User:Average/Business Plan

Imagine a night club where people are making things out of microcontrollers, code, and steel... For those who like short-cuts see the discussion page. Basically, the goal is to fix and redeem the world. Obviously, neither the conservative hierarchal model nor liberal free-for-all resulted in the world that we all wanted, so this is the remediation plan for various leaders and refugees that still hold some smidgen of righteousness and ideals. Apply a little fine-grit to the plan below and you're good to go...

Edit: Please edit this. It needs to be revamped. It's too stodgy and covers only the member-side part of the equation. Besides that, there is also the idea that people can come in and request a project (like building a table, or machine this part, design a new cabinet, etc). Two people can suggest the price of the completed project and haggle until they agree, then offer it to the customer. If the customer doesn't like it, it goes to the front room for retail or the space can use it, eating their own dogfood.... etc. etc..

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A business plan, eh? Perhaps you're a city leader and feel the pressure of having nothing for youth and other hoodlums to do in your community. Well, you could just give them one of your community`s many old computers and set them on the One True Path...

...Or, perhaps you're biting at your nails as the apocalypse encroaches into your business districts, right? Well, you'll have to save the wooly mammoth because the knowledge in these documents probably came from it`s presumed demise, otherwise this document is exactly what you need to start redeeming your massively-subsidized-by-trees-and-other-life economy. I mean, don't expect to be successful if you owe God or someone. But it is a self-organizing system, that (like seeds drifting in the air) can be dispersed across every city and take root with very little involvement from above. Just find the right space, set up the World Game, pour in some kids, and turn up the rock and roll.

Sit back, and watch your diseased body of a downtown start to become a center for socio-economic activity that you never dreamed, but saw on TV.

Hackerspace Movement: How to Clean Up the Mess Made by Your Forebearers and Reign Supreme

author: @Xer0Dynamite, 2015, 2016

The overarching goal of the hacker and makerspace initiatives are to create a better world by fixing the failures of the old pyramidal model of [current] industrialism which focused on exploitation of resources, forgetting history, and commodification of human beings and, ultimately, replacing it with something sustainable, righteous, and human -- an "economy" previously dependant on imports of cheap foreign goods will be turned into local crafts(wo)mans of busy beavers and innovative artisan designs.

The best wisdom from industry and elsewhere suggests that radical changes will be necessary within the decade, pushed by practical and spiritual concerns related to Peak Oil, Peak Energy, and the scientific (and religiously) predicted planetary transitions given our stages of human development. Done correctly, lifestyles will improve as prior excesses from the old paradigm gets churned and redeemed into new value for the Creative Economy, allowing resources to get more efficiently (re-)allocated where they can make more benefit for the community.

Current oil-driven capitalism is like an addict who doesn't want to admit that they have a problem -- no matter how much they know how unhealthy their behaviors are, they refuse to change. Shipping 99% of your goods further than a day`s truck-drive is a real drain on human social capital, road building and maintainance, and fossil fuel consumption. We can transform this and create a homebrew, industrial, economic revolution in the process. This effort exceeds the efforts of generations past (like the communes of the 60’s) by integrating maximal participation rather than just “tuning in and dropping out.”

The basic hacker and maker space creates a social nexus and economic alternative for the "creative class" (the hackerspace aspect) while building a new type of work-space that connects mechanically-inclined individuals from the community with tools and other people (makerspace aspect) -- bridging high school education with post-secondary education with the industrial economic system -- a virtuous circle for all three groups to benefit. However, it's not structured as like the dirty, monolithic, heirarchical institutions, it's a socio- and economic revolution: providing a highly-dynamic, safe space where high-schoolers and general community members can make economic and social value together with just a minimum of obstacles.

The main feature of these centers is it's decentralization: there's no "boss" telling people what to do: people become members, learn from each other, and participate in the community, creating new value in the process. Further, the plan is implementable across the world, from villages and metropolises that have a minimum of: a high school, a paved highway, a post office, and some minimal communications system capable of sending and receiving signals (a le telegraph). If you want neo-industrial part of it, you'll also need a bank.

The movement has a lot of interest world-wide and eventually the scope of the movement will require changes across the entire commercial banking sector (among other things) in order to fix our economy: away from merely securing deposits and towards new wealth generation by pairing innovators with hard-to-acquire (or otherwise expensive) tools or other assets placed in depressed but functional real estate. Ultimately, these creative encounters should have outlets involving raw materials and technical know-how on-hand. That's the purpose of this document. Further, the public sector will have to be redeemed to address former missteps taken with the building of America and the apathy garnered by decades of misuse of the Law. For the academic sector, new bridges will have to be built to repair some of the historical detachment from the world as touched upon above. This is an arena where the players have not yet come to the fore to acknowledge the need to be engaged. A handful of academics with a passion working with high-school kids and others with similar levels of education are ideal.

What kind of projects are envisioned? Teaching system administration, computer programming, robotics with cheap micro-controllers, STEM projects, laser-cut wood designs, 3-d printing, artistic and creative projects that utilize these tools. People from the community can come in and request work be done, an estimate can be given, and a project built. Anything that is creative or useful to the community is a candidate for this space: textile work, paper and book-making, t-shirt graphics and screen printing, automotive design and parts fabrication, circuit-boards and other electronics projects for kids and geniuses alike. Low-wattage radio broadcasting will beam the beats for the revolution out to the neighborhood. The idea is to make a space so casual and accessible, they may even meet and play D&D. STUB build-by date (days to build), member-materials-EQC., supply-side (labor+materials) estimate, time-to-sell (floor-days), retail demain-side estimate, project-fails (member breaks X), item fails after sale? gravity: who holds the item?

Consider this. People can come in from across the local area and, if they don't want to build something they need themselves, they can:

• request an idea be built, no money need be given, the space builds the idea, two or more members decide on the price ("inspected and priced by _"), and the customer is notified. If customer declines on the price, the item is put in the front for retail sales. House keeps 10% for not satisfying customer. If item doesn't
• ask for a repair, gets estimate from two or more members, ....
• customer puts up 50% of estimated costs and can require member X to build in Y days, project gets built, customer can examine project during work and decline the result, but if project sells within #(hours_required_build) x 2 weeks for original estimate, no money is given back, otherwise 10% of the difference in sell-price is given back. If it doesn't sell within the specified amount of time, customer can have project at the 50% cost.
• customer puts up materials costs, no date is specified, customer and house split the gain...

Items guaranteed for X days if inspected by manager.

PLAN:

You need to have a plan. Your members are:

• smart and creative high-schoolers with time on their hands,
• college students looking for a good space to build projects,
• crafts(wo)men of various trades that otherwise don't have access to major tools and could use a social environment rather than work alone in their garage, and
• artists/misfits of various types that have been marginalized or cast-aside from the existing make-them-productive-through-dominance paradigm.

Site location should be near college or cultural centers (ideally) or impoverished areas where warehouse space is available. Access to public transportation centers or bike paths is good. Buildings should have windows, open and reconfigurable architecture, electrical/water/phone/data/sewage service, heating system for colder geographies, and a bathroom. A static IP address for a Internet server is ideal. Fiber if you can get it.

The informality makes filling the space easier than most would imagine. The model is the stone-soup idea: everyone has a little contribution from the community to make it work. A couch, a toolbox, an oscilloscope, cheap books sold from library -- all these things come together at practically no cost. Most communities have surpluses of things that they'd be glad to give as a long-term loan for a place that open to the community. It's a non-profit and everybody wins.

This initiative is designed to be paired with hackerlofts and new living co-operatives to form the basis for radical lifestyle changes and to showcase the best practices for creating a transformed society which simultaneously is both post- and neo-industrial. Hackers and makers generally require just minimalist accommodations to provide the focus towards the many improvements to the existing technological, industrial, and urban infrastructure that will be required and available as opportunities. The initial outlay and risk is miniscule.

Primary activities for hackerspaces are various member-started projects, cultural events, educational teach-ins, and game-nights. All these can bring the community together and serve demand happening RIGHT NOW. There's very little liability concerns at the start. As you scale to Builderspaces, on the other hand, you'll have bigger needs.

To ensure success in the decentralized community of the hackerspace, this initiative includes use of a technology called the Pangaia World Game. The name derives from the hippy Gaia Hypothesis of James Lovelock who conceived of the Earth as a living, self-organizing system and Buckminster Fuller who conceived the concept of a world peace game -- a systems-based approach where everyone would participate in fixing the world’s social and economic problems. In this case, we're solving the problem of organizing hundreds of fiercely independent individuals (because most have already been betrayed by the existing paradigm) and creating a new currency system (to keep everything squeaky clean of ethical deficits and free of moral debt) -- a non-trivial task.

The World Game is the low-tech catalyzer designed with bio-mimicry. Utilizing a cork-board as a fertile ground, it is the agglutinating force that links ideas with people and resources. It runs 24/7 and fosters a space`s "organizational memory" to showcase what people are engaged in and, via it`s low barrier-to-entry, fosters a continual, asynchronous "dialog" for people who move in and out over time. The Game exploits the perpetual tension between order and chaos and works best when a whole wall is available. It exploits the power of Reed's Law to create 2ⁿ geometric scaling by providing not only the quadratric n² value formed by linking people together, but the additional dimension gained from the ability to create arbitrary groups of shared interests.

Everyone can vote up or down each other's ideas. This counts as the individual unit of work and creates an in-game currency for those making the creative economy. These game-points then inform the old-money funding sources to find interesting projects, besides inspiring internal mayhem.

Together, these ideas and tools have the capacity to transform society in a matter of a decade rather than centuries.

INITIALIZE:

All you need is an abandoned warehouse, empty second-floor downtown, or just an unused building somewhere. Your community development office should help you out. therwise, another option is to sell shares to the community to start the hackerspace, allowing all assets to be owned by the shareholders, but keep management held by those with the passion to build it.

However the space is granted, hackerspaces thrive with maximum freedom, but can also lose energy or dissipate funding without some guidance. The World Game is designed to channel this latent energy into useful projects and highlight qualified mentors and willing volunteers for every need of the hackerspace. Nonetheless, the issue of governance is basicly addressed by following self-organizing principles.

Space inventory starts very basic and scales as interest grows. Minimal starting conditions are public accessibility, open wifi, a couch/desk, and the corkboard. Then:

• shared work tables for projects,
• lockers to hold projects items,
• desks with computers (running Free software),
• small-watt radio transmitter for beaming out your revolution,
• whiteboards for collaboration,
• video projectors to demo ideas (project onto curtains, frosted windows, or walls to entice people about what's going on inside),
• PA system for setting the work vibe,
• a small but well-curated library,
• kitchen for late-nite pizza at the hackathons,
• bike rack to encourage sustainability,

Beyond that will generally accumulate organically according to your member's interests: parts drawers, raw material bins for use/re-use, tools for taking things apart, etc. A retail space is encouraged for selling products from the space.

Post your Statement of Purpose so that everyone will understand and trust what you're doing. The signatories who craft this core "DNA" are considered Founders. This should help others to find those they might need. Additionally, for spaces receiving outside funding, you may want to set up a "Board of Directors" meeting time and place so they can see your progress. In such case, control is not meant to be handed over, as it is not a kind of organization that can be lead from above without a clear visionary. Save that for the Game and wait to see who emerges as leaders.

RUN:

The revenue model has four sources: memberships, patrons (private donors and corporate sponsors), community events (50% of gross receipts kept by the space), and retail sales of items made within (revenue from selling shelf-space).

Community, of course, is important, but meeting expenses is equally so. Because of the community nature of the space, first-year funding can be as low $5K and initial footage needed is only about 2000 sq ft, preferably located in warm climate, near cultural centers, including universities, coffee shops, or downtown areas. Given the right conditions, a hackerloft living quarters can be acquired simultaneously to be co-located, but that's just for those so dedicated. With the partnership of banks, they could acquire and host the assets in a community trust for spaces where a clear leader has emerged.

Absent a major contributor or philanthropic angel, the initial aim will be for the initial expenses to be supplied by memberships and patrons. The other portion, as mentioned above, will come from retail sales and events hosted in the space. The house keeps 50% of all proceeds from events hosted by members and sells shelf space rather than earn commissions on sales. So members can sell things and keep all proceeds, minus a reasonable monthly shelf-fee based on size of item. Note that memberships don’t prevent other people from hanging out (over age 18) or participating as long as they’re with a member who is accepting responsibility for them.

Besides the significant revenue source, memberships give the advantage of quantifying interest of all those who walk in the door and can encourage greater participation if done right. In addition, memberships can give concreteness to liability issues as well as create opportunities with other like-minded “co-operators” (coffee houses could give discounts to members, for example). As a rough example for revenue, 50 people at an average of $50/month gives $2500/month of low-overhead revenue.

Kickstarter has proven that tiered participation equals more participation. Tiered monthly membership structure (and their benefits):

• $5, Member: Cool card, free access to space whenever it’s open, free wifi, email address.
• $25, Hacker: Adds use of house computers, Linux account, and small storage locker.
• $125, Maker: Adds use of machines for steel, wood, plastic, bigger storage.
• $500, Crew: Gets 24-hr access code for the space, large semi-permanent floor-space or a bunk at the loft.

Additionally, there are non-builder, one-time or annual supporter levels for those who believe in the mission (aka "matrons and patrons"). These can be material assets for the space or cash. General structure:

• $2,500, Matron or Patron. Gets acknowledged on website and any publications.
• $10,000, Shareholder. As above and bi-annual shareholder update.
• $50K, Sponsor. As above with placard or other visible logo at the space. Can receive updates as desired.
• $250K, Board member. Can sit on the board and guide the movement’s development.
• $1M+, Angel who wants to change the world. Talk to us directly.

A free “day pass” could be considered for those who want to try-out the space, engage community members, and get comfortable. Such pass should have contact info, wifi password (applicable in spaces without good network admin support), and during initial period can act as a coupon good for $3 off initial, base membership. If people aren’t willing or able to pay $2 for a month’s worth of access to the space, then they shouldn't be in the space (for they don't understand or value it).

For starving artists, an art and projects fund should be made to co-pay the desired membership level as long as they are willing to pay the minimal membership of $5/month. Memberships should not be a barrier to participation for any willing and interested community member.

For corporate sponsors, they can donate goods or dollars and get their logo mounted in the space as long as it's within their mission and for as long as their donations are used ("these parts donated to you by Radio Hausen.").

Operationally, many of the tasks for keeping the organization running smoothly are handled by the World Game. Administrators can post bounties for getting jobs done and people are incentivized by various rewards. A small group of paid staff may still be useful.

AMPLIFY:

The goal is to accelerate a great transition and make a Creative Economy, but like the seed analogy or a snowball rolling downhill, it all starts with a small effort.

For the following table, the left column signifies the approximate monthly investment or commitment (per a given degree of magnitude) by founders for creating the level of engagement which should promote the next level of organization most organically and automatically as the demand and interest from the community increases. Students can divide these numbers by 10:

• $10/month Notice of Incorporation: Written document informing any interested parties your intentions; business cards to help people feel like they’re part of something great, giving links to your domain, and helping them to co-create the next level of engagement.
• $100/month Digital Presence: Domain name, web page, discussion groups giving concepts behind the space, mailing list to start acquiring member interest and communication of ideas and possible space locations, perhaps a dedicated linux server and static IP address.
• $1K/month Hackerspace: Basic Physical Presence. This level has ability to create hobby and community projects with team members talking about possible large-scale projects and establish residential lofts. Non-profit level that should engage with the education sector.
• $10K/month Makerspace. Tools for woodwork, papermaking, textiles, and perhaps plasticswork. Has the ability to create products. Meet with public officials, chamber of commerce, commercial banks. Spin off a co-working B Corporation.
• $100K/month Builderspace. Add industrial equipment and high-voltage service: milling machines, welders/torches, steel forge, large bay doors. Floor space sold as part of membership. Has ability to create new automobile designs. Start interfacing with corporate sector.
• $1M/month Global Domination: space-faring scenario, every city engaged and interlinked. American karma and history resolved to create the 21st century economy: Neo-industrialism.

This roadmap can be started NOW and be executed across many cities simultaneously, scaling up to a billion people within 1-5 years. It is expected that a post-industrial society and lifestyle happen concurrent to these developments: establishing food sovereignty with permaculture and community gardens, transportation and housing co-ops, urban architecture and redesign, and new levels of civic engagement as new social structures get developed.

Be sure to read the link about Big O notation to understand the significance of it all.

AFTERWARD:

The hackerspace pathos could be said to borne out of places like the MIT AI Lab, Homebrew Computer Club, Chaos Computer Club, phreakers and hackers of the past, and pirate radio and HAM Radio Enthusiasts who dreamed up the idea of freely communicating to people far, far away a long time ago.

Thanks to Stephen Guerin and Simon Mehalek for visioning and inspiration and Susan Blackmore-Ashford for support from the sf_x. Send a ping to the author if you found it useful!

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About the author: The author was a computer engineer devleloping AI at MIT who dropped out and bummed around America to hop freight trains, sailboats, and “ascend the mountain” to contemplate and understand the situation of America. Along the way back, acquired a doctorate but became homeless while trying to plant the seeds to a new civilization. He’s still recovering and awaits the right crew to redeem the world so that children have a future beyond consumerism, debt, disease, and mass delusion. He can be found at his user page.

Link to original article.