TALES FROM MAKE: BLOG Euro Hacker Spaces
Ich bin ein Hacker.
Bre’s hacker tour of Europe started at the Chaos Communications Camp, where hackers from around the world gathered for presentations, food, camaraderie, and Club-Mate, the best soft drink ever.
Photograph by Bre Pettis
I went on a tour of hacker spaces across Europe this summer. Berlin is filled with hackers! C-Base (c-base.org), Chaos Computer Club (ccc.de), and Esch (eschschloraque.de) are all popular hangouts.
Starting at the CCC hacker camp near Berlin, I drove through the night to Austria just to go to the Metalab (metalab.at/wiki/English), an awesome hacker space in Vienna. It’s located in the heart of the city, right near the parliament building. It’s a vital and active space, and the Metalab folks have been intentional about setting it up and making things happen there.
They have facilities for presentations, community space for hardware and software hacking, a chill room for playing video games, a library, a foosball table, and a wet room for working on photography and circuit board etching. Paul Böhm, a founder, gave a great presentation describing the intentions, infrastructure, and development of their hacker space.
Located in the small town of Bochum, Germany, Das Labor (das-labor.org) is a hacker space filled with flashing LED gadgetry and vital hacking action. When the Hackers on a Plane group visited, Jörg Bornschein and Tilman Frosch explained that the laboratory was founded by accident. A group of cultural organizations decided to rent a building and they needed one more tenant. Looking to Netzladen in Bonn (netzladen.org) and C4 in Cologne (koeln.ccc.de) for inspiration, they wrote up rules and brought together 20 people to discuss costs and membership fees. To spread the word, they postered local colleges. Now with approximately 42 members, Das Labor is a great space to work on electronics or software projects. Their work inspired a project for the Weekend Projects Podcast.
If this inspires you like it does us, check out our special online article on setting up your own hacker spaces: makezine.com/go/hacker.
Now back in the States, I’m starting up a hacker group called NYC Resistor, and we’re on the lookout for a clubhouse where we can collaborate, learn, share, reverse engineer Club-Mate, and work on awesome projects (nycresistor.com).
Bre Pettis produces MAKE’s Weekend Projects Podcast. Tune in every Friday afternoon and learn about a project you can make in a weekend at makezine.com/podcast.