About Us

Mission Statement

Hive76 is a community of makers and crafters organized around a shared workspace. We enable our members to invent, build, collaborate, and share skills. We promote science education and the do-it-yourself spirit in our greater community to enable people to make things awesome and make awesome things.

What we do to accomplish our mission

Our battle cry is "Make things awesome, make awesome things!"

• We provide members with 24/7 access to a large workspace.
• We share tools, materials, and knowledge with each other.
• We run skill-shares, classes, and other events for the benefit of the community.
• We incubate, encourage, and provide resources to entrepreneurs and inventors.
• We make decisions democratically, and aim to better ourselves and our community through collective efforts.
• We welcome non-members every week to our Open House, where anyone can stop by to work on a project.
• We volunteer resources to local DIYers, artists, and businesses who want assistance with their creative endeavors.
• We hang out, have fun, and enjoy the company of exciting, inventive, interesting, generally awesome people.

If you are interested in joining us, drop an email to [email protected] with the subject "Membership" and we will get back to you ASAP with more details about how to join.

Location

Hive76 is currently Headquartered in Center City Philadelphia, at Suite 519 at 915 Spring Garden. We're easy to get to by car (there is easy parking nearby) from the Broad St. Line (4 block east of Spring Garden stop) or from Market Frankfort (5 blocks north of Market East Station).

Space

We have 1200ft^2 (for now) of hackerspace, a MakerBot, Drillpress, automated papercutter, O-Scope, and more. Our space is open to visitors 3 hours every wednesday, and it's open to members (Core and Basic) 24/7.

Our Name

Hive76 was founded and named in the summer of 2009. There are several references in the name to hacker, maker, and Philadelphia culture.

Hive

Hive comes from hope that we can be as active, and coordinated group, and the similarities between the emergent behavior of networks and electronics and natural systems of insects. Bees (and a Hive) are also essential parts of cross-fertilization and management of a garden or growing space. Simaraly, DIY and hackerspaces are an essential part of an 'innovation system', and groups like Homebrew Computer Club have been key in innovation, which results in a better world, and a booming city.

76

76 is a call out to the Spirit of 1776, as a reminder that our goals as a DIY space echo the goals the founders of the United State of America. Both groups aimed to be a group of equals working to meet a common need, and serve a common good. The idea that working together we can do things that we could never pull off working alone.

Other References

As a combination, H76 also calls out to a few other events or ideas. We leave figuring this out as an exercise to the reader (and search engines).