Hacker Perspective: Nick Farr
"For these people, there's no separation between work and fun." - Aaron Swartz (www.aaronsw.com)
On any given Monday night, just 2.5 miles up the hill from the White House, you'll find a group of hackers gathered together around microcontrollers. In one corner of the room, hackers are busy working on code, trading techniques, and hammering out bugs. In another, hackers are busy cutting wire, filtering through bins of chips and components, soldering and desoldering components while gently critiquing each other's work.
Most of the people in the room, however, are "newbies." They're off to the side, fascinated by these hackers making cool things out of a pile of parts. Through careful observation, some idle chatter, and a few questions about the work in progress, they're getting a clearer idea of what these small components do and how they come together.
In a few Mondays, after getting a little experience with a soldering iron, a few code samples, a bit of encouragement, and a kit of their own, a few of these newbies will start contributing ideas and hacks of their own - and be recognized by their peers as fellow hackers.
This is all happening in a space called HacDC, an independent hackerspace founded and funded by hackers to share knowledge, resources, and the crux of what hacking is really about. "Microcontroller Mondays" are just one example of how HacDC brings hackers together to explore where technology meets art, culture, politics, economics, and many other fields.
Since my first Ann Arbor 2600 meeting, sometime in the mid-1990s, I've been fascinated by those who call themselves hackers. If I've ever been reluctant to call myself a hacker, it's because I've been in awe of what other hackers are working on and the depth of knowledge and creativity hackers bring to their work. I'm really blown away how brilliant our community is, how quickly hackers achieve a deep understanding of complex systems and find ways of brushing aside limitations and artificial boundaries. Hackers believe anything is possible and work very hard to prove it - often just for fun.
This fascination with hacker genius is why I work to help build communities of hackers, to bring hackers together to share their talents and tackle larger tasks. My core belief is that these communities will show society at large what hacking really is and who hackers really are. My core talent is hacking bureaucracies and hierarchies, gaining a deeper understanding of networks of people in order to patch their prejudices so our community can help the world as a whole.
The first "organizational hack" I was involved in was moving the Ann Arbor 2600 meetings from a nearby mall into the University of Michigan Student Union. The Union had a lot of really great meeting spaces, but the bureaucratic hurdles were a bit much for all but the most organized and established student groups. In retrospect, it wasn't all that hard to register a student group, get a few regulars to chip in some cash, and lobby some academic departments and even the IT group to match what we could scrounge up at a meeting. At the time, it seemed like a lot of work - but it was well worth it for what we got.
We had fast, wired Internet access (this was a few years before Wi-Fi took off), lots of power outlets, a huge board room table with big comfy chairs, no security guards looking over our shoulder, a food court downstairs - what more could we have asked for? We even had a projector and a screen we could use to give presentations! To some of you, it might not sound like a lot. But to us, it was much better than the mall.
It wasn't long before we found other bureaucratic hurdles to exploit. At one meeting, we found out that Microsoft was going to be throwing a big event in one of the upstairs ballrooms to help sell these limited install "student" versions of Office. Most of us were abandoning closed-source software, even throwing unofficial distribution parties during our meetings. While we could see the end of closed-source software in the server market (especially those of us called upon to "fix" Exchange servers on a daily basis), open-source desktop software still had a long way to go. But at least it was there!
Through some clever social engineering, sympathetic administrators, and a better knowledge of the rules than those called upon to enforce them, we were "invited" to demo the first versions of what's now known as OpenOffice at the event Microsoft paid for! Whether or not someone bought a Microsoft product that day, few people left without getting a free copy of StarOffice from us to try at home. While the side-by-side comparison wasn't as good as it is today, we began to show the larger community that there were good, free open-source alternatives that they could help make better!
After college, I followed some of these friends from Ann Arbor out to California, right at the time when the dot-com era was coming to a close. It was there that I encountered a hackerspace called New Hack City. In what used to be a sweatshop, hackers from the Cult of the Dead Cow and their friends had created an insanely awesome space. Most people only got to see the dance floor, but behind a moving wall hid a very large hacker lab, filled with machines, robots, tools, and spaces where hackers got together to build insanely cool things.
The one bad thing about New Hack City was that it was a relatively closed, tight-knit group of people who really didn't want to open up their space to all but a few trusted friends, let alone the general public. Ultimately, because they failed to attract new people to help pay the rent, the space ended up closing.
It was around this time that I began to get involved with non-profit organizations. There's a type of non-profit organization called a 501(c)(3) that's both exempt from federal tax and is authorized to accept tax-deductible donations from individuals and corporations. When most people think of a "real" non-profit, they're thinking of a 501(c)(3). In contemplating the failure of New Hack City, and seeing that hackers didn't really have a way of getting independent funding for their projects, I embarked on another bureaucratic hack that eventually became The Hacker Foundation (THF).
To become a 501(c)(3), you have to form a corporation and apply with the IRS to gain recognition as a tax-exempt non-profit. Most organizations don't even attempt it without the help of a CPA and an attorney. Nobody thought a group of hackers could gain recognition for an organization called "The Hacker Foundation" without a lot of outside help. Most people thought we should just give the organization a more innocent sounding name - that we'd be shooting ourselves in the foot by using the word "hacker" in our name.
Oddly enough, I still get a bit of this prejudice against the term when I talk about HacDC. It's pronounced "Hack-D-C" and when I'm talking about it to a non-technical audience, I often end up going into a long explanation as to who hackers really are and what hacking really is. Fortunately, this is getting a lot easier, thanks to the great work hackers are doing and the willingness of hackers to talk about their community without fear of being branded as a criminal. Now that there's a space in D.C., I can invite people to drop by to see what hacking is for themselves!.
Most of what kept me going during THF's long application process was a desire to chip away at this prejudice, to prove that we could proudly call ourselves hackers and achieve the same federally recognized status enjoyed by those who call themselves academics, researchers, humanitarians, teachers, and other labels easily interchangeable with "hacker." In the process of applying for 501(c)(3) status, we had to show how hackers played all these different roles.
Nearly two years after first being told it couldn't be done, THF achieved 501(c)(3) status. Since then, many other hacker organizations have applied for exemption, proudly using the word hacker without fear of being automatically rejected. One of the most powerful accomplishments of The Hacker Foundation was proving that independent hackers and projects could apply for 501(c)(3) status without a lot of money or outside expertise... that hacking was a "tax exempt activity." Many of the hackerspaces forming today, including HacDC, are applying to become 501(c)(3) organizations so they can more easily seek funding and resources from the communities they serve.
Thanks to a hackerspace in Berlin, THF embarked on what is probably one of the greatest organizational and social hacks I've been involved with. THF was invited to 23C3, the 23rd annual Chaos Communication Congress in Germany, and I spoke there on behalf of the foundation. I was incredibly impressed by the European hacker scene, something I had only tangentially seen at hacker events here in the U.S.
What really floored me was seeing C-Base (c-base.org), a large, open, and inviting community of hackers who had built what I viewed as New Hack City on steroids. Upstairs was a dance floor ringed by a bar, loft workspaces, a huge DJ booth, public terminals, and an ever changing array of decorative technology. Downstairs, they had almost every kind of specialized workspace a hacker could want, everything from a fully stocked server room to a recording studio and a woodworking shop! One of my failings as a writer is an inability to fully communicate what an impression the C-Base had on me. If you're interested in seeing what a hackerspace can be, I strongly encourage you to attend this year's congress in Berlin, the 25C3 (events.ccc.de) and visit the C-Base. My hope is that one day HacDC will achieve in Washington what C-Base has achieved in Berlin.
Seeing the C-Base, I knew that hackers from this side of the Atlantic would be inspired. I had been encouraged by Germans to bring hackers from America over to Europe for their hacker camp happening later that year. I'm not quite sure if it was entirely coincidental, but they had scheduled camp to happen right after DEFCON 15. The minute I got back, I started working on making Hackers on a Plane happen.
We set out to make the ultimate hacker vacation. For $1,337 (or 1,337 euros), you got a ticket to DEFCON, round trip airfare from Las Vegas to Germany, a ticket, and all the supplies you'd need at the camp. Again, words fail me in describing how awesome the camp was. I strongly encourage you to check out the documentary about the camp to see for yourself (chaosradio.ccc.de/ctv113.html).
Again, in retrospect, putting 40 hung-over hackers on a transcontinental flight, then dumping them in a field with few creature comforts was not really a great idea. Yes, the hacker camps in Europe are exactly that: camps. One of our first logistical failures was not raising all the tents we needed before nightfall. While (almost) everyone who went had a great time, and the camp organizers did everything in their power to help us out, doing the world's two largest hacker events in the same week is not something I'd recommend repeating.
Even after a long week of partying with fellow hackers, a few brave souls decided to continue on a week long tour of hackerspaces throughout Germany and Austria. Here, visiting the C-Base, the C4 in Cologne, the Metalab in Vienna, Das Labor, Entropia, the Netzladen and others, hackers were inspired by the same things I saw a few months earlier. Three hackers from New York City decided to form their own hacker space and started laying the foundation for what became NYC Resistor (nycresistor.com) right in the main space of the C4!
This year, at The Last HOPE conference, many of these hackerspaces come out for the first U.S. Hackerspace Village. I'm happy to say it was a complete success, as that first group of inspired American hackers got to introduce their European hacker friends to their fellow hackerspace members. It was awesome to see other spaces in the U.S. get to meet and network with each other. We had groups from all parts of North America, like Noisebridge from San Francisco, the Texarkana Institute of Technology from Arkansas, and east coast "locals" HacDC, NYC Resistor, the Hacktory from Philly, and even representatives from hacklab.io in Toronto!
We had a huge microcontroller workshop, a circuit bending lab, our own hackersmart with parts and old bits of hacker history, and a live link to the Metalab in Vienna! Most importantly, these gifted hackers dedicated to building community got to meet and socialize with their counterparts around the world, making friends and thinking of new ideas, coming together in exactly the way I hoped they would.
I got to see, firsthand, a community forming around an event I helped put together. The HOPE conferences have always brought hackers from around the world and helped strengthen the international hacker community. The Hackerspace Village was merely an extension of that, focused around helping hackers build permanent gathering points where they live, so they can enjoy something like a year-round HOPE of their own.
In many ways, a hacker's work is never really finished. Making spaces like HacDC and NYC Resistor thrive takes a lot of effort - and continues to test the bureaucratic skills of the hackers who keep them going. I'm sad to say that between my day job, helping run HacDC, and traveling to conferences to help inspire more hackerspaces, there isn't a lot of time for me to get and stay involved in "real hacking," like Microcontroller Mondays.
As HacDC embarks on a project that partners community organizations to help build a real, comprehensive, and free wireless network in our neighborhood, I realize with both trepidation and gratitude that my greatest social and organizational hacks are yet to come. I realize that I have a lot more mistakes to make and lessons to learn.
While I may never see the day where the average person equates the term hacker with genius, passion, and creativity, I'm hope that that I'm playing some small part in bringing this community closer together for the benefit of mankind.
If you're interested in building a hackerspace, be sure to check out hackerspaces.org. Nick is more than happy to take your e-mails at nickfarr@hacdc.org.