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Timeline

Emery Premeaux edited this page Oct 10, 2024 · 14 revisions

Tokyo HackerSpace was founded around May 23rd, 2009. Mitch Altman had come to Japan to give a speak about starting hackerspaces at a Tokyo Barcamp. During his speech, Chris Shannon registered the tokyohackerspace.com domain. The Majority of co-founders then joined our first forum (google groups) between the 23rd and 29th. The BarCamp that started it all (2009/05/16)

Our first meeting was June 9th, 2009. Initially we were meeting in various bars and venues around Tokyo.

Our first class, "WTF is a resistor?? : an introduction to electronics" was held July 27th, 2009.

We moved into our first location August 20th.

Our first members social / BBQ party was August 25th.

Our first Open house, "A Day In The Life Of THS" was September 6th, 2009.

A lot of info could be gleaned from our old google forum.

In the beginning... (2009/05/16 - 2009/08/20)

  • 2009/05/16 : BarCamp, in which Mitch Altman introduced the concept of makerspaces. Chris Shannon registers the THS domain name
  • 2009/05/23 : Saturday : first meetup on THS founders. I think this was at The Pink Cow.
  • 2009/06/09 : Tuesday : First Tuesday night open house. This tradition has continued ever since. I don't remember the bar.
  • 2009/07/12 : Lauren presented a lightning round pitch about THS
  • 2009/07/27 : First Class: WTF is a resistor; An introduction to Electronics, by Akiba and MRE. Held in a church basement. Coincidentally, less than 50 meters from the future first home of THS.

Shirokanedai Era (2009/08 - 2012/08)

  • 2009/08/20 : moved into Shirokanedai house
  • 2009/08/25 : first event in Shirokandai : members and friends BBQ party
  • 2009/09/06 : first public event: DITLO A Day In The Life Of THS
  • 2009/11/23-24 : Tokyo Make meeting 04
  • 2010/05/24 : Tokyo Make Meeting 05. In these early days of Make meetings, we volunteered as well as set up and ran a soldering and kit building station
  • 2010/09/18 : Democrats Abroad BBQ (video slideshow)
  • 2011/03/11 : Great Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. See our 2011 Tohoku Quake page

Make Magazine Tour and clips video of Shirokanedai, including early Safecast

ShootTokyo visit

MAKE interviews Akiba : How THS responded to March 11th

Shibuya Era (2012/08 - ??)

After the owner of the Shirokanedai space informed us they were selling the land (now there is a huge condo building covering the two lots they owned), Shibuya was a temporary home for the space. We were co-locating with in an office building just a few minutes walk from Shibuya scramble. While this was super convenient, our portion of space was quite small, and we were limited in the kinds of activities we could do there. We are very thankful to the people in the office that donated space to us while we looked around for other options.

Shibuya office with Ian from Dangerous Prototypes

2012/08/21 : Shibuya move-in party (Akafugu report) 2012/10 : Akafugu held clock assembly classes

Nogizaka Era (?? - 2015/03)

One of our founding members owned a restaurant and catering business and had recently lost one of the tenants of their shared storage space in Nogizaka. So THS was able to move in and have a bit more freedom to do certain activities. While it remained cramped, it was nice to be able to do a few things not normally allowed in an office environment.

48-hour Akihabara speed run

Naka Itabashi Era (2015/03 - ??)

Finally THS was able to get back into a large, open space with few restrictions. The space consists of a LARGE garage space, and a meeting room above.

2015/06/20 : Makery visits and reports about the new space