Looks like we didn't get the word out soon enough or hard enough! There's another group of folks looking to put together a hacker collective like you've been discussing here on the forum. Now, there is certainly room for more than one here in the twin cities, especially with these long, cold winters. But I'm guessing all of us interested in this would be better served by pooling together for a first location. Now, certainly this is no order for any of you to participate with this other group, but I think we'll all wind up rather compatible. We're looking at an open, democratic group with a few strong personalities to lead us into formation. Looks like Paul would be one of those, and another never hurts. We're also looking at something in central, public-transit-friendly locations. In fact, we've actually scoped out one or two buildings. (We as in others in this group.)

If you're willing, please head over to <a href="http://mnhackers.net">mnhackers.net</a> and log into that google sites wiki (just a gathering space for the time being) and poke around. It might be worth a coffee sometime between all the folk involved, from both groups, to see how this could play out. Word is there's also a yahoo! group someone kicked up on our side. I'm looking for a link and confirmation, and will share it once I find it.

Cheers,

-jth

I found our email list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hackfactory. You can also find a link there by signing into the wiki with your email address.

Anyway, we looked at one site: 1620 Central Ave NE, Minneapolis, MN 55413. It's a large building that seems like it would make a really great space in a central location. We briefly discussed the building on Hiawatha that another had mentioned, and Midway would be a great location too.

Here is some information I found earlier, perhaps others had found it too. I realize this is rather broad, so I'll refrain from posting to this thread anymore.

Most worth reading is this first one with tips on starting a hacker space:
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2007/0 ... start.html

-- Tour of European hacker spaces: http://www.make-digital.com/make/vol12/?pg=190

-- More of MAKE magazine's hacker space coverage: http://www.google.com/cse?cx=0080324144 ... &sa=Search

the yahoo group is twin cities? it's not clear from the group description

I tried logging into the mnhackers site but it said I didn't have sufficient permissions, is it closed now or is it closed without an invite?

(I tried logging in with a gmail account, and I am not sure what NATN.net is)

Oh and by all means please invite all of the members to join us or let us join up with you, I think our combined efforts will not be wasted if we work together.

I also attempted to log on, but was unable to get to the forum. When you looked at the spaces, did you get any feel about costs and dimensions? Do you mind sharing those here?

Can't get anywhere on your mnhackers.net site to look around, same authentication problem

I think they moved to the yahoo news group, but there is only about a dozen messages last time I checked, so I am confused. What's going on over there jth?