Hackerspaces are community-operated physical places all around the world, where people can meet and have fun on their projects. XinCheJian, the first of many Hackerspaces in China, is one of the many hundreds Hackerspaces all around the world. Each Hackerspace is an autonomous entity, but they all share the same philosophy of having fun building things. An hackerspace is an environment where peopl
e can learn and tinker with technology, work in teams, participate in international competitions where many new opportunities can be found and created for all. Hackerspace can be traced back to the original Homebrew Computer Club in 1978 where Steve Jobs and Steven Wozniak first showed the Apple Zero and where later on Bill Gates came start ask money from everyone for Basic…
XinCheJian is a non-profit organization, it’s mission is to support, create and promote physical computing, open source hardware and Internet of Things. To achieve this, XinCheJian has talks, discussions, projects, startups promotion, workshops, competition organisation and our own participation in international competitions…
Our long-term goal is to spread the concept and philosophy across China and inspire Hackerspaces in every large city from east to west. Who we are and what we’re bringing to XinCheJian
* Min Lin Hsieh (谢旻琳), Community Organizer. Financial, organizational, marketing skills and experience in helping engineering projects and clubs.
* David Li (李大维), Foreman. Network of contacts in the local community, passion and respect they hold for his technical achievements and knowledge of open hardware.
* Ricky Ng-Adam (伍思力), Project Generator. ambitious ideas, engineering experience, strategic planning, community-building and evangelistic skills. What does physical computing, open source hardware mean? Physical computing includes things like handmade art, design or DIY hobby projects that use sensors and micro-controllers to translate analog input to a software system, and/or control electromechanical devices such as motors, servos, lighting or other hardware. Open source hardware include such things as the Arduino microcontroller platform. Arduino is a good example: a very tiny computer in your pocket that can interact with the physical world with free and easy to use OpenSource tools to do software development for it. The plans to build and mass produce Arduinos are available to all. How are we doing this? By creating a community loosely federated with the global community of Hackerspaces across the world. The community favors fun, creativity, teamwork, problem-solving and openness to provide a learning and development opportunity to the Chinese people and expats in China. We have sufficient personal funds to get the project started in Shanghai. Eventually we want to adopt a not-for-profit business model, with memberships similar to social clubs. This is highly feasible and has been shown to work in many countries. Hosting startups in the space during the weekdays and having our community events during the evening and weekends is also very complimentary.
