Dutch Hackerspaces At Ten Years Old: Celebrating A Community With A Special Map

The exotic cruise destination of Hoek van Holland Haven.
The exotic cruise destination of Hoek van Holland Haven.

A couple of months ago I wrote a piece about the evolution of hackerspaces, and mentioned that I’d be attending a party for a hackerspace birthday. As I write this that party was last weekend, and it was celebrating both the birthday of RevSpace in the Hague, and the tenth anniversary of hackerspaces in the Netherlands. After a relaxing ocean cruise across the North Sea and a speedy train ride I found myself in RevSpace with a bottle of Club-Mate in my hand, hanging out with not only the locals but a selection of others from all across northwestern Europe and beyond. RevSpace is an exceptionally well-organised hackerspace with a large membership, so there was plenty to talk about and a lot of interesting projects to look at.

There was a short programme of talks in Dutch, covering hackerspace history and interviewing a panel of hackerspace founders. I am told that these may make their way online with an English translation in due course, and should be worth looking out for. Then there was an epic-scale barbecue, an old-school rave with Gameboy chiptunes and analogue synth EDM among other delights, and the chance for an evening’s socialising with the rest of the attendees. Continue reading “Dutch Hackerspaces At Ten Years Old: Celebrating A Community With A Special Map”

Hackerspace Map of Europe

Finally A Hardware Hackerspace Map For The Apocalypse

In case you don’t know, our hacker brethren in Europe are pretty darn sophisticated with their hackerspaces — most of them even implement the Hackerspace API which tells the public when they are open, or closed. This allows them to tap in with hardware to create a fancy notifications for when the spaces are open!

Shackspace, the place to be in Stuttgart, had a nice big map of Europe destined for world domination in their lounge. They thought it could use an upgrade, so have been adding LEDs to represent each hackerspace. They glow green when open, and red when closed. And they built it all in one weekend flat.

If your space is not on the map, start using the Space API and let them know so they can update their project!

Sadly Shackspace in Stuttgart was not one of the hackerspaces we had the pleasure of touring during our European Hackerspace Tour!

[Thanks Momo!]