Un calpin d'Anne Goldenberg

I just met a member of the Vancouver Free Geek group, that opened recently in the BC city, becoming the first ever FreeGeek in Canada. Speaking with her, I realised that : 1st we need one in Montreal (students, artists, homeless people, activist, geeks, community groups and even yuppies would need it), 2nd, it may be not such a pain, because we could have the help from the FreeGeek network and learn from their experiment to put together free software and hardware geeks from Montreal to make them work together. Also, FreeGeek Montreal could start as something small, not open permanently for exemple.

What is free geek ?

It's a place I dreamed about maybe 5 years ago. I was coming from a journey in India, and had seen all this bare foot people refactoring informatic device in a New delhi
abandonned business center and I was starting a 6 months contract at France Telecom R&D, where I met Christophe Aguiton, half an activist, half a researcher, traveling all around the IT activist places. He was the first to tell me about the existence of FREE GEEK in Portland Oregon. Portland is an known to be a place where lots of computer hardware and digital gear is being built. But until 2000, hardware were neither unmounted nore recycled there. The old hardware stuff were going to india, and china like most of the old hardware of the world. But some guys and girls decided to take this question in charge, by opening a recycling center for computer, but not only : they would teach who ever come to them, how to build, rebuild a computer. They called that the adoption program. So anyone is welcome to could go there, volunteer for a bunch of hours and build your computer from selected, recycled pieces, attend a workshop to install a free operating system on it, and bring home the device you've constructed with so much attention. I believe that the free geek of portland actually also recycle an old fabric to make it working place.

When me and anarcat visited the Portland Free Geek, it looked like a fabric, but organised on deconstruction, classification, reconstruction, teaching activities, and run by amazing heterogenous people (old, young, big, thin, female, male, clowny like people and a crazy dog too). It was big, a bit noisy, festive. About 6 different rooms or spaces, from reception of material, classification, deconstruction, sorting and recycling of raw material, storage, reconstruction to teaching rooms, and a shop too, for people not having time for the education program or just looking for a gadget to buy.

Free geeks in north america and the one of Vancouver.
From the
Portland Free Geek , aka the Mothership 5 Free Geek has been set up in the US, and one in Canada (Vancouver) (see: FreeGeeks location in wikipédia"). This network work like a solidarity support for each initiative.

FeekGeek|GeeksLibres in Montreal

So, for montreal, this is what I see :
* Now that Ateliers du libre are homeless.
* Because we know there are a bunch of geeks, free software friends, hackers, artist, out of money techies, student with old laptop and no money to buy a new one, Media, IT activist and community groups, as well as yuppies finding old stuff interesting, who are roaming around, hiding technological treasure and garbage in their basement or wall cupboard.
* Because it's hard to find cheap hardware in Montreal.
* And because there would be a network to help us building a free geek in Montreal...
... I think we should set up one.

Possibilities
* We could reserve a room for other/free software like activities.
* We could think of this space as of a coworking place (in link or not to free software and hardware, but not in contradiction)
* We could have a room for sailing, a room for working with hard-ware, and an other one for lessons.
* We could open this space temporally, once a week if we are not strong enough at the beginning.
* We could ask for fundings, as this activity could easily be considered as a public utility one, in order to pay the rent.
* We could find a way not to pay a rent, and use the space of a foundation, church or university basement ?
* FreeGeek Vancouver just got a a grant of $4000 by Mountain Equipment Co-op.
These Urban Sustainability Grants are designed to "support local environmental groups in each MEC store community." I guess we could also get a grant of these kind, that could help us pay the rent ...

* To talk about that, we could meet soon. If some of you feel enthousiastic about this, please leave a comment.

(I'm going to meet free geek vancouver on tuesday morning to try to know more about their organisation)