Welcome and introductions

[Michael Kulpa]

Well it looks like we've got a few people interested so I suppose we
might as well get a first post going.

Welcome to the list, I hope you find it useful.

I gave a bit of an introduction when I invited everybody, but just to
expand on it a bit, my name is Michael Kulpa, I go by kulps, I've been
a director at ENTS for a couple years now and I'm keen to have a well
organized Hackerspace.


If you'd like to leave an introduction feel free to do so here.

[Jean-Francois Arseneau]

Thanks for the invite and for taking the initiative on this Michael (or,
I guess I should say kulps.) I think this list will be useful to the
continued growth of hackerspaces in Canada.

My name is Jean-Francois Arseneau (JF for short), I'm the president of
HubCityHackerspace, a fledling hackerspace that is being built up in
Moncton, New Brunswick.

Looking forward to participating in this new list,

Jean-Francois Arseneau

[Andrew Orr]

Great idea, I'm in.

My name is Andrew Orr (aka xorrbit), I'm a founder/director/treasurer
at SkullSpace in Winnipeg. We incorporated about a year ago and
started leasing a space 6 months ago so it's been a crazy year for us
to say the least.

Also looking forward to this list (I gave up on hackerspaces-discuss
awhile ago :P).

Cheers,
-Andrew

On Jan 4, 2:34 pm, Jean-Francois Arseneau <hubcityh...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[Seth Hardy]

hi, i'm seth. i was one of the founders of hacklab.to. then i decided i needed space for power tools and didn't care about writing software in my spare time, so i left hacklab to start site 3 colaboratory. site 3 has been operating for a year and a half now, we have about 60 members of varying degrees and at least that many regular non-members in our open community. we run many events and work on crazy art projects and are much more of an intersection-of-art-and-technology makerspace than a hackerspace. 

i have no love for hackerspaces.org for a number of reasons, but strongly support local/useful meta-organizations and groups. i'm one of the people who got SoOnCon (southern ontario hacker/makerspaces con) going, and am happy to see more community building between canadian spaces.

--
seth hardy
sha...@asymptotic.ca
647/890.1452

[Alex Leitch]

Hi, I'm Alex. I'm one of the other founders of Site 3, which is pretty amazing. I used to be a member of hacklab.TO, until I talked someone into using power tools for fun and we left to start Site 3. I spend most of my time organizing workshops and checking in about member dues.

I'm also an associate of Dames Making Games Toronto, and a variety of other crews. I organized SoonCon 2011 at the TIFF lightbox, and I'm excited to see how Canada takes on something something community, initiatives, kumbaya, flame effects, conferences, make future happen, yes, that.

--

rowdymedia.com - site3.ca

647.892.9321 - alex....@gmail.com - @aeleitch

[Simon Clark]

Hey, 

I'm Simon Clark, one of the founders at Diyode in Guelph, Ontario.  We've styled ourselves more as a community workshop than a hackerspace, but the essence is that same.

We've been open for a little over a year. 26 members, self-sufficient.  Our challenge now is to keep momentum going and to draw in more of the local diy community.  We are well stocked for basic woodworking, metal working and electronic tools, and are currently chasing after funding for more advanced tools like a laser cutter, 3D printer, etc.

.

Simon Clark - Diyode Community Workshop

AIM:siatdfi, Skype:zebraspot, Twitter:diyode

71 Wyndham St. S, Unit B, N1E 5R3, Guelph, Ontario

+1 (519) 822-6788

[Brad Pommen (NTC)]

Hey everyone and thank you for the invite.

My name is Brad Pommen and I am the chief hackerspace coordinator for
the Nelson Tech Club (http://nelson-tech-club.info) in British
Columbia.
I have been in the tech scene for over 15 years in varying roles and
love to share my knowledge and experiences, including attending CES
2011 & 2012.
The NTC has been around since Oct 2010 and has seen roughly 30+
members pass through the doors during that time.
As a club, we have kicked butt at local web dev contests and are
Arduino and electronics junkies.
We have a dedicated hackerspace (400+ sqft) and 10-15 regular
attendees at our weekly meetings.
Currently we are supported by key members, no formal membership system
has been devised.

Looking forward to sharing and learning along with you all.

Cheers,
Brad

[Darcy Casselman]

Hi!

I'm Darcy Casselman, the president of Kwartzlab
(http://kwartzlab.ca/), the hackerspace in Kitchener-Waterloo,
Ontario.

I think we've got an awesome community here, both at Kwartzlab and in
KW, and amongst the southern Ontario hackerspaces. I look forward to
being able to build the community amongst all the Canadian
hackerspaces.

Somewhat tangentially, I'm also one of the official contacts for the
Ubuntu Canada Local Community Team (http://ubuntu-ca.org/). If you're
interested in contributing to the Ubuntu project at your hackerspace
(or just throwing a release party, cuz hey, why not?), I'd love to get
in touch with you off list. Drop me an email.

Darcy.

[samroesch]

Hi,

I'm Sam Roesch, cofounder of the Kingston hackerspace http://hackingston.wordpress.com/
(Currently named Queen's Fab Lab). Our group is very much dwindling,
due to a lack of free time for our founding members, most of whom are
graduating this year. I hope however it's not dead, and something
might carry on.

We are less of a space, and more of a group of people with similar
interests. We have been using a university lab to meet in, where we
built a mendel 3D printer, and people occasionally worked on personal
projects.

-Sam

[Matt]

Hi, my name is Matthew Friesen. I'm a one of the suckers(directors) at
ENTS. I have been involved with the Edmonton New Technology Society
since planning meetings started in the summer of 2009, and have been a
director since the summer of 2010.

I look forward to sharing ideas with you guys, and helping make a
stronger Canadian Hackerspace/Makerspace community.

-Matt

[Thomas Gray @ Victoria Makerspace]

Hey, my name is Thomas and I'm one of the Directors at the Victoria Makerspace.

We're approaching the start of our second official year, with our AGM coming up in early February and we're currently more focused on fabrication than electronics, with a wood shop and a metal shop to go along with our high-tech tools (3d printer, laser cutter, etc).  That will hopefully change in the new year with a second, more accessible space opening up for regular arduino nights and some introductory biohacking.

We're not a hackerspace due to branding - Victoria has the provincial government seat and has a lot of conservative citizens, so we didn't want to scare them with our name when there's so many better ways to do it.

We've found the biggest draw to get people out is to offer them free alcohol, so we made over 100L of apple cider this fall.

-Thomas

[Derek Jacoby]

Ahem, Thomas you understate by about half :-)

I'm Derek, one of the of other Victoria Makerspace founders (http://victoria.makerspace.ca)

In regards to the biohacking, I've been teaching courses down at BioCurious in the SF bay area (http://biocurious.org) and have a small biotech startup I'm working on in Victoria while I do my PhD at the University of Victoria. It's an offshoot of that which has me pushing the Victoria Makerspace to be the first community biolab in Canada. I know some folks in Toronto are working on similar fronts this spring and I'd love to chat with anyone else navigating the regulatory waters of biohacking here in Canada.

If you want a better idea of what I'm on about with biohacking have a listen to my TEDxVictoria talk at http://www.makerspace.ca/wp/tedxvictoria/

Thanks for setting the group up!

--Derek

[AphoticJezter @ ENTS Edmonton]

Hello all,

I'm Jesse (AphoticJezter @ #ents on freenode) and have been a director
for ENTS since August 2011.

I became a member first off to be able share my experiences building a
RepRap, and also to be able to collaborate on projects involving
circuit design and microcontrollers which I've been experimenting with
on my own for about a decade now.

I'm really excited by the potential of hackerspaces to become core
community organizations. Between diy repairs, 3D printing/CNC
milling, and the recent widespread adoption of development platforms
like the Arduino, I believe that hackerspaces will fill a growing role
in the future.

Cheers all!

Jesse

[Ninety Nein]

Greetings folks,

My name is Tyson Haverkort.  I am one of the founding directors of the Vancouver Community Lab, and I'm also a member of the Vancouver Hack Space.  

I think this will be a good resource for people trying to setup, expand, or maintain a hacker space.  I'm sure we all have lots to share....

[Ben Reed]

Sup guys,

I'm Ben Reed, a director of Calgary Protospace. The last year has been nuts for me as I've been turning Protospace from a small storefront hang-out for network admins into a community workshop with lots of tools and space. We've seen massive growth and exposure in recent months - getting connected with the arts, theater, educational and electronic music groups in Calgary. Our city is finally waking up to discover that they are capable of innovation are creation - that curiosity needs to be followed.

I'm excited to see an outlet established for Canadian hacker spaces, hack labs, maker spaces, community workshops and other collaborative work spaces so that we can be more effective. I will have a lot of topics to discuss as I find community development and group psychology extremely fascinating. I also hope to learn from the experience everyone else has had in establishing their local communities across the country

Cheers!

[Paul Chavady]

Ahoy!

My name is Paul Chavady and I'm the founder and vice president of Saskatoon Techworks. We've gone from conception to realization in the last year and have seen and learned a lot! We've had some help from Edmonton and Calgary (thanks guys) but for the most part have forged our own path. It will be really valuable to pick the brains of some of you more established leaders.

It's great to see all the Canadian hackerspaces pulling together and truly inspiring to see them popping up all over the place.

[Luke]

Hi folks, I'm Luke. I'm a co-founder of the Vancouver Hack Space -
VHS. We've been around for ~3 years and have a 20-30 paying members
and several hundred people in our broader community. Our space is
mostly limited to electronics, small machining, 3d printing, software,
security and beer. But we want to keep growing to have a full machine
shop. We'll soon be getting a laser cutter and our CNC is close to
being ready for use.

I also have a specific interest in solving the payment collection
problem for canadian hackerspaces. We're currently using paypal
(gross, but it works), but I'd like to go over to a payment processor,
so we can have more control & we can just charge credit cards. Then
we could also do usage-based-billing for beer, kits, and other shit.
Ideally I'd like to build an open-source service that any canadian
hackerspace could use with little effort to accept automatic payments
from their members. The more money we can have our community giving
to our hackerspaces, the better. Very interested in talking more
about solving this.

[Simon Clark]

I also have a specific interest in solving the payment collection
problem for canadian hackerspaces.  We're currently using paypal
(gross, but it works), but I'd like to go over to a payment processor,
so we can have more control & we can just charge credit cards.  Then
we could also do usage-based-billing for beer, kits, and other shit.
Ideally I'd like to build an open-source service that any canadian
hackerspace could use with little effort to accept automatic payments
from their members.  The more money we can have our community giving
to our hackerspaces, the better.  Very interested in talking more
about solving this.

We use beanstream for collecting member payments.They have a scheduled billing option, so it's a no-brainer, the money just comes in every month.

There may be money to be saved by having a central membership processing authority, but I would imagine it ould get complicated with HST submission, and such.

[Andrew Orr]

Hey Luke and co.

I handle the books and the membership dues collections for SkullSpace in Winnipeg.

After struggling with the collection and accounting for of cash, cheques and paypal dues for some time we approached our bank about setting up a pre-authorized debit system and got the majority of our members to sign up for it. It makes membership dues collecting a *lot* easier as the dues are direct deposited to our bank account, and since our rent is done by postdated cheques, ideally there would be no intervention required to collect dues and pay rent (our two biggest monthly financial events).

However, for a number of reasons there are those who do not want to sign up for this. That is understandable and we still accept cash, cheques, and paypal for those members. Because of the way our accounting is set up there is still a lot of work involved in processing member dues (even PAD members) and just keeping the books up to date. Right now everything is spread across three files:

1) gnucash main books file - this has the books for the corporation and includes membership dues as monthly accounts. This is done so in order to keep PII out of the main books so members can review/audit the books as they please.
2) gnucash membership dues file - This is just to keep track of how much membership dues people have paid (some people like to prepay months at a time) and contains the transactions for taking the money out for the month and putting them in a monthly dues account. These monthly dues accounts are what is mirrored in the main books.
3) membership info spreadsheet - This has contact info and info like if they are on pre-authorized debit and if they have keys.

This system worked fine initially but now it's becoming time consuming to work with. What I'd like to do is move both gnucash files over to a database backend (gnucash supports mysql and sqlite iirc) and also add the spreadsheet info to this database, and then automate a number of tasks with db queries. Things like checking who is all paid up for this month or who all has keys using the current system is cumbersome. Even processing monthly dues is currently done one member at a time, which really sucks.

In any event I'm wondering if anyone else has ideas of how to streamline this process, not only from a dues collection standpoint, but from the accounting side of things also.

Sorry for the data dump/hijack, what started as a "here's my recommendation" turned into a "here's what I'm doing and the problems I'm having, wat do?".

Cheers,
-Andrew

[Alex Leitch]

We use Quickbooks for the accounting, roll-your-own software to track who's due this month on what schedule, and a combination of a locked dues box in the space and Interac e-payments for dues collection.

We don't accept paypal as a general rule because have you seen how that company behaves in public, it is an embarrassment to everyone with optimism for the future.

But we do accept donations via PayPal, because for some reason people lurve it.

We're about to add an electronic strike to our door, which will help trace who's coming in and out, and who has keys, but since we have a reasonable number of Full Time Members/Acknowledged User Groups, it's easy to trace who's allowed keys at any given moment.

There isn't really inexpensive and coherent membership software out there, but I hear Think|haus has had some luck using church management software. They like ChurchInfo. I don't, because it assumes Family Unit payment, but it's still pretty good.

[kulps @ ENTS Edmonton]

I'm going to kick you guys to a new thread. Dues collection, I wont
crosspost your stuff but it would be better to have info like this
somewhere searchable.

> *rowdymedia.com - site3.ca*
> *647.892.9321 - alex.lei...@gmail.com - @aeleitch*- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[James Munroe]

Hi there from Newfoundland.  I'm James Munroe and one of the founding directors of ProtoShed Community Workshop. We're about three months into the founding of a hackerspace in St. John's. I am very happy to discover that there is a national conversation going on about hacker/makerspaces in Canada.

[mike.dissidence]

hi my name is Mike Mackenzie-Grieve

i am from swift current sk, and i am trying to start up a space here, for now i only have 3 members so i am hoping to find new members here soon and get more interest going.

i have a long history with tinkering and building things, i have built 2 repraps, and several other small things, and i enjoy trying new things. 

[adamundefined @ Halifax Makerspace]

Hi, I'm Adam Cox (aka adamundefined). I'm the president of Halifax Makerspace (http://halifaxmakerspace.org/). We started meeting last Summer and just recently incorporated as a non-profit society. We've started to collect member dues and are hoping to find a space and sign a lease in the next month or two. We currently have around 10-20 members. We're going to start small and will probably be mostly about arduinos, electronics, 3d printing, small CNC for a bit but we're hoping to build up to a larger, more capable workshop as soon as we can. 

I emailed a bunch of you a few weeks ago with insurance question and wanted to thank you all for the quick and thorough responses. Thanks to kulps for pointing me to this group. I've read through most of the threads and I'm sure we'll have more questions to ask as we get off the ground in Halifax. 

Cheers,

Adam

[kulps @ ENTS Edmonton]

Hey Adam, 

Thanks for checking in, if you're into irc, don't forget to check into our channel for chatting. #cdn-hackerspaces, irc.freenode.net. 

If you're unfamiliar, fire me a quick email, ENTS hosts a shell server for members to irc from. 

[jason]

Hi Everyone, my name is Jason and I'm on the board of directors for Windsor Hackforge, a fledgling hacker/maker space located in Windsor Ontario. We're currently housed in the main branch of our city's public library. The non-profit organization was formed in late 2012, but we just had our grand opening event a couple of weeks back, and are starting to bring in paid members.

Our group right now is a mix of software developers and electronics geeks. You can learn more about us on our website: http://hackf.org. We tend to organize most of our events through Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/hackforge) and Meetup.com (http://www.meetup.com/Windsor-Hackforge/).

[jason]

[Kathleen Angelski]

Hi all, 

I'm Kathleen, Project Coordinator for Two Rivers Gallery's MakerLab 2RG, a community workshop we're setting up within the art gallery in Prince George, BC.  Opening this September, I'm currently deep in it.  I've got lots of questions, and would like to make contacts with people who've already been through this process.  As well, I may have the budget to bring in some guest Makers for workshops...so again, making contacts.  My personal background is in metal and woodwork, visual arts, textiles and fibre arts, so I'd especially like to make friends with skills in electronics and new technologies.     
 

Thanks!

[Rudy Janvier]

Hey,

I'm Rudy Janvier from ENTS. I have been a director for a couple years now. I usually go by neosamuri in IRC and basically the rest of the internet. 

[brian.sulz]

Hi everyone,

My name is Brian, and I'm currently heading a project to start a makerspace up in Fort McMurray, Alberta. I recognize a couple of the names here as people I've gotten a bit of help from already, which is pretty neat.

We're totally at beginning stages, planning and whatnot, but so far we're a team of 4 trying to do this. We're hoping to do more of a makerspace than a hackerspace and possibly get our municipal/city government on board with us. I have a pretty wide range of contacts I've been trying to pull from and so far it's looking good.

Literally any advice/info or help I can get is greatly appreciated. We're more or less making this up as we go, so all these online resources are super invaluable. Thanks to Michael for inviting me to the group.

[ra...@thinkhaus.org]

Greetings and salutations,

My name is Rain, the go-between for Think|Haus (http://www.thinkhaus.org) in Hamilton, Ontario. 

Its great to see a bunch of familiar names from Southern Ontario as well as old friends from other places that I've lost touch with. (Psst....Brad from the Nelson Tech Club. Its NeonRain. \(°□°)/)

I look forward to getting to know and collaborating with everyone else from the different spaces that I haven't had the pleasure of meeting yet. 

[Aras Balali Moghaddam]

Hi Everyone,
My name is Aras. I am one of the founders of Kamloops Makerspace. We have been focusing on creating a maker community here in Kamloops BC since last summer by hosting regular workshops. We are about to close a deal on an ~1800 sqft space which will give us the room we need to grow. We have started to received some donations from local businesses, individuals and also the Victoria Makerspace.

We use a forum to stay in touch with our community and also to organize ourselves: http://community.kamloopsmakerspace.com/

I am very happy to have found this group, we can definitely use your help and advice as we shape and organize our makerspace.

Cheers!

[Jim Akeson]

Welcome Aras! stoked to come see you this summer. Kamloops has some very cool projects in the works!

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-Jim Akeson

[Jim Akeson]

Welcome Aras! stoked to come see you this summer. Kamloops has some very
cool projects in the works!

--

 

 

-Jim Akeson

[Vincent Wolfe]

Good evening all,

I was recommended to join up here and introduce myself.  My name is Vince and I am the director of the Central Alberta Maker Space.  We are brand new and still in the process  getting going.  We are so new I haven't even had keys to our place for a week yet :)

I am hoping to pull from the entire Central Alberta area, but primarily from the Red Deer area for now.

For now I am the sole board member, but look forward to that changing in the future, too much work for one man.

I am happy to accept any wisdom anyone here can send my way, or any stories about how wrong or right things went for you.

-Vince

[kulps @ ENTS Edmonton]

Welcome Vince, 

There's lots of opportunities to learn from everyone's experience. I'd suggest reading the rest of the posts in the group, most are pretty on-topic without too much bike-shedding. 

I know there's quite a few people here willing to field questions you might have so feel free to reach out directly if you're just looking to soundboard some thoughts, even if they're not concise questions. 

Michael 

[Jordan Perry @ Makerspace Nanaimo]

Hi Everyone,

My name is Jordan Perry and I'm one of the directors at Makerspace Nanaimo in BC. We're coming up on 3 years occupancy at our location. I'm looking forward to reading through all the posts here and absorbing as much insight as possible.

[kjmc...@gmail.com]

Hi all, 

My name is Kile McKenna, and I am a director for the Kamloops Makerspace.  I look forward to diving into the resources available here.

Kile