Building a Hackerspace

A lot of good things are going on lately. Last weekend I was in Nuremberg for the openSUSE Board f2f meeting which when more than fine. I am preparing for oSC15 and on the openSUSE Camp things are better than usual.

We spent a few months talking about making a Hackerspace in Thessaloniki and almost a couple of months some people decided to stop talking and start acting. So we made Tech Ministry , a 180 square meters place in the center of Thessaloniki where everybody can find a home for their projects. Of course we are still building it, literally a hackerspace is never over, but we still need a few things to make it functional. We plan to have it fully functional but the end of next week, but I know really well that everybody has a plan until they get hit, LoL.
If you have some money left in your paypal and you want to help you can do it by donating to our Hackerspace here. We could also use any kind of equipment that you don't need so all you have to do is contact me here by sending a comment or by sending me an email. If you are an FOSS Project Tech Ministry is always happy to support you by promoting your project in our members, so just send us all the information you think we will need for that. 

My Prusa i3 -The Beggining

It's been a while, actually almost a year since I last bloged, and what a year...
So after oSC13 I've decided among many other things that I did to finally start building my own 3d Printer. I was determined to build a Prusa Mendel V2 when I sudently changed my mind and decided to build a Prusa i3. Just to be honest I just think that Prusa i3 is more beautiful than Prusa Mendel.
 I was reading on how to build a 3d printer since I first saw one in oSC11 but I though it was to complicated and I asked the help of a friend who knew electronics. For many reasons the friend jumped out of the idea so I 'paused' the idea since I did not had the knowlege to do it on my own and the fact that organizing oSC13 was a very time and consitration consuming thing. Finally this January I decided that I will try to make one of my own and see what happens, so I wrote down the BOM of PRusa i3 and started looking to buy the parts. Nowdays I am at the point that I have almost all parts gathered, except the Hotend that I think deserves some more searching before purchasing one. Today it was the first day that I started putting together the frame. A rookie mistake holds me down from completing the frame today but I am pretty sure that I will have the frame assembled by the end of next week. It is Summer and being a Forest firefighter make time a luxury so the end of next week is not that far. 

Organizing oSC13 - 69 days before

I read yesterdays post and I found it very 'dark', not far from the truth but if you plan to make a conference reading that post will discourage you. One other truth is that I yelp a lot, if you met me more than once you know that for sure, it's not because I am a bad person or one of those people that see it all black, it is the perfectionist inside me that believes we live in a perfect world and reacts.

It is impossible to organize such a thing and wait for everything to be perfect. It is too complicated and there are many things that nobody can actually predict and even if you done that before, most of the things you need to handle probably changed since the last time you did it. What I keep telling myself is to expect perfectness but be pleased if something is above very good. With that you are a bit more relaxed and as the years passed by I learned that the only actual way to reach perfectness in complicated situations it to be (relatively) relaxed so that you have eyes around and predict things that can make a situation go bad. Also being relatively relaxed gives you the ability to think for alternatives. A good advice I was given once upon a time after a failure of organizing a gig was "ALWAYS have alternatives". What I mean by that is that when you organize something you start making tasks, it is impossible for some of those tasks not to go wrong for many reasons. At certain situations it (depending on the affection of the task in what you organize) it is better to leave outside a good idea were there is no viable alternative than trying to do something Great and because of this you will deliver something less than good. Another thing to have always in mind is that 'The road to hell is paved with good intentions" and no matter how hard you try people will see the result in the end, not the effort you did for that result. Another thing is that in the end there always be someone that will not like what you did and probably will tell you that the worst way and at the worst time. Value feedback from all because it is priceless but learn to separate good from bad feedback.

I think this is enough for today. I am at my actual work today so I will spend less than the time I want to the oSC13 and this is not a bad thing actually, I will tell you why at some other point. 

TheHackerspace opening: When Great things happen

 I rarely envy people, one of the times I did it was when some guys from Athens announced the creation of a Hackerspace there. I also envied them wen i saw that they started making good work and organizing well. After that I heard about the creation of P-space at Patras and I thought that it was only a mater of time for some people to make something similar to my City.

 A few weeks ago I heard that Efstathios Hatzikyriakidis along with Stavros Kalapothas and Stergios Kalamopoulos where starting a local Hackerspace. I knew Efstathios and he had helped me on the past when I once sent him an e-mail because I wanted some help for Arduino. He was very helpful back then and in a way he had earned my trust.

  So yesterday it was The-Hackerspace opening, and it was an open invitation for everyone to attend and have a talk about our City's Hackerspace. Almost 30 people where there, all curious and all genuine interesting (at least from what I can tell) for it. We had very interesting talks while waiting for the organizers to present us their ideas about the-Hackerspace and you could find all kind of people among us, from hackers to Window users.

At a certain point the people that gathered us all there got our attention and started presenting us their way of thinking of how they would like  the-Hackerspace to work. I was amazed. Their ideas were (are) progressive but at the same time doable. I admit that it was far from what I expected to see in a good way. From what I saw and from the talk we had after their short presentation, other people had the same opinion with me. After that we had a cake and a few hours later we left with the best impressions.

If you are from Thesssaloniki or from a city near there is no excuse for not at least make a visit there. You can find more information about the location of the-Hackespace at http://the-hackerspace.org/location/.

In a city that Great things rarely happen, the-Hackerspace is something at least innovating and it surely deserves our attention and support.