This weekend I went along to the very-nearly-cliché double-header of a Restart Project Restart Party and London Hackspace's open day.
Hackspace is a non-profit community-run workshop where the right kind of geek can come to share tools and knowledge, and the Restart Project finds a natural home here - setting out to promote positive behaviour change by encouraging and empowering people to use their electronics for longer.
Too busy to mean that I could easilly get my demented Sennheiser headphones seen to, there was an impressive turn out for both events with newcomers scribbling their problem on the wall-mounted flip-chart and hanging around waiting to be paired up with one of the volunteer electronics experts. In the main room of Hackspace, members were demonstrating self-built 3D printers, radio-masts and wind turbines, or happily tip-tapping and coding away at laptops. The library was pretty impressive, featuring tomes on as diverse a range of topics as blanket-making, software architecture and amateur radio operation.
I have to say, I felt quite alienated - as a non-skilled member but very interested member of the public - and I think this is something that both organisations will need to address if they are to fulfil their long-term ambitions of broadening our ability to make and repair things for ourselves. Simple instructions would help, and although everyone was friendly enough, a welcome of some kind would have eased the passage of the uninitiated.
Good stuff though, and I'll definitely be back to Hackspace and getting myself along to future Restart Parties to shove my headphones under someone's nose...
