Q&A: Hacker Dojo's Katy Levinson on new digs, return of Hacker Fair
- Cromwell Schubarth
- Senior Technology Reporter- Silicon Valley Business Journal
- Email | Twitter | Google+
But she and the co-working space that gave birth to Pinterest, Pebble and many other startups are ready to shift into a new gear after surviving a threatened closure, Kickstarter fundraising campaign and move to a new location.
A grand opening of Hacker Dojo's new location is scheduled next week and on the Sunday after that the first "Hacker Fair" since the troubles began will be held.
The Hacker Fair is a big event for Levinson and the Dojo, a kind of job fair in reverse. Hackers sit in the booths where employers would be at a job fair, showing off their most ambitious projects to potential employers or funders.
Levinson spoke to me this week about the Dojo's history and plans for the future. The following are excerpts of that conversation.
How is the new space?
It's fun. The new space is about 16,500 square feet — about 27 percent bigger than what we rented before. But of that old space, we were only allowed in just about half of it. It's much better. It feels like a corporate campus really.
We just finished building our new event room where we can actually host reasonably sized events. We're actually for the first time in a year and a half inviting new people into the space. We're encouraging people to hold big events. We're able to really scale up and follow our mission of education and knowledge for everybody.
How big an event can you handle. The old space was legally capped at 49, right?
I believe that the official capacity caps out somewhere close to 300.
In the old space, we used to have events so — partially indoor, partially outdoor — that would come close to 300 people. But those were really illegal. Now we can do them legally. Maybe illegal isn't the right way to put what we did at the old space. Let's just say we can now do them without giving the city a heart attack.
ReplyDeleteThis is so interesting blog. You are best listing knowledge provide at this site. I am very excited read this nice article. You can visit my site.
coworking space mountain view