Hello! What are you?

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Hi folks!

I’m a Discourse enthusiast who tried himself to implement such thing but found no community to build it up so far. As such, I found it simply amazing when a friend pointed me to this school of yours and I realized you have done it so! It’s the first Discourse community I find in the wild! :smiley:

But then, I could find no topics explaining what it is. Sure, the website does say:

Hi, we are OpenTechSchool, a distributed community initiative organising welcoming and inclusive code learning happenings with real people in the real world. Our offers are for technology enthusiasts of all ages, genders, backgrounds, and experience levels. On top, we invite anyone to become an organiser themselves, set up their own local chapter organising learning events and join our community of coaches everywhere in creating original teaching material under the open Creative Commons Licence.

I just think this should also be pinned to this “forums”! :wink: Shouldn’t it? :open_mouth:

What it says under foundation is also very relevant, IMHO:

The OpenTechSchool e.V. has officially been established January 5th, 2013. As of March 25th, 2013 it is officially registered as a “gemeinütziger e.V.” — a non-profit foundation under German law. The main objective of creating the OpenTechSchool e.V. was to have a legal entity to help with sponsoring and structural things. Generally the foundations goal is to provide any kinds of service and help to nurture the OpenTechSchool movement all over the globe.

In any case, I wanted to introduce myself and see how it goes from there.

I would also love to visit you guys one day and maybe even bring a new location to where I live, but this is just a far-reach wet dream of someone who barely knows you guys! :stuck_out_tongue:

Let me also ask you this… Would you call yourself a Business Incubator? I hardly know what this even means, but I’m currently looking for such a similar place or space here in Sao Paulo.

Hope those are not too many subjects for a topic… :blush:

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Hey there. I’ve come across these in Brazil, might be worth checking out:

http://criaglobal.com/en/
http://www.pipa.vc/en

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Hi and welcome to the community!

I guess we don’t pin stuff from the website in the forums because it’s on the website :wink: Makes no sense to you?

You don’t have to know “us” (we are a global community) to start something in your city. Just check out all the material, blueprints on the website and the blog is also a great resource.

No, we are not a business incubator. We don’t do any business. We’re about technology and we’re 100% volunteer / free of charge.

Cheers!

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Thanks for that, @savarin! I’ll try to get in touch with them and report back… :wink:

But I don’t think that’s what I was looking for today. Right now, I just want a place to hang around with my laptop and other tech people so we can exchange information on each others projects, aspirations, ideas, technology, programming, designing, etc.

I’ve came around many places like that when I visited Amsterdam and London. I picture you have at least a place like that there in OTS, and many in Berlin. I’m still to find one here… Wait, another friend just found one!

http://saopaulo.impacthub.net/nossos-espacos/para-trabalhar/

Too bad you have to pay an annual fee of U$ 200 or so and a minimum monthly fee of U$ 34 to get 10 monthly hours of space. :frowning:

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Hey Martin!

It does make a bit of sense, just like it would make a tad more to add some redundancy and even summarizing here on the Discourse as well. It’s a platform people should get more and more used to and probably that will happen naturally sooner or later anyway, so no sweat there.

Do you happen to know if there is a name for what I described above? It would help me to have a name for that kind of venture. I think it’s called a “hub”, isn’t it?

As for the material, I just checked it a little more. I did came here with a completely wrong idea of what you were, despite the name containing “school”. I think I got the wrong picture from my friend… But I still like the whole concept very much, and I missed this statement read before:

OpenTechSchool is a movement aiming to offer free tech education

I couldn’t possibly dream of making something like that myself in here, and I don’t think we are even close, in Brazil, to be able to do something like that. There’s too much I could tell you of why I think that, but if you’re interested to know more, drop me a word. :sunny:

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Sounds like you’re describing a Hackerspace (which is a bit different from a co-working space and very different from a business incubator). There are at least four in São Paulo, according to this website: http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/São_Paulo
Maybe worth a visit?

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Definetly! Thanks.

I just learned the word “coworking” less than 1 week ago, after I started this topic. So it’s all new to me.

What about the opentechschool itself? Is there a term or word for this movement? It isn’t coworking, hub or even a hackerspace, is it? At least it isn’t listed in that wiki there.

I have visited one that’s yet a different kind of coworking: laboriosa89 - it’s a completely free and open space for people to meet and work, basically. I joined their team in working on a new site which could illustrate the concept a little better. Another movement without a name!

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What, would you say, is the difference between a hackerspace and a co-learning one?

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Hackerspace refers to an actual physical workspace (see wikipedia desc) while the co-learning groups are a learning concept. And though co-learning groups might take place at hackerspaces (or in our case in coworking spaces) it is two different things.

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Cool! Even more complementary to what she said. :smiley:

Makes a lot of sense to me now, but I’d still not be so sure of what the OTS is. A free coworking space for colearning might still be quite vague.