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The Heart of Code has launched \o/


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Takeoff!

On Saturday, 20th of May, the most beautiful, powerful and unpredictable space ship ever built has launched successfully. And we are ever so proud and delighted to be part of the journey.

Some day in January 2016, three members of the Heart of Code sat in a pile of laundry and pizza and drafted first ideas for a womens* hackspace. We found a name, a hosting service and a vision: We wanted a community, yes, we wanted to organize events, yes, but we also wanted to find and found a proper hackspace. With crazy tools, girls, women and tech.

Now, 1.5 years later we have actually let this dream come true. Our very own hackspace has opened doors on the 20th of May, at 23:42pm. On the 23rd we officially founded the Verein Heart of Code e.V. And everything that started as a somewhat crazy, megalomaniac and fun idea become something as real as four massive brick stone walls.

How did we get there? A couple months ago we heard of a space being available next to Görltizer Bahnhof, ironically the Heart of Kreuzberg. A beautiful little room on first floor, that was only accessible via a ladder, like a tree house and embedded in athe artists’ ttt collective. It was beautiful and trashy, but it also had obvious blemishes. It was clear that a lot of renovation had to be done, and we were concerned about the lack of accessibility. After several discussions and very divided opinions we then took a heart and decided to rent the space. The past weeks we’ve been busy learning how to isolate a room, lay electric cables, set up and plaster walls and fix a ceiling. With the help of friends and the local collective ttt we managed to get all the neccessary steps done.

Together with the reopening of the art space downstairs we celebrated our launch with numerous friends who came by. Thanks a lot for joining the party, we had a blast!

 

So what’s next?

Right after the opening we founded the Verein Heart of Code e.V, in order to be a legal entity, that is entitled to collect member fees and receive donations. We are now in dialogue with the respective offices and we are waiting for confirmation. We are currently 9 members and we are looking forward to have more members joining. Financially we are going to be dependent on donations and fundings, since we only have a limited number of members with limited financial ressources. We are working on that and we are aware that some people are interested in becoming supporting members.

If you are interested in supporting us with ressources, please get in touch. We are looking for financial support and sponsoring to afford the rent, organize events and for purchasing tools and materials.

We still have some tasks ahead to make our space a proper hackspace, we still need to set up a work bench, tables and some chairs. Given the size of our space, this shouldn’t take too much time. If you have spare folding chairs and racks left, let us know!

And, most importantly, we will start to fill up the space with life, projects and actions and conitnue to set up our community. We have plans for several learning groups, experimenting with our server (thank you greenhost, <3) hacking projects, a podcast, some tools we want to purchase and learn to use and yes, we are planning to devour plenty more pizzas, beers, mates, cookies and we are quite excited to spend more time with each other. We are also going to organize workshops, talks and hackdays as soon as we are somehow settled. We will use the bigger and accessible space downstairs or retreat to other offices again. We will keep up the fixed thursdays as “Damensalon”, but we are envisioning a place that will be busy most days.

We would like to thank everyone, who contributed, with ressources, time and by expressing support of our cause. Every kind of help and support is so important, appreciated and motivates us to keep going :) So thanks a ton to our allies, to our friends and …well, to ourselves, the beautiful Baumschiff Crew.

There’s a fun little article about the Opening by Grace Dobusch. Read it here.

 

Image by Grace Dobusch


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