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"Our running expenses are quite low, and are met by our membership fees and founding partners initial payments. We have no paid staff, but a couple of members have received in-kind memberships to the space in exchange for some work they do for us," Dalton (below) told iTWire.
Linux Australia has been supporting a number of conferences and has recently extended help to groups in the FOSS space, the most recent being a grant to The Ada Initiative, a group that is seeking to increase the involvement of women in technology.
Membership of the Gold Coast Tech Space costs $100 a month. "(This) gives you 24/7 access to the space and first dibs on desk space for a particular project you might want to bring in. You also get a locker and a pigeon hole and the warm fuzzy feeling of supporting an awesome project," Dalton said.
Several Australian cities, Melbourne and Brisbane to name two, have similar hacker spaces where people who are so inclined can meet and collaborate on projects.
An embedded software engineer who worked on network switches and routes after finishing his university studies in the UK, Dalton says that the interest in DIY projects has more or less come full circle.
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"I think in the last 10 years or so, geeks have realised that we cannot just hide in our bedrooms or garages on IRC and mailing lists, we need to get out and collaborate, and this is where things like Barcamp, Unconferences, Meetups, User driven conferences (such as Linux Conf and OSDC), co-working spaces and hackerspaces have really reignited the spark."
After his university studies, Dalton got heavily into GNU/Linux and Free/Libre software and after seeing many proprietory software disasters at places he worked at, he has now become a strong advocate of FLOSS.
He says a lot of devices - even some which are fully proprietary - can be hacked or repurposed in some way and this really gets to the root of what learning is all about - taking things apart and understanding them.
"A lot of people I talk to are tired of being dumb consumers and want to create things, and the hackerspace culture has been a real catalyst for people taking charge of the technology that they own," he said.
"This culture has now also been embraced by a number of companies now wearing their open source badge with pride and actually encouraging people to hack with their products and create new things.
"More recently projects like Arduino, Open Source 3D printing (eg. Reprarp) and the recently released Raspberry PI have really got everyone very excited and the amount of innovation and cool technology coming from the grassroots clubs is quite impressive."
Dalton started the Tech Space with a view to making it a central place that people from all over the coast could come to and collaborate and learn, all at a grassroots level, one which had no minimum entry requirements and one where all types of people were welcome.
"Rather than being spoon-fed, people can sometimes learn much more effectively by working together on a project or technology," Dalton said. "After a couple of visits by some of the GCLUG (Gold Coast Linux User Group) members to Brisbane Hackerspace the idea began to form into something real and it was really jump started late last year when I met our now vice-president, Lucas Brandt, who was also looking for some space and so we joined forces! A few of us were really keen to do good for the community and help people, so we hope to include this in our charter and will be reflected in the group projects that we choose."
Dalton says there are minimum age requirements - children are welcome but a parent needs to be a member and present. "Apart from that everyone is welcome. Members that join the space have to sign a very short code of conduct that says you understand the goals of the space and will be respectful to others."
