a-Hacker-Space design pattern presentation].

{|
|+
Hacker Spaces Design Patterns
|-
!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)