Re:My Dad Asks HN: Should I Build A Hackerspace?
by jey on Tuesday September 22, 2009 @05:05PM
(#837942)
Sounds impractical from the standpoint of making your money back. Also the idea of having an equipment free-for-all is terrible. Equipment can only be used by one person/team/company at a time, so you need to make sure there's a reasonable economy to allocate the resources fairly according to supply/demand. You could maybe set it up so that the equipment is rented at some rates, but all tenants get a certain amount of free equipment rental per month.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:My Dad Asks HN: Should I Build A Hackerspace?
by nickmolnar2 on Tuesday September 22, 2009 @05:31PM
(#837997)
There definitely needs to be a very powerful reservation system. Some high-paying members might be able to rent out certain pieces of equipment for days at a time, while others would only be able to access it when vacant. You would not want somebody monkeying around with your C&C machine while you were taking a 2 hour break.
It would certainly require some good software, and community support. Maybe the different pricing levels would allow you to book equipment further and further in advance, to ensure availability for big projects.