Name and Geographical Remit

HSF Organisation
1

I was chatting with people from Irish spaces at Maker Faire on the weekend, and they raised the question of whether they’re still meant to be involved with the Foundation as it’s now the “UK Hackspace Foundation”. We have always included the Irish spaces in our map, and we also now have one listed space on Guernsey, which is not part of the UK.

The “UK” in the name was meant to disambiguate it from the old Hackspace Foundation (now known as London Hackspace Ltd), rather than as anything geographically explicit. There is nothing in our constitution which restricts us to the UK.

I think we should represent our neighbouring English-speaking islands (as long as they want us to!), and borders are silly. So, I propose the following:

  • We change the operating name of the organisation to “Hackspace Foundation”, which removes the clumsy “UK” (we can keep the company name the same for the moment)
  • Our remit should be changed to promote and support spaces in “The UK, Crown dependencies, and Ireland”
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I’m in support of this, there was/is concern that dropping the UK part of the name meant we were including every Hackspace in the world. There are already efforts elsewhere anyway (http://www.nationofmakers.us/).

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Agreed. I do think Hackspace Foundation works well, avoid anachronism and the potential of re-branding every few years as the United Kingdom disunites and it doesn’t exclude our Irish and Island dwelling friends!

DM

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For the remit statement would “British Isles” fit and be acceptable but shorter than “The UK, Crown dependencies, and Ireland”? I literally don’t know if it would be accepted or sound wrong, especially in Ireland.

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Do we need to restrict ourselves by remit/area at all?

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I’m led to believe it’s not a terribly popular term in the Republic of Ireland. Listing places is a bit clumsy but it is clearer, and we’re only going to need to do it in a few places.

I don’t think anyone has world domination as a goal here. Any insurance, grants we receive, or equipment we can (re)distribute, will likely be UK-specific. (Any legal/tax advice, etc may even be England & Wales specific.)

I just want to rectify the fact that we unintentionally cut some spaces out of the organisation for no good reason.

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