Here's a good presentation at 24C3 on Hacker Space Design Patterns.

From the intro:


I know Bre Petis of NYCResistor is working on a book on hacker spaces, but its not out yet.

Anyone know of other resources or accounts of hacker spaces getting started - probably a good idea to learn from the experiences and/or mistakes of others rather than repeating them.

I e-mailed the owner of the TechShop (http://techshop.ws/) in California back in November about setting up a TechShop location in Minneapolis. I pointed him to this forum. Perhaps he'll stop by and offer some help.

I have been in contact with Tech Shop. Right now they are looking at setting up a franchise system to allow cities with a strong maker community to open up a shop with everything ironed out so to speak.

They are in the funding stage and it looks like 2011 before anything of that sort happens. The "economic downturn" has hurt their fund raising abilities.

Opening up a shop similar to Tech Shop or in collaboration with Tech Shop would be ideal, but that is at least 1 year more like 2. In the mean time I think getting something like a hacker space how ever small will be worth its weight in gold.

Personally, I'd be much more inclined to participate in a cooperative space run democratically in a way that would make it eligible for non-profit status in time. If someone has the capital to kick up a commercial venture like TechShop, more power to 'em, but for a hobbyist, I'd rather have the community/club-house feel.

I agree too but that'll take some strong-minded and well-heeled folks to get together, get along, and get things moving. This forum is a good start for that and I it looks to me like the current feelings of folks here are moving in that direction. It's alot more difficult, time consuming, and risk-laden than a "ready made franchise" model but I dare say it'd be a heck of alot more fulfilling and useful to the community.