I live in Baltimore and am a member of the Baltimore Node. We are a well-intentioned group with great ideas, but we are better at drinking cheap beer than executing great ideas. However, we have facilitated various conversations about technology and start ups in the city. We are across the street from an art school, and some of the people from the art school occasionally get involved or ask for help on projects. People have independently done some projects in the space, but we have yet to do any big collaborative projects.
HacDC, the hackerspace in Washington, DC has more Ph.D.s. They tend to take themselves more seriously and do a lot of excellent projects, but they are not as social or as inviting. I feel like radhardened did a lot to make the place more accessible to amateurs and that her absence will definitely be noticed.
A group of us from the Baltimore Node went to visit HackPittsburgh, but I haven't interacted with them enough to get a good feel for those folks. They helped with the Art and Code conference at CMU, and that was excellent event. One of their members moved to Baltimore and has been a great addition to our space.
There is also a hackerspace a little further north of Baltimore called the Harford Hackerspace. The relationship between their group and our group was somewhat contentious because we started up around the same time and were considering forming a joint group when we realized it would be bad for all involved. Then we had a member who was loud who created this weird vibe between our space and Harford. But once he left, the relationship between the two spaces improved. Harford is interesting because the members are a little bit older, rooted in the local community, and more family oriented.
As I understand it, HackMiami is full of black hats and asked to visit the local hackerspaces. They sent an email from hushmail to a bunch of the local spaces. When they arrived, they said a lot of derogatory things and offended people at some of the local spaces, but this is one of the cases where the lack of organization at our space saved us. No one from our space replied to their email offering them the opportunity to visit.
However, we have had interesting visitors on occasion including Mitch Altman who taught a workshop, Cory Doctorow who was on his book tour, and someone from the Vancouver Hackerspace (which has the best acronym ((VHS)) who was making a documentary on hackerspaces.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
winterfish
no subject
Date: 2011-03-20 10:26 pm (UTC)HacDC, the hackerspace in Washington, DC has more Ph.D.s. They tend to take themselves more seriously and do a lot of excellent projects, but they are not as social or as inviting. I feel like
A group of us from the Baltimore Node went to visit HackPittsburgh, but I haven't interacted with them enough to get a good feel for those folks. They helped with the Art and Code conference at CMU, and that was excellent event. One of their members moved to Baltimore and has been a great addition to our space.
There is also a hackerspace a little further north of Baltimore called the Harford Hackerspace. The relationship between their group and our group was somewhat contentious because we started up around the same time and were considering forming a joint group when we realized it would be bad for all involved. Then we had a member who was loud who created this weird vibe between our space and Harford. But once he left, the relationship between the two spaces improved. Harford is interesting because the members are a little bit older, rooted in the local community, and more family oriented.
As I understand it, HackMiami is full of black hats and asked to visit the local hackerspaces. They sent an email from hushmail to a bunch of the local spaces. When they arrived, they said a lot of derogatory things and offended people at some of the local spaces, but this is one of the cases where the lack of organization at our space saved us. No one from our space replied to their email offering them the opportunity to visit.
However, we have had interesting visitors on occasion including Mitch Altman who taught a workshop, Cory Doctorow who was on his book tour, and someone from the Vancouver Hackerspace (which has the best acronym ((VHS)) who was making a documentary on hackerspaces.