Cairo Membership Model (CMM)
Cairo Membership Model (CMM) The Cairo Hackerspace’s open-source model for sustaining a community The Cairo Hackerspace Membership Model (herein CMM) has been in development since the launch of the space in 2009. After seven years, we decided to consolidate the model and document it in a brief yet descriptive manner. Our goal is to share its benefits with other hackerspaces and especially help guide new hackerspaces in developing in a sustainable and practical way. The model was developed with “Hackerspace design patterns 1.0 and 2.0” in mind. We believe our model is a successful attempt to combine what we have learned from our experiences with the application of these design patterns. In the last seven years, the Cairo Hackerspace has undergone different types of crises - corrosive outside political environment, sudden shutdowns, a total of SIX location moves, and others - and has continued to survive without money other than member contributions. Thus, the model has served us to remain flexible as a space and a community. It is in continuous development and it is open source. CMM was developed for three main reasons. First : to help a hackerspace remain internally sustainable without turning into a commercial space. Second : to attract a community and keep current members more attached to the space by cultivating a sense of ownership. Third : to create jobs and opportunities for individuals inside the space to sustain themselves and use their skills more innovatively, and to give a chance for the “starving hacker” to remain a full member without embarrassment. CMM has 3 dimensions. Each dimension represents a membership type and each member can join all three dimensions according to demand: Definitions: Member : An active member Membership : The Fee to be a member Anyone : member or not CMM : Cairo Hackerspace Membership Model Service : A service that a hackerspace can do, like building a robot Jobs list : The list that contains the things that have been asked from the hackerspace to make in return of money Things : Stuff Community hacking : Any activities to engage new community or the current community of the space CMM Model description: The membership dimensions are x, y and z: X member is anyone who pays money for their membership, provides an in-kind donation, pays for a service or anyone is source of money entering the hackerspace. Y member is anyone willing to do something that will pay a partial/full amount of her/his/its membership to support the hackerspace financially with his/her work and may get paid for her/his work too. The work can be: operating the fabrication machines, teaching a class or a workshop, making things that can be sold by the hackerspace, do a job from the jobs list, community hacking activities to bring more diverse members to the space, etc. Z member is any member willing to voluntarily help in operating the space itself by engaging in activities such as: opening and closing the space, cleaning, web administration, maintenance, and representing the space officially in events and conferences. To be a Z members can apply to the open positions listed and will be selected by an all-members vote. We don’t have an actual categorization or naming of people inside the hackerspace but use the X,Y and Z as a placeholder for whatever category name you choose for this type of membership. References : http://pad.fixme.ch/p/hsdpworkshop https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/Design_Patterns This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License