Charity

Today, I’m no longer the Treasurer of Farset Labs, and in the next few days, I’ll officially have left the board of trustees of the charity that I helped form over 13 years ago. Farset Labs started as a Google Group that I started in 2010. It took until 2012 to get our act together, along with some entertaining hackathons riding on the backs of our friends at Dragonslayers. Over the past decade-and-a-bit, I’d easily say that Farset Labs has been the keystone of my life and my career, and I’m pretty sure that (before the renovations in 2019) you’d find my blood, sweat, and definitely tears staining various parts of the building. ...

This is a condensed version of a twitter thread in response to @silverSpoon asking about how Farset Labs would comment on recent news of Dublins hackerspace (TOG) being uncerimoniously turfed out of their third home thanks to developers just wanting to flip sites Agreed, and it shouldn't be down to companies to fill up the gap. https://t.co/Np46Znn3xH — Andrea (@silverSpoon) June 8, 2021 I wonder if @FarsetLabs has comments on how that works on NI? — Andrea (@silverSpoon) June 8, 2021 It’s similar up here, but that’s more challenging (and lines up with @jeffrey_roe’s comments in the piece) that hackerspaces fall between a crack in local development support between ’entrepeneurship/startups support’ (aka subsidised professional services and office space), the classical arts sector individual and studio support (which has its own significant issues, often a lot more bureaucracy than it’s worth, and stifling community revenue generation by arcane entertainments licensing that I’m sure if you start @adamtucks he’ll chip in) and last, the classical community centre/sports groups (such as the GAA clubs discussed in the original article). ...

So we’re only a few weeks into developing this idea, and first I’m going to give some credit where credit’s due; the people that I’m working with this have been brilliant, I want to give special thanks (in no particular order) to Ryan Grieve (@thegrieve), David Kane, Ben Harrison, Martin Gilchrist (@Gilchrist_LLP), Jonny Milliken, Dan Reid, and Chris Murray (@kris18890). Anywhere, where are we now? ...