Volunteering

See also: ToDo and Teams

There are loads of ways to volunteer at Nottingham Hackspace, from small events and tasks, to entire teams and large scale projects. See below for the various ways you can help. Nottingham Hackspace only exists because of volunteers: There are no staff, and no one is paid for the things they do, including the trustees. Members (and sometimes non-members) put in a huge amount of time every month to ensure the smooth running the Hackspace. The things listed below represent a number of different approaches to volunteering, some of which will probably suit you better than others. They fall into roughly four areas:

• Teams: Self-organising groups of hackspace members who look after specific areas, and have monthly budgets to spend on them.

• Events: Drop-in events organised around specific collective tasks.

• Chores: Small, non-disruptive things that repeat and you can do by yourself.

• Projects: Specific bits of infrastructure done by ad hoc teams. Scale varies greatly.

Events

Main article: Events

Open Night

Happens every Wednesday from 18:30, and we always need members to welcome visitors, talk to them and give hackspace tours. Giving a tour is easy.

Hack the Space

A day/s of tidying, tweaking and revising the space to be more organised and work in better ways for everyone.

Check out our Hack the Space Days wiki page for details of the next and previous events.

Members Meetings

On the first Wednesday of every month, members meet to discuss and vote on any issues arising for the space. Each meeting also needs someone to chair and someone to take minutes.

Public Events

From hackspace open days to mini maker faires, we sometimes have a hackspace presence at various events. Members are generally welcome (and needed!) to demonstrate projects and answer questions form the public.

Chores

There are many small chores you can do at the hackspace to help - mainly tidying and cleaning. See the Chores page for a list with some ideas.

Projects

All of the examples below are completed projects, picked from many that have taken place. Generally, they were initially raised at members meetings, though sometimes you might also see projects emerge from the Google Group. All were led on a project basis, with ad hoc teams of interested people existing for the duration of them.

• Plumbing in the wet area.
• Building the spray booth.
• Wiring the space with CAT 5.
• Building shelves.
• Sorting through occasional large donations.
• Building the dusty area.
• Flooring the metalworking area.
• Additional workshop lighting.
• Getting a 3D printer up and running.

Discussions of projects and potential projects often pop up on the mailing list. A small number of people can achieve quite a lot once they've got the budget and the remit to do something.