Re: Is it dead?

[Brantley Gore]

I hope not.. Justin is passionate about hackerspaces. I hope he hasn't given up. I would like to help, if I can.

[Linkreincarnate]

I used to live in Macon.  Now I live on the west coast. I do come back from time to time and I still am active with hackerspaces.  I can help you out with getting this started if there is actually some interest in it now.  When I was still in Macon I found it hard to drum up any interest. If there is interest now I would be happy to rev this project back up and get it moving. That said I cannot be the primary person running the group since I am only in Macon One to Two times a year. 

 So the groups I was looking at for funding were local churches (Macon has plenty) and possibly the Knight Foundation  (they do a lot around Macon)  We might also look to see if there are any grants that we could write.  We could get grants for community outreach and stem education. Grantwriting requires incoporating as a 501c and that takes a while and a lot of paperwork.  

 As this is going to be in a really poor neighborhood there is no way we can support the space through  monetary contribution from members.  We will basically have to buy a small cheap house in village green and convert it.  This will keep us from having to pay rent and eliminates he primary recurring cost of a hackerspace. This introduces a problem of a large one time up front cost.  The cost of the house/land.  There are a couple of lots that no longer have houses on them because they caught fre maybe we could buy one of those for cheap and put prebuilt shed structures on it?

Someone needs to scout the area for a lot that is for sale.  They can be had for as low as 39,000 with church donations, grants, and maybe a kickstarter that number could be reached.