Sunday, 9th December 2018. Another cold day in the night of winter. The sky is clean and we have a meeting with the HAL9K team, in Aalborg, third city of the country with more than 100000 citizens. The space is easily accessible by bus with the line 14, if you you are coming by car, free parking places are available near the workshop. Torsen welcome me in the space. Some people are already there to work on there own projects. Usually, the space is only open for members, a small passcard is given to each members. This one give you access to the workshop but also to some machine.
The entrance give you the mindset of the mind, 4 computers screen looking at you with different kind of information and fun things. The first from the left show us a rotating head from a member, the second one give you a view of the Hackaday website, the third give you the date and finally the last one on the right give you the agenda and planning of all activities. Directly at your right, a limbo space is present, with a lot of future hack stuff. If you don’t need something, you can put that here and someone will probably take it to make another thing with.
The space is not small, on your right from the entrance, you have the main shared space, here are waiting Torsten and 2 others members working on their own projects. This room contains a small library, some 3D printers, a large shared desktop, some sofa, and a homemade laser cuter. This is quiet and hyggelig (cozy).
At the left of the entrance, you have access to the electronic room, with lot of stuff, device, and hardware. A chemistry room with different protected shelf containing some dangerous liquid. In the back of the makerspace, the big machines are present, drilling, willing, wood work and all other machinery. My hosts show also another part of the space, outside of the main place, a kind of extension, future wood work space. Like a lot of makerspace, a small kitchen is present, you can drink coffee and buy soda (5dkk) with an old punching machine from a train.
HAL9K name comes from the movie The Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick, the 9K comes from the ID of the commune. The name was taken because it was fun and the domain name was available. This project is born in 2010, by a desire to create something like the makerspace Labitat in Copenhagen. At this time, the makerspace was close to the harbor and moved in 2014 to a bigger space given by the Kommune.
In 2014, at least 30 members were present, today, in 2018, at least 50 members are present. To become a member, you must pay 150dkk, except if you are a student, the half of this amount (75dkk). The members are composed of student but also lot of different persons coming from anywhere. One reason to come here is to use the laser cuter or 3D printers. Lot of people, living in an apartment, want also to have a place to work. They are also coming to fix some personal, create small things
HAL9K is a kind of free and open association with a board but it is for the legal part. The space tries to be self managed and each members are responsible of their acts and what they are doing. The makerspace does not have real events internaly, but, participate to the sommerhack near Viborg and to the minimakerfaire in Aarhus one time by year. They are thinking to create an open house event. Some months ago, a company (PROSA) specialized in Open Source gave some meeting on open source software solution.
There is no big projects in the space. HAL9K has no masterplan, if you want to do something, you can do it by yourself. If it is a really interesting project, some people will try to help you. Again, open and free will. There is no real vision too. Everyone is equal in the space, and everyone is responsible.
Every tools and machines have a qrcode pointing to an article in the HAL9K wiki or the website. There is no real updated documentation and, only for some big tool like the laser cuter, and drilling/willing machine, they give instruction. Usually, they prefer to give instruction by talking in front of the person.
When a tool is broken, you need to fix it, if you can. But, the open and free mindset give some issue, it isalways the same people fixing and cleaning things. It is usually okay. They want to have more members to engage in new projects or give ideas. Natural engagement is complicated. They also want more space, maybe a better communication and visibility.
# Hal9k
- Sofiendalsvej 80, 9200 Aalborg, Denmark
- bestyrelse@hal9k.dk
- bestyrelse@lists.hal9k.dk
# Links
- https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/Hal9k
- https://hal9k.dk/
- https://wiki.hal9k.dk/
- https://www.facebook.com/hal9k.dk
- http://lists.hal9k.dk/listinfo