Noisebridge is an award winning anarchistic educational hackerspace

Hackerspace

A hackerspace or hackspace is a location where people with common interests, often in computers, technology, science, or digital or electronic art can meet, socialise and/or collaborate...

 in San Francisco, inspired by the Chaos Computer Club

Chaos Computer Club

The Chaos Computer Club is an organization of hackers. The CCC is based in Germany and other German-speaking countries.The CCC describes itself as "a galactic community of life forms, independent of age, sex, race or societal orientation, which strives across borders for freedom of...

 and other hacker organizations. It is a registered non-profit California corporation, with IRS 501(c)(3) charitable status. According to the Noisebridge website's Vision page, "Noisebridge is a space for sharing, creation, collaboration, research, development, mentoring, and of course, learning. Noisebridge is also more than a physical space, it's a community with roots extending around the world." It was organized and began regularly meeting in 2007 and has had permanent facilities since 2008.

Membership

Noisebridge encourages participation by anyone who feels they can contribute, and non-members are welcome at the space at any time. All workshops and activities are free, with some exceptions for materials costs, and all are open to the public. As of October 2010, membership stands at over 150 people.

Research

Noisebridge members have been involved with major award winning research projects. This includes winning the best paper awards from top tier academic conferences such as Usenix

USENIX

-External links:* *...

 Security Conference and CRYPTO

Crypto

-Cryptography and cryptanalysis:* Cryptography, the practice and study of hiding information* Cryptanalysis, the study of methods for obtaining the meaning of encrypted information* CRYPTO , an annual cryptographical and cryptoanalytic conference...

Noisebridge operates a lights-out cloud computing

Cloud computing

Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility over a network ....

 lab with more than 100 computer cores and contributes resources to several open source

Open-source software

Open-source software is computer software that is available in source code form: the source code and certain other rights normally reserved for copyright holders are provided under a software license that permits users to study, change, improve and at times also to distribute the software.Open...

 projects, including the GCC compile farm

Compile farm

A compile farm is a server farm, a collection of one or more servers, which has been set up to compile computer programs remotely for various reasons...

.

Community participation

Noisebridge members regularly speak at events around the world such as Defcon, Blackhat, The Chaos Computer Club's Chaos Communications Congress, CCC Camps, HOPE, and more, as well as present at local events such as Maker Faire

Maker Faire

Maker Faire is an event created by Make magazine to "celebrate arts, crafts, engineering, science projects and the Do-It-Yourself mindset".-Past events:The first was held April 22 – 23, 2006, at the San Mateo Fairgrounds...

, and contribute to the founding of hackerspaces elsewhere. It is well known for its Five Minutes Of Fame event as well as hosting the local San Francisco Dorkbot

Dorkbot

Dorkbot is a group of affiliated organizations worldwide that sponsor grassroots meetings of artists, engineers, designers, scientists, inventors, and anyone else working under the very broad umbrella of electronic art...

.

Spacebridge

Noisebridge has an active near space

Near space

Near space is the region of Earth's atmosphere that lies between 65,000 and 325,000–350,000 feet above sea level, encompassing the stratosphere, mesosphere, and thermosphere. A more understandable definition would be above where a commercial airliner flies but below the realm of an orbiting...

 exploration program, which has launched weather-balloon probes exploring altitudes of nearly 70,000 feet, carrying a variety of smartphones and digital cameras for imaging and altitude sensing using GPS. Altitudes reached have exceeded the operational limits of consumer level GPS systems.

Media coverage

Noisebridge won the SF Bay Guardian 2010 Best of the Bay award as "Best Open Source Playground"; the review concluded, "the vibe is welcoming and smart."
In 2011 the SF Weekly

SF Weekly

SF Weekly is a free alternative weekly newspaper in San Francisco, California. The newspaper, distributed throughout the San Francisco Bay Area every Wednesday, is published by Village Voice Media, a 16-paper alt weekly newspaper chain that also includes the New York City Village Voice and the Los...

awarded Noisebridge Best of San Francisco as "Best Hacker Playground", describing it as "the ultimate in DIY ethic" and noting its "distinctive sense of humor."
Noisebridge has been covered by international media for a myriad of projects involving their membership, in NPR

NPR

NPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...

, the BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

, Wired

Wired (magazine)

Wired is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since January 1993, that reports on how new and developing technology affects culture, the economy, and politics...

, The Guardian

The Guardian

The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

, CNET

CNET

CNET is a tech media website that publishes news articles, blogs, and podcasts on technology and consumer electronics. Originally founded in 1994 by Halsey Minor and Shelby Bonnie, it was the flagship brand of CNET Networks and became a brand of CBS Interactive through CNET Networks' acquisition...

, Le Monde

Le Monde

Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...

, which covered biohacking classes at Noisebridge, Heise Online, ORF

ORF

ORF may refer to:* ORF , the Austrian public service broadcaster.* Open reading frame, a portion of the genome.* The IATA airport code for Norfolk International Airport in Norfolk, Virginia.* ORF format , Olympus raw image file format....

, Irish Times, Die Welt Online

Die Welt

Die Welt is a German national daily newspaper published by the Axel Springer AG company.It was founded in Hamburg in 1946 by the British occupying forces, aiming to provide a "quality newspaper" modelled on The Times...

, Die Zeit Online

Die Zeit

Die Zeit is a German nationwide weekly newspaper that is highly respected for its quality journalism.With a circulation of 488,036 and an estimated readership of slightly above 2 million, it is the most widely read German weekly newspaper...

, Der Standard

Der Standard

Der Standard is an Austrian national daily newspaper which is published in Vienna . It was founded by Oscar Bronner as a financial newspaper and the first edition was published on 1988-10-19...

, and elsewhere.

Physical space

During most of 2007 and 2008, Noisebridge was a group of people meeting in new locations weekly. In October 2008 the Noisebridge group began renting a commercial property in San Francisco's Mission District, but it quickly outgrew that location. In September 2009 Noisebridge moved to a much larger facility a few blocks south on Mission Street

Mission Street

Mission Street is a north-south arterial thoroughfare in San Francisco, California that runs from the city's southern border to its northeast corner. The street and the Mission District through which it runs were named for the Spanish Mission Dolores, several blocks away from the modern route. Only...

. The current space has a machine shop, optics lab

Optics

Optics is the branch of physics which involves the behavior and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behavior of visible, ultraviolet, and infrared light...

 and darkroom

Darkroom

A darkroom is a room that can be made completely dark to allow the processing of light sensitive photographic materials, including photographic film and photographic paper. Darkrooms have been created and used since the inception of photography in the early 19th century...

, kitchen

Kitchen

A kitchen is a room or part of a room used for cooking and food preparation.In the West, a modern residential kitchen is typically equipped with a stove, a sink with hot and cold running water, a refrigerator and kitchen cabinets arranged according to a modular design. Many households have a...

, two classrooms, areas for electronics work and sofas for laptop work and socializing, but not for sleeping.