For those that had not previously heard, NYCCCP (aka “the space”) is coming to an end. The space was the idea of Porkchop and Mike, based on hacker spaces that existed in Boston and Phili. The idea is relatively simple. Rent a reasonable sized (in our case 50′ x 20′) location, set up desks for all people that are interested in joining. Build a server room, and get a pretty decent synchronous DSL line in. Cost for the space is distributed among it’s members, all of whom pay a monthly membership fee to keep the place running. I wasn’t originally part of the space, but did join up a year later, and it was a good place to host some Xen test servers.

The space has been running for 3 years, but over the last year people were going there less often, and interest had definitely waned a bit. A few members were lost as they moved a bit further away. Two weeks ago, the overall financials went from self sustaining, to dropping at a relatively sharp pace. In 3 years, the dynamics of the group changed. A lot of us met through the LUG, but became friends outside of it. Originally we only had computers in common, and the space was a good gathering point. But now we do scifi night every week at my house, see each other for lunch a couple days a week, and do plenty of things on the weekends (like biking and hiking).

So, Mike, Porkchop, and I agreed it was time to call the space a grand experiment, that was a good thing, but whose time had passed. The space will shutdown the end of September, and we’re in process of getting everything/one sorted out there and out of the building (there are a bunch of other folks with servers there that will need to move as well).

It’s a sad thing to see go, but times do change.