Spoke last night to Eric Michaud and Mitch Altman from the Hacker Spaces movement: a network of "community-operated physical places, where people can meet and work on their projects."
Lots of grumbling about the lack of any kind of open workshop in Berlin - somewhere equipped with plenty of tools, where you can turn up and work on your own projects. There are a couple of places that sort-of do this - C-base or the regenbogenfakrik, but apparently they only have very basic equipment. Also a lot of shared ateliers, etc. that tend not to be open to the public. Fixing this is outside our scope - kitting out a workshop would cost several thousand euros, let alone the need for a space. But interesting to see what other people are up to, what they want and don't have. There's a talk about hacker spaces coming up at the CCC. |