7/6/2011: The Hacker Space Movement – Life Beyond the Cubicle

July’s dinner was a meeting of two great innovation networks. David Weekly shared his remarkable story of creating the Hacker Dojo. A rich discussion followed as SVII’ers shared their own experiences of innovation culture at its heights.
The shared value of fostering an innovation culture between Hacker Dojo and SVII was strongly evident and poses the question for future collaboration. Here’s some things mentioned this evening.

Alan Kay
Don Norman
Gary Starkweather
Ivan Sutherland
Arduino
GAFFTA

original event description:
The office cubicle simply isn’t the ideal workplace for those who are collaborative creators. This dilemma led pioneers to create a new kind of work place which encourages communication and mind sharing. One such approach has become what is known as the “Hacker Space” Movement.  A hacker space is essentially a community workspace where people can go to work on projects or startups. In hacker space vernacular, the term to “hack” means to build or create, and is not to be confused with to “cracking” the act of breaking a system or breaching security commonly associated with the word “hacker”.

One of the worlds premier hacker spaces has sprung up right here in Mountain View, CA. It is known as the Hacker Dojo. Since it opened two years ago, it has become a hotbed of activity of people working together to create amazing things and ideas. Our guest for July’s dinner is David Weekly, Founding Director of Hacker Dojo. He is also the Founder of PBWorks, a company that was built around the idea of making a wiki as easy to make as a Peanut Butter & Jelly sandwich. PBWorks currently empowers over 1,500,000 collaboration communities worldwide. He is an advocate for both the physical as well as social architecture that leads to a more productive and satisfying place to work.