[Swansea Hackspace] Moving Options

[Neil Jones]

On 23/04/16 09:10, Nathan Hackett wrote:
> Personally I'd rather we had less space but with more autonomy and 
> available funds, rather than stay at the current location. How small 
> is 'small' anyway? :)
>
I actually emailed Justin personally as he invited us to. I said in my 
email more or less that I wouldn't divulge the exact details because I 
realised that the list was public and googleable and there was a risk 
that someone else may jump in and grab the premises. You may recall that 
I raised this issue as a problem when this list was created.  Justin has 
provided me with some details which I obviously can't post here.

I don't think the space we are considering is too small. Going from the 
square footage this seems to be a far better space than we had upstairs 
in our original room in Wind Street and from the nature of the place it 
is fairly typical of the kind of windowed premises we would be likely to 
consider anywhere in Swansea.

I'd rather we had somewhere in the town centre but this isn't too 
remote. It is walkable to and from the train station if, like me, you 
enjoy walking.
There are good public transport links.

Having chatted with various people at the social evenings and done some 
research myself on rents  in Swansea I think if this is available and 
Justin says it is within our means to rent, then it is a good option.
The current space is nice. It is spacious which is a big advantage. The 
downsides are the cost, which we can't currently afford long term its 
lack of shop windows
and the problems of access, shared access etc. Shop windows are going to 
be important if we are going to advertise ourselves and the Sketty 
proposed place has them.

What does concern me, after chatting to people at the socials, is that 
currently we are actually living beyond our means. This means as Justin 
said we need more members. I think Nathan sums up my feelings on the 
matter as autonomy and available funds are actually rather critical to 
meet our desires in the long term.
We are more likely to gain new members if we have a more public presence 
rather than being hidden away in a building in town, even if it is 
conveniently located.
I  am convinced that there are more potential members to find out there.

I am wondering if it is worth considering having an informal meeting to 
inform people or even if one of the directors just turns up with a 
laptop and plugs it into our large screen and shows us the details on 
Monday night during the social?

> I appreciate all the work you and the other directors are doing to get 
> this resolved, it doesn't go unnoticed.

Hear Hear!
I understand that a lot of the work is being done by Gerrit. So thanks 
Gerrit!

Neil




>
> On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 5:11 PM, Justin Mitchell 
> <justin at swansea.hackspace.org.uk 
> <mailto:justin at swansea.hackspace.org.uk>> wrote:
>
>     As many of you will have heard, we have been investigating alternative
>     locations for the Hackspace ever since TechHub vacated our
>     building and
>     moved up the road to High Street.
>
>     We had been holding back on publicly announcing a move because we were
>     very close to finalising the details for a number of spaces, all of
>     which have now fallen through for one reason or another.
>
>     As of today we have only two options available to us, and we need to
>     make the decisions quickly:
>
>     We can stay where we are, but it is expensive, and we will need to
>     find
>     additional members and income to be able to afford to stay there, as
>     well as needing to arrange better door and internet access.
>
>     or, we can move to a smaller place we have been offered in Sketty. it
>     needs some tidying and decorating, but is much more affordable, and
>     would give us our own space with door access and window space.
>
>     At this point we would welcome opinions from the members on which
>     option
>     they would prefer.
>
>     We would especially be interested in any alternatives that people are
>     aware of, there are a lot of empty properties around Swansea, so you
>     would need to know they are actually available and at roughly what
>     cost
>     to be of any help.
>
>     If anyone wants more details on any of the above please email me
>     or the
>     other directors off-list.
>
>     thanks
>
>
>
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>
>
>
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