HSG is moving! — reboot, money, old stuff and hardware

[Valentine C]

Hi all,

If you haven't heard, HackerspaceSG will be moving for the second time!

We're currently in the process of moving from 344B King George's Avenue to 336D King George's Avenue. Yes, we'll still be in the same building, and in the same great area near to lots of hardware and electronics shops, Mustafa (probably not 24/7 at the moment), and plenty of delicious food.

Hopefully, we'll be able to take this opportunity to also remove some of the anti-patterns that led the space to stagnate and become unpleasant for visitors over the 8 years that we've been there.

Timeline

We've taken possession of the new space. Some light renovation works are still in progress, and we're moving the bulk of our items over in the coming week.

If you'd like to say goodbye to 344B, our last day there is 12 November. Sadly, we won't be having a farewell party this time, no thanks to COVID-19 and our Singapore government's safe distancing regulations.

But if you'd really like to come by the old space one more time, join our HackerspaceSG Telegram group at https://t.me/HackerspaceSG, and see if any of our current members are willing to host you.

We've been slowly moving bits and pieces to 336D. The current plan is to hire a mover to move some tables, sofas, shelves, and large electronics like our dishwasher, that would be unsafe for our volunteers to bring over ourselves.

Note that one of the fuses in the external fuse box at 336D burnt out last week, taking out the air-conditioning and some of the lights and power. We're already in touch the building's managing agent, and they'll hopefully be able to get it replaced one of the evenings this coming week.

Address usage: If you have been sending your personal mail to HackerspaceSG, please make arrangements to redirect it to our new address. We will also be contacting all members with a business address subscription to let them know of the change in address.

A quick outline of what's likely to happen between now to 12 November:

Sunday, 7 November (today):

- Some of us are forming a human chain to move boxes and other small items to 336D (the new space).

- A cleaner will be coming at around 3:30pm to clean up the main area of 336D, so that we can start placing furniture.

- We'll still be packing stuff and breaking down shelves for the move.

- PIN pad and magnetic lock at 344B will likely be removed, and we will revert to key access only.

Monday, 8 November:

- Internet should hopefully be provisioned at 336D. We've put in an application with M1, and another fibre point has been installed already, but they haven't reached out for an installation appointment, so we'll have to follow up tomorrow.

- Small items will continue to be packed and moved.

- PINs should be provisioned for all current members at 336D.

Tuesday, 9 November:

- The movers might come in to dispose of some bulky furniture that we no longer want, like our red sofa, and a couple of the desks.

- Small items will continue to be packed and moved.

Wednesday, 10 November:

- The movers will bring the heavy and bulky stuff listed above to 336D.

Thursday, 11 November:

- A renovation contractor will come in in the evening to repaint the walls, and do other reinstatement works so that we'll be good to hand the 344B unit to our landlord.

Friday, 12 November:

- Handover date!

- There should be a joint inspection between us and the 344B landlord today.

Old Hardware and Stuff

While we've been packing, we've uncovered a mountain of old hardware, electronics, and other random stuff that people may (or may not) have donated to the space.

Some of the things we've found just this week alone: 

- Old Raspberry Pi Model A's (probably from 2013) that have swollen capacitors (I think);

- Old hard disks and enclosures from before SATA was a thing;

- An old Compaq Pocket PC from maybe 2003.

- A DB-25 parallel port cable

I don't think HackerspaceSG, in its 12 years of existence, has ever wanted to be a museum for old hardware, so we've let them go.

It's one thing for us to have had the mindset that "this might eventually be useful for someone" before, but when we don't actually have an inventory of everything people's donated, and replacement parts are available for affordable prices from Aliexpress/Taobao — have these items really served their purpose?

We'll be working on an inventory after the move, and will need to work out a policy on what kind of items can be owned by the space, what items we can be temporary custodians of until they find a better home (developer boards, maybe), what items can be "on loan" from members, and what items really need to be kept in labelled storage boxes that are paid for monthly. We don't want to be in the self-service storage business, and we definitely don't want to be an extension of someone's bedroom.

If you have left something at 344B, still remember what those things are, and would like us to keep them around for you, please join our Telegram group and let the community know, so they don't get disposed of. We'd also appreciate it if you could subscribe to a membership to help defray our costs (see below).

Money

HackerspaceSG has, for quite some time now, tried to practise some form of open source accounting and be transparent with our finances. A summary of our finances have been published as plenum minutes since October 2020: https://docs.hackerspace.sg/plenum/

One reason we've had to move is because the rental for new unit is significantly cheaper than our current one ($2,500/month vs $3,400/month, before bills).

Even with the move, we're still down an estimated $450 a month.

We've also had to spend around $9,000 on renovation works, $850 so far on "new" desks, around $1,000 on moving and disposal (because we're moving the smaller items ourselves), and probably another $1,000 on reinstatement works for 344B.

HackerspaceSG has always been a space for the Singapore tech and maker communities, and we're looking to move towards being of greater service to everyone for at least the next 3 years.

This would require contributions from more people in our community, and we've set up fundraising pages on Open Collective (SGD) and GitHub Sponsors (USD) for people to chip in small amounts.

Our goal is 300 people contributing $16/month each, which would help us diversify our revenues and not be so reliant on selling memberships to keep our lights on.

Would you be willing to be one of our 300 Spartans helping keep our space and community alive?

Thanks for reading this far, and we hope you'll get a chance to visit our new HackerspaceSG v3 sometime soon!

Cheers,

Valentine

on behalf of the HackerspaceSG community