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Wired posted a nice article detailing the proliferation of hackerspaces in the US, even mentioning our fair organization in the process -
While many movements begin in obscurity, hackers are unanimous about the birth of U.S. hacker spaces: August, 2007 when U.S. hackers Bre Pettis, Nicholas Farr, Mitch Altman and others visited Germany on a geeky field trip called Hackers on a Plane.As Hackerspaces.org reports of another 27 spaces are currently being planned, we're likely to see/hear more about our growing hacker communities in the press. Check out the full article on Wired's blog.German and Austrian hackers have been organizing into hacker collectives for years, including Metalab in Vienna, c-base in Berlin and the Chaos Computer Club in Hannover, Germany. Hackers on a Plane was a delegation of American hackers who visited the Chaos Communications Camp — "Burning Man for hackers," says Metalab founder Paul "Enki" Boehm — and their trip included a tour of these hacker spaces. They were immediately inspired, Altman says.
On returning to the United States, Pettis quickly recruited others to the idea and set up NYC Resistor in New York, while Farr instigated a hacker space called HacDC in Washington, D.C. Both were open by late 2007. Noisebridge followed some months later, opening its doors in fall 2008.
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It couldn't have happened at a better time. Make magazine, which started in January, 2005, had found an eager audience of do-it-yourself enthusiasts. (The magazine's circulation now numbers 125,000.) Projects involving complex circuitry and microcontrollers were easier than ever for nonexperts to undertake, thanks to open source platforms like Arduino and the easy availability of how-to guides on the internet.
