March 29th marks this years International open Hackerspaces day

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Just like the past three years, the hackerspace community will open their doors to the public, on Saturday the 29th of March 2014.

Designing 3D printed cookie cutters, making your own soap, milling furniture, from adjusting the colours of your living room lights to match the film you’re watching to checking how secure Whatsapp really is. It’s all possible in a hackerspace.

A hackerspace is an environment where creative, legal, technical and other curious people join together to work, think about and talk over a wide variety of subjects. “Some of these projects are really practical, others are more “because we can”. What is always the same is our goal to gather knowledge, work together and share our knowledge” says Jildou, founder of the Frack hackerspace.

The members of many hackerspaces demonstrate this goal by inviting anyone curious to come by and see what’s possible. Hacking isn’t just what the media tells you it is.

“The hackerspaces like to supplement each other and work together where possible. This way we can learn from each others faults, increase our knowledge and will we be able to offer a wide variety of projects all around the country”, explains Dave Borghuis, the founder of Tkkrlab.

Next to building machines, members also work on projects to, for example, remotely open the front door of their space, or to adjust the temperature of multiple areas via the internet. There’s also a collaboration with a library to teach kids how to solder, there are privacy workshops on multiple locations and spaces work together with municipalities regarding security and open data.

The open day will be a colourful whole, with activities spread all through the country. Every hackerspace will have their own interpretation. An overview of activities and opening times can be found at Hackerspaces.nl or on the site of the local space.

Everybody is welcome to come over!

12 Dutch hackerspaces are joining, for more information about the activities take a look at their own site.