hackerdojo

Potential space

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Went over with Brian to look at a place in downtown Mountain View today. What surprised me most about the place wasn't how great it was. Rather, I was surprised at how few other people interested in the HackerDojo showed up.

Which is to say, other than Brian, who organized the tour, the real estate agent and me, zero.

The place was/is really cool. There's enough space to have two classes going on at the same time, but the acoustics probably wouldn't lend themselves to such an arrangement. The space had a large number of neat features, the railings, the woodwork, etc., but is too expensive for the amount of space. The building also fails to lend itself to hardware projects: just try to put a CNC lathe on the carpeted, second floor, I dare you.

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Hacker Dojo meeting

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Tonight was the second HackerDojo group meeting. Tonight was less a progress meeting and more of status session. I felt that last week's meeting was more of an action meeting and this one was a follow up "reporting" meeting for those who missed last week's meeting.

I'm very happy I went, even if the flavor of the meeting wasn't the most desirable, because I met a large number of the people involved with the group via the HackerDojo website. I met Liza (yay! Another Liza!) and another David, as well as Dean Mao, whom I've been wanting to meet as he's a fellow "director," which means he's willing to up a larger amount of moolah than just members.

Because I have difficulty sitting through meetings if I'm not involved in them, I took notes in the meeting. My note taking style is very much a "write everything down, sort it later" method, but it works for me. I can't say I'm thrilled about my role as the "secretary" of the group, but I have to admit that it's more because the role of secretary tends to default to women, and I have a deep-seated aversion to default gender roles. I will also admit, however, that my desire for all things organized often overwhelms my aversion, which explains my willingness to take notes.

I posted my meeting summary. Gosh, I'm looking forward to this hacker community center opening! SO MUCH SO!

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Quick visit to San Mateo

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Mom and I went up to San Mateo today, to meet up with David Weekly and a few others, so that we could tour some possible locations for a new coworking/community sort of place. There are a number of coworking places in the City, but, as far as we can tell, none on the Peninsula or in the South Bay. Which is not to say you can't find shared places to work: those exist. However, none (also "as far as I can tell") are community run. Most are for-profit facilities with an internet connection, a phone line and a desk. You might have a window in there, too.

So, David put out a call to other like minded people, asking if they'd be interested in starting a coworking/community center on the Peninsula. The response was pretty much overwhelming.

Having recognized, despite my loner tendencies, just how much I need to interact with people to stay happy, I signed up.

Community run means that each member in the community has to help out, or the whole structure falls apart. If nothing else, running multiple ultimate leagues taught me how stressful having a small group, or one person even, run a large organization can be.

So, off we went to help tour places.

Unfortunately, the realtor dropped the ball and didn't meet up with us at David's work place. We ended up chatting about locations and what each of the four of us who showed up were interested in finding. It was a good meeting, if not as exciting as I had hoped it would be so that Mom wouldn't be bored. She was a good sport about it, though.

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