Double Union

Double Union is a San Francisco hacker/maker space.[1] Double Union was founded by women in 2013 with the explicit goal of fostering a creative safe space. The organization’s mission is to be a community workshop where women and nonbinary people can work on projects in a comfortable, welcoming environment.[1][2]

Double Union
DU's logo is a Unicode symbol with two nested sets
A paper workshop at Double Union
AbbreviationDU
Formation2013
PurposeHacking, Feminism, DIY culture
Location
Membership
150-200
Origin
San Francisco, California
Founders
Liz Henry, Valerie Aurora, Amelia Greenhall, and others on founding committee
WebsiteOfficial website

Members hold public and members-only events for activities and workshops like zine making, paper circuits and electronics, coding, sewing, 3-dimensional printing, lightning talks, print making and many others.[3] Key carrying members are allowed to invite guests of any gender.

History
Tools and supplies

DU was founded in 2013 by a group of about ten women including Amelia Greenhall, Valerie Aurora, Liz Henry and Ari Lacenski from their connections at other hackerspaces; at The Ada Initiative's feminist unconference, AdaCamp; and through Geekfeminism.org, collecting initial funding through an Indiegogo campaign.[4] Later that year, Lacenski left the group, claiming that two unnamed cofounders practiced a form of activism that she considered too aggressive.[5] There is a board of directors and a structure in place for voting in new members; as of 2015, there are around 150–200 members.

DU's logo is a bright pink Unicode character (U+22D3), from the Mathematical Operators block.

Originally located in the Mission district, Double Union relocated to the Potrero Hill neighborhood of San Francisco in Fall 2015 after their building was sold by the landlord. To fund the move and several equipment purchases, Double Union undertook an Indiegogo campaign, which finished at 106 percent of its goal.[6]

Physical space

For its first two years, the space was in a 700-square-foot room in the Mission neighborhood, at 14th and Mission in the Fog Building.[3] As of 2015, the new space is in the Potrero neighborhood in San Francisco.

Projects

App

Several Double Union members have created an app for managing hackerspace membership applications, Arooo. Arooo is free to use and is licensed under the GNU GPL.[7]

ODD

Double Union created the Open Diversity Data project.[8] The project aggregates diversity data for a wide array of tech companies.[9]

See also

References
  1. "About". Double Union. Retrieved 12 March 2016.
  2. Cassandra, Rachel. "Meet San Francisco's All Women Hacker Space, Double Union". Bitch. Bitch Media. Retrieved 12 March 2016.
  3. Greenfield, Rebecca. "Why Silicon Valley Needs The Coder Grrrls Of Double Union, The Feminist Hacker Space."
  4. Fleishman, Glenn. BoingBoing. New Disruptors 56: Doubling Down with Amelia Greenhall.
  5. Lacenski, Ari (12 September 2013). "Shaming, doxxing and making culture". Tumblr. Retrieved 25 September 2016.
  6. Doctorow, Cory. "Double Union Woman Hackerspace Needs Help with Funding Finding a New Space". BoingBoing. Retrieved 12 March 2016.
  7. Arooo git repository
  8. Brownstone, Sydney. "Publicly Shame Companies that Won't Tell us How Un-Diverse They Are". Fast Company. Retrieved 12 March 2016.
  9. "Open Diversity Data". Open Diversity Data. Retrieved 12 March 2016.

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