[HackerSpaces] 01 year of dai5ychain

[jake elliott]

hiyawl -

dai5ychain local network, a small community space in chicago, has
recently had a 01 year anniversary.  here's the txt i sent out to
friends & accomplices a few weeks ago; hope it's interesting for you or
at least can act as an introduction :)

this is also posted at
http://dai5ychain.net/jake/2007/10/24/01-year-of-dai5ychain/

-------------------------------
dai5ychain has been up & active for 01 year!  we opened last year one
week after the first chicago hackmeeting[0], on monday october 23rd
2006.

the first day we were open to the public, i put a paper sign on the
front door and played quake 3 by myself.  eventually a few curious
neighbors and friendly anarchists from the hackmeeting trickled in.  at
that time our most popular service was designing and printing on jeremy
hammond's lightly trashed g4 powerbook.

yesterday i ran into george herrejon, a neighborhood kid who's been
hanging out in the lab for the last several months with his younger
brother erick (both of them participated in the 'stepmania school'
workshop in april).  i had given him an xubuntu linux text-mode install
cd to try to run on a few old laptops his parents had found.  george
could hardly contain his excitement - he had just finished installing
xubuntu linux by himself on all three laptops: "it said something about
'hardware' and then the cd ejected and i turned it back on and put in my
password!  then it started up and it looks just like how you used to
have it in the computer lab."  we used to run xubuntu on the old iMac G3
machines; george has seen us through from that minimal setup to a
fullblown terminal-server install with individual user accounts and
persistent storage.

in its first week dai5ychain's user base was me, tamas kemenczy[1], lynn
hurley, jeremy hammond[2], stephanie padilla and alex lopez, but today
the number of registered users is over 250.

so after a year of providing an open resource for the neighborhood to do
their homework, keep in touch with relatives abroad, make flyers,
compose acid techno tracks and play video games, we have a lot of
practical experience of working with our community and helping them meet
and explore their needs with art+technology.  we also have a lot of
practical experience with regards to our own needs in operating this
project.  and i think we can move forward into our second year with a
clarity of focus and expectation that will help us make dai5ychain of
even more value.

this message is inviting you to join me in taking the next step
together.  i think it's going to involve some fundamental changes to our
process and structure that will be more focused and also more inviting
to collaboration from the larger community around art+technology
+activism.

first, dai5ychain will be effectively closed to the public for the next
4 weeks, until the 20th of november.  this is to give us time to clean
and organize.

when we reopen on the 20th of november, it will be with a new
organizational structure.  in the past, all we've done is schedule "open
lab" time, in large blocks (ie monday-thursday 10am-6pm, or tuesday
+thursday+saturday 4pm-9pm, etc).  moving forward, we'll use an open
calendar system to specifically schedule workshops and open lab time
individually in smaller blocks.  every two weeks, the online version of
the calendar will be printed into flyers in english and spanish, and
distributed in the neighborhood by a dedicated volunteer.

we'll also take a more coherent and structured approach to documentation
and feedback.  each scheduled workshop or open lab time will be
accompanied by an entry on the (forthcoming) dai5ychain blog, and a
small, optional survey.

we'll also place a new priority on two things that have been hard for us
to manage this year:
1. consistent availability of the most popular resources: printer, fax,
blank cds, flash drives.
2. a more user-centered website that can be a valuable and fun resource
for dai5ychain's users.

so here's how you can get involved now:

+ all of this needs discussion, planning, revision and collaboration of
course!  if you'd like to be part of that continuing conversation, you
can join the google group at:
http://groups.google.com/group/dai5ychainers

+ also i'd like to meet in person to talk about it.  if you're
interested in having that conversation face-to-face, please come by
dai5ychain, 2159 w 21st pl, on tuesday the 30th of october at 7pm (next
tuesday).

+ start planning workshops you could lead at dai5ychain!  a workshop
could run from 1-4 hours, be a series or a one-shot.  content could
range from learning HTML to creating and reading an email account to
playing a gameboy tournament.

ok - thanks for your part in a great year and i'm looking forward to
collaborating more with you in the next year!

[0] - http://hackmeeting.dai5ychain.net/
[1] - http://tamas.timond.net/
[2] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Hammond