Wen Open

This blog post is a quick update on the work going on behind the scenes to finally open the hackerspace.

The Good News⌗

The good news is that we’ve received the keys from our landlord, and the whole space has been finally cleared of all the furniture that had been left inside by the owner.

The Bad News⌗

The bad news is that removing the furniture allowed us to finally see the naked space for what it is, and there are definitely a few things that need to be fixed. It’s not going to be a major renovation, but still it will slow us down and delay the opening of the space.

We are now talking with our landlord to coordinate the work between us and them, splitting the expenses that they’ll have to cover, and the ones we will. The silver lining is that most of the work should be under their responsibility, so at least it won’t cost us too much money, but it will cost us in terms of time and delays.

So Wen Open⌗

For the time being the honest answer is that we don’t know. We could be ready in April if everything goes smoothly, but it may also take longer depending on the availability of the contractors working on the space. Luckily the work required is mostly labor-intensive, so it shouldn’t be subject to delays in gathering the material itself, but when other people are involved in the process we cannot have any certainty.

More Updates⌗

Other than the office everything else seems to be moving forward quite nicely. Since the last update we have:

1. Completed the paperwork to register the association, the rent and utilities contracts, and submitted everything to the relevant state entities.
2. Finalized the design of our stickers: we’ve designed, ordered, and received the stickers for hack.bs. We ended up producing five different designs, and they will be shipped soon to everybody who donated to us in the past few months.
3. Finalized the design of the t-shirts: we settled for two awesome designs, and already placed an order for 100 of them (50 of each type). They will be ready by the end of next week, and afterwards we will start shipping them out to our supporters.
4. Speaking of supporters, we’ve also received an unbelievable amount of support from the Bitcoin community: we are now at 5k+ EUR of donations received, plus a 2.1M sats grant from Geyser.
5. We’ve been doing PR work, speaking about the space at a few events and podcasts, namely: Builders In Bitcoin EP #27, Citadel Dispatch EP #87 and Priorato del Bitcoin.
6. Lastly, we’ve been working on furnishing the place, and we’ve already taken delivery of a few desks, chairs and one large sofa. We have more of them coming soon, but we are pausing deliveries until the renovation work is done.

Video⌗

We want to close this post by showing you a video of the space. It’s really messy at the moment, but keep in mind this is just our starting point. There are two floors filmed in two different videos:

The ground floor will host the main office space (in the large room) and the “coffee area” in the back, with couches and a space designed to relax and socialize.

The basement will become our “garage”, where the noisy stuff will go. Think about 3D printers, CNC machines (like the one that has been recently gifted to us!), servers, etc.

In conclusion, we are very excited about the progress we have made in setting up hack.bs. We couldn’t have done it without the support of our community, and we are grateful for every donation, grant, and word of encouragement that we have received. We are looking forward to completing the renovation work and welcoming visitors to our new space soon. Stay tuned for more updates on our progress, and thank you for being a part of this journey with us.¹