Developers, Hackers and Designers Sign up here:  http://longmonthackathon.eventbrite.com/

Longmont's Civic Hackathon (http://longmonthackathon.com/) will be firing up next weekend, April, 12th, 13th and 14th at Skyline Highschool in Longmont, CO. and the city just put up more Open Data Sets and and API's that developers and dev teams can take advantage of.

Cities and their information sets are supposed to be open to their residents but, that doesn't always happen to the level it really should.

Hackathons help change that.  We've seen larger cities like New York, Denver, Chicago, Austin and Oakland put on civic hackathons for a few years now, and that's really helped to open these city data sets and turn the cites more into Open Data Platforms for it's residents and it's businesses.

What's exciting to me is when a smaller city like Longmont (Pop. approx 88K) takes the initiative and puts on a civic hackathon.  It's not as common to see and, for that reason alone, needs to be encouraged even more.

Colorado has a very cool initiative called Open Colorado (http://opencolorado.org/).  The guys over at GISuser blog thought so too when they wrote this up about Longmont's Hackathon:

In April an awesome community hackathon event is taking place in Longmont CO and being hosted at Skyline High School (Longmont Hackathon) – I love the idea of doing this at a school – the perfect community venue! The City is involved in the planning, they have an official Twitter account @hackLongmont and also a facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/Longmonthackathon

We need developers and designers to make it happen though.  The more the merrier and it's going to be a excellent event mixed with local business, the high school computer teams, the city technical folks, and many others.

The Longmont Gigabit Network is even making an appearance (there's a fiber connection with 1000MB up and down data speeds running into Skyline High School, where the Hackathon is taking place).  For those that didn't know: Longmont is building out it's own Municipal Fiber Network for it's residents and citizens (one of only a very few cities in America doing this).  If you live or work in Longmont, in the near future, you'll have access to some of the fastest and cheapest internet service on the planet.  Get a taste of it at this hackathon.

You don't have to be a professional developer; if you just dabble in writing code, we'd love to have you join us.  If you design things, join us and take a shot at figuring out the layout of a phone app, creating it's look and feel and work with some developers to make a prototype of it real.  The idea is to engage the community and come up with great ideas that can make our city (or any other city, it's all OpenSource) a better place to live.  All are welcome.

Sign up today:  http://longmonthackathon.eventbrite.com/

Developers, Hackers and Designers Sign up here:  http://longmonthackathon.eventbrite.com/

Longmont's Civic Hackathon (http://longmonthackathon.com/) will be firing up next weekend, April, 12th, 13th and 14th at Skyline Highschool in Longmont, CO. and the city just put up more Open Data Sets and and API's that developers and dev teams can take advantage of.

Cities and their information sets are supposed to be open to their residents but, that doesn't always happen to the level it really should.

Hackathons help change that.  We've seen larger cities like New York, Denver, Chicago, Austin and Oakland put on civic hackathons for a few years now, and that's really helped to open these city data sets and turn the cites more into Open Data Platforms for it's residents and it's businesses.

What's exciting to me is when a smaller city like Longmont (Pop. approx 88K) takes the initiative and puts on a civic hackathon.  It's not as common to see and, for that reason alone, needs to be encouraged even more.

Colorado has a very cool initiative called Open Colorado (http://opencolorado.org/).  The guys over at GISuser blog thought so too when they wrote this up about Longmont's Hackathon:

In April an awesome community hackathon event is taking place in Longmont CO and being hosted at Skyline High School (Longmont Hackathon) – I love the idea of doing this at a school – the perfect community venue! The City is involved in the planning, they have an official Twitter account @hackLongmont and also a facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/Longmonthackathon

We need developers and designers to make it happen though.  The more the merrier and it's going to be a excellent event mixed with local business, the high school computer teams, the city technical folks, and many others.

The Longmont Gigabit Network is even making an appearance (there's a fiber connection with 1000MB up and down data speeds running into Skyline High School, where the Hackathon is taking place).  For those that didn't know: Longmont is building out it's own Municipal Fiber Network for it's residents and citizens (one of only a very few cities in America doing this).  If you live or work in Longmont, in the near future, you'll have access to some of the fastest and cheapest internet service on the planet.  Get a taste of it at this hackathon.

You don't have to be a professional developer; if you just dabble in writing code, we'd love to have you join us.  If you design things, join us and take a shot at figuring out the layout of a phone app, creating it's look and feel and work with some developers to make a prototype of it real.  The idea is to engage the community and come up with great ideas that can make our city (or any other city, it's all OpenSource) a better place to live.  All are welcome.

Sign up today:  http://longmonthackathon.eventbrite.com/

So, in case you haven't figured it out, I'm really getting into this hackerspace area.  I'm a member of denhac (www.denhac.org) and on it's board of directors.

I'm working with my town to try and get them to create a municipally sponsored hackerspace (which I'm calling a makerspace because the word hacker, still, makes some of the more conservative types cringe).

I'm trying to figure out how this can fit into a communities educational system, it's local businesses, it's civic structure and the overall infrastructure of the town it exists in.  And it should exist in every single town.

At first, some people thought hackerspaces where just a fad.

Wrong.

This is a major societal trend.  It's related to community, education, the high cost/debt created by and questionable value of college, the end of unions (and the end of things like guilds and apprenticeships), the desire by many people to start their own businesses and needing a place to prototype concepts into products (software, hardware, whateverware) and it's a place where students and elder/experts come together.

It feeds our need, as humans, to create, to learn and to teach.

First, watch this video (seriously, watch the whole thing; he's a true geek so keep that in mind.  He nails what a hackerspace is, embodies the enthusiasm of it and defines nicely where we're going with them).



All done?  Good.

He seems a bit out there doesn't he.  This guy reminds me of all the guys that started the personal computer revolution.  All of them.  These are the types of people it takes to create large shifts in how society works.  These are the people that can (and have) literally, changed the world.


OK, get time to get started.

Now, get a group of 4-5 people together and start meeting on Tuesday nights (why?  Because, that's when all the hackerspaces have open house night, it's random, but you have to pick a night so it might as well be when everyone else is doing the same thing).  No agenda needed other than all 4-5 need to have watched the above video.  This little group of founders will figure it out.

Find a space to rent.  It'll need at a minimum a workshop, a classroom and a kitchen (like) area.  A lounge, computer room and office would be good, but not required.  It should be as nice as it can be, but at the same time, as cheap as it can be.  It needs as much internet bandwidth as you can get.  It can be smallish at say 1000 SF, or largish at 5000 SF.  Our space at denhac (3D render of the space below) is in the middle of that range.

Start accumulating tools that can be shared among the community (see below for a good hackerspace tool list).

Decide what it costs to have a membership.  This can be anywhere from free (you've got a sponsor or rich member willing to cover costs) to $150+ a month (as an example, one for profit hackerspace type space called TechShop operate this way).  I'd suggest a tiered membership with something for students (say, $10-25 a month), regular members ($50 a mo) to a 'patron' type membership (people that want to give more to support the space) of $100-250 or more a month.

Apply for 501c3 status.  Most other hackerspace have done it already and have been approved.  This is NOT required to get started, it's a nice to have and makes it easier to get donations.

Make very simple rules.  I like the one and only rule the hackerspace the video speaker helped found made:

Be excellent to each other.

That's it.  No more needed to get started.

Open your doors.

It really doesn't need to be more complicated than that.  A community will form.

Thats it.  Now get to it.

=======================================================================

Here's denhacs floor layout (thanks to Matt Yoder):


It's about 2500 SF.  It has a large garage door (front right)- wanna pull in a truck?  You could; cement floors on the first level (perfect for shop gear, etc.).  A computer/server room (front left).  A lounge area with couches and tables (middle left).  A utility room. A Bathroom (unisex).  Classroom (back 1/3 of space) and a sort of loft area above that perfect for work stations (electronics, 3D printer, radio/recording station, It's workspace.. basically all the less messy stuff that would require a cement floor goes upstairs).

So, in case you haven't figured it out, I'm really getting into this hackerspace area.  I'm a member of denhac (www.denhac.org) and on it's board of directors.

I'm working with my town to try and get them to create a municipally sponsored hackerspace (which I'm calling a makerspace because the word hacker, still, makes some of the more conservative types cringe).

I'm trying to figure out how this can fit into a communities educational system, it's local businesses, it's civic structure and the overall infrastructure of the town it exists in.  And it should exist in every single town.

At first, some people thought hackerspaces where just a fad.

Wrong.

This is a major societal trend.  It's related to community, education, the high cost/debt created by and questionable value of college, the end of unions (and the end of things like guilds and apprenticeships), the desire by many people to start their own businesses and needing a place to prototype concepts into products (software, hardware, whateverware) and it's a place where students and elder/experts come together.

It feeds our need, as humans, to create, to learn and to teach.

First, watch this video (seriously, watch the whole thing; he's a true geek so keep that in mind.  He nails what a hackerspace is, embodies the enthusiasm of it and defines nicely where we're going with them).



All done?  Good.

He seems a bit out there doesn't he.  This guy reminds me of all the guys that started the personal computer revolution.  All of them.  These are the types of people it takes to create large shifts in how society works.  These are the people that can (and have) literally, changed the world.


OK, get time to get started.

Now, get a group of 4-5 people together and start meeting on Tuesday nights (why?  Because, that's when all the hackerspaces have open house night, it's random, but you have to pick a night so it might as well be when everyone else is doing the same thing).  No agenda needed other than all 4-5 need to have watched the above video.  This little group of founders will figure it out.

Find a space to rent.  It'll need at a minimum a workshop, a classroom and a kitchen (like) area.  A lounge, computer room and office would be good, but not required.  It should be as nice as it can be, but at the same time, as cheap as it can be.  It needs as much internet bandwidth as you can get.  It can be smallish at say 1000 SF, or largish at 5000 SF.  Our space at denhac (3D render of the space below) is in the middle of that range.

Start accumulating tools that can be shared among the community (see below for a good hackerspace tool list).

Decide what it costs to have a membership.  This can be anywhere from free (you've got a sponsor or rich member willing to cover costs) to $150+ a month (as an example, one for profit hackerspace type space called TechShop operate this way).  I'd suggest a tiered membership with something for students (say, $10-25 a month), regular members ($50 a mo) to a 'patron' type membership (people that want to give more to support the space) of $100-250 or more a month.

Apply for 501c3 status.  Most other hackerspace have done it already and have been approved.  This is NOT required to get started, it's a nice to have and makes it easier to get donations.

Make very simple rules.  I like the one and only rule the hackerspace the video speaker helped found made:

Be excellent to each other.

That's it.  No more needed to get started.

Open your doors.

It really doesn't need to be more complicated than that.  A community will form.

Thats it.  Now get to it.

=======================================================================

Here's denhacs floor layout (thanks to Matt Yoder):


It's about 2500 SF.  It has a large garage door (front right)- wanna pull in a truck?  You could; cement floors on the first level (perfect for shop gear, etc.).  A computer/server room (front left).  A lounge area with couches and tables (middle left).  A utility room. A Bathroom (unisex).  Classroom (back 1/3 of space) and a sort of loft area above that perfect for work stations (electronics, 3D printer, radio/recording station, It's workspace.. basically all the less messy stuff that would require a cement floor goes upstairs).

Welcome to my new blog.

I go by the handle Toast.  I am an IT/AV nerd, and I like to play with technology.  I enjoy spelunking n*x systems and pretty much anything else with a command line interface, hence the title of this blog.  I also enjoy playing with the guts of electronic gadgets, anything Arduino or RasPi related, programming (especially in Python), and a relatively obscure dying sport called aggressive inline skating.  

I am a big fan of the idea of hacker spaces in general, and I’m a proud member of the Denver hacker space DenHac in particular.  At DenHac I’m able to explore the limits of what is possible with technology in a spirit of playful cleverness.  This is the definition of the word “hacking” as according to Richard Stallman.

Reading through my InfoSec class textbook “Principles of Information Security” by Michael Whitman, I came across this definition: “Hackers are ‘people who use and create computer software to gain access to information illegally.’” While this definition and Stallman’s are not necessarily mutually exclusive, the former (and unfortunately more common) definition explicitly excludes any form of legal activity, which seems absurd to me when you consider the fact that the culture and history behind the word “hacker” predates most “anti-hacking” laws by decades.

Anyway, this is all a round-about way of saying that yes: I do consider myself a bit of a hacker, and no: I am not a computer-criminal, techno-vandal, identity-thief, or cyber-terrorist.  From this point forward, any mention of “hacking” or “hackers” on this blog can be assumed to follow the Stallman definition, unless otherwise noted.

So thank you for visiting my blog.  I love sharing information and teaching people what I know, so I will be posting again soon about recent hacking adventures and other interests of mine.

I commend Julius Genachowski, Chairman of the FCC.  He wants to see a 'Gigabit City' (1000 MB internet connections to homes and businesses) in each of the 50 US states, by 2015.

But there are two big stumbling blocks in the way.  First, how does this get paid for?  Is the federal government going to help jump start this by providing infrastructure funding to help?

Apparently not.  At least, there are no plans for it at present.

Second, how do you get around all the laws being passed nationally that make it illegal for a municipality to install a gigabit network for it's citizens?  I live in Colorado and we have a law like that here that Comcast and it's friends paid off some state politicians to put into place.  The premise was 'government shouldn't compete with business'.  It makes it illegal for a municipality to put in place a Gigabit Network without first having a special election and getting the majority of the population to vote in building the network.  Comcast then comes in, funds an astroturf group, and scares the hell out of the population with BS stories about raised taxes and failed efforts by other cities to scare the population into voting against putting in a data network utility.  Sadly, many of these 'failed efforts' stories are true.  Why?  Comcast made them fail by going into these cities, cutting prices to below what the cost was for the city to build and fund the network, and ensure things like municipal bond issues designed to pay for a city owned high speed data utility would fail.

When business provides the least possible service for the most possible money, and kills off anything that might compete with it, that's not doing your economy, or your citizens, any favors.  Data networks are no longer just another business service. They are an essential utility service.  I don't want to trust that to just one company per city.  I'd like some competition, even if it's the city itself providing it.

These companies need to either embrace the opportunity and build out ahead of what they say demand is, or get out of the way.  Currently they're not embracing anything, and they are not getting out of the way (they are actively blocking it at every opportunity).

There needs to be a change at the federal level outlawing these 'cities can't play' laws keeping them out of building data networks like the Gigabit Cities our FCC chairman (and many others, myself included) want.  This is something the FCC can do now:  Campaign for a change to these stifling laws being put in place through private lobbyists, state by state, paid for by Comcast, ATT, Verizon and all the other usual suspects.

If our government really wants to jump start America's ability to compete and innovate, building super high speed data network utilities is one of THE best ways it can do that.  The prescription is simple:

1) Provide real federal funding to municipalities to build out gigabit fiber to the curb for homes and businesses. Treat it just like building out highways for our cars.
2) Repeal (and make impossible to enact) these truly stupid laws that keep cities from building their own data network utilities.

It's really pretty simple.  All you have to do is help pay for it and tell Comcast and friends to get out of the way.

The result will be an incredible jump in the vibrancy of our economy (local, state and national) and you'll see an explosion in the expansion of knowledge and the ability of our workforce to do things no other workforce in the world can come close to.

Give people the infrastructure and they'll build on top of it.  They'll build products, services, companies, institutions and communities you can't even imagine today.