2010 in review
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[edit] 2010 in Review
[edit] Kicking it off
757 Labs went official around January 1st of 2010. It was a wild year in terms of bootstrapping a hackerspace in Hampton Roads.
Initial build out of the physical space took some time, and much credit and thanks goes to all that helped. This goes for both financial help in purchasing supplies to paint and clean the space, as well as people that helped do the work in cleaning up and preparing the space.
[edit] First year in review
Lab membership grew pretty steadily over the first year. There was quite a bit of interest. A surge of interest (but no new members) came from when AltDaily published an article about the space. Word was definitely spreading in some circles. During another part of the year the comics group got press, as did 757 Labs by providing space for their event. No interest came from local television or print media in general.
Marketing was done in a few magazines by distributing flyers. This never brought any direct people to the lab, but may have been responsible for some other exposure.
During year 1 we had visitors come from similar spaces in Houston and Texas, as well as a visitor for the Netherlands. Interns coming to the area to work at NASA Langley found us and took an active interest in the lab. There is a good chance they will be back in summer. It seems that visitors are more likely to be looking for hackerspaces than the locals.
757 Labs hosted meetings for at least 3 groups during year one. It appears that one of these may have died, but there are others coming in.
The lab doesn't seem to get much love from things like the Chamber of Commerce, or the Hampton Roads Technology Council.
[edit] Major projects
A few projects were underway in year one. Nothing too major, but a huge amount of excitement came from taking 5th place in the hackerspaces in space balloon project. While it was late in the year, this was really an exciting time for members that helped with the project and perhaps those that witnessed.
757 Labs name was published along side some research papers done by Matt Davis, which was great. There was some progress on some other projects as well. Some electronics fixes were posted to our blog, and we continue to receive thanks quite often.
[edit] Membership numbers
During the year the membership grew throughout. Around October of the year things seemed to be in somewhat of a lull. Had everyone interested in the hackerspace come forward already? The answer was no. It seemed like as things took a pause for a bit, all of a sudden new people started showing up. People outside of our existing circle of friends. They brought new skill sets, new interests, and continue to bring new life to the ever evolving lab.
During the initial early points in 2010, there were some very interesting and skilled people that had high interest in the hackerspace. Unfortunately we saw a number of these people leave the area to pursue great job opportunities elsewhere in the country, and education opportunities.
[edit] The bad news
The bad news...
[edit] Payments
Payments received for any given month runs a little over half of the membership. While the membership numbers are strong enough to cover the current rent, that would only happen if payment was received from all members.
There are varying reasons why this might happen. It's a volatile employment market, and some members have hit hardships. Others just don't have any money, but are pretty productive and bring lots of life to the lab. Others are just forgetful.
The lack of a good system to handle payment collection and reflecting back the payment status hurts. Payments come in at all times during the month, and things skew as far as which month the payment goes towards.
Original it was thought that paypal would take care of everything, and that it would be easy enough to do recurring payments via it. But that really hasn't been the case.
[edit] Lease
After the first year, the new lease has a clause where they can kick us out with short notice. The year we moved in the light rail line through Norfolk was being built so things were torn up around the lab space. Now that it is completed the owners of our space are hoping to attract someone else to our space. Someone who pays over 5 times the rent we do. This puts a bit of a cloud over us, and does make future planning and lab enhancements hard.
This wasn't totally unexpected, the first few years is a test to see if this can make it. We had to see if the area is strong enough. Is the motivation high enough of the people here? Motivated people in this area are often times motivated enough to leave the area.
The commercial real estate market is still in trouble, and downtown Norfolk has elements that are dying. The new grocery store failed and much of the expensive rental housing might be empty. This is a good thing for us, it means we are likely to be pretty safe. A small amount of effort has been put into looking at other potential spaces, but it's hard to pre-plan in advance. As the current membership numbers doesn't cover the current rent, it will be a challenge in the future. Our next location is likely to not have power included in the base rent.
[edit] The Good News
- This is being written at the end of March in 2011. It's 3 months into 2011.
- New people continue to show up. Interested interesting people.
- Classes are going on. With lots of interested people showing up for them.
- We've already competed in one contest, with 3 entries.
- More visitors are destined for the lab from far away places.
- Projects are going on that have the potential to spawn companies.
- More activities that have an economic development angle.
- Someone is actually coming to visit the area, and the lab, as part of their decision to relocate to Hampton Roads.
- We were already involved in a bid process of a potential paid electronics engineering project of substantial size. It didn't happen, but it demonstrated the knowledge pool of the lab is becoming known.
- 3 months into the year and we're in one of the prime spots on Granby for an art project involving technology and the community.
- There is just crazy, big things happening randomly so far in 2011.
2011 is blowing the doors off of 2010 in terms of activity, interesting things.
[edit] What's next?
Lots.
