Hi people!

It's time to show us, time to "spam" the list! :) After MONTHS
of reading about all hackerspaces and bricolab stuff, ideas,
organizations, it's time for us here at Poetry Hacklab to ask
for HELP!

In the past 6 months we faced the risk to LOSE EVERYTHING in
just one day. Because of that, we HAD to move all our historical
computers into a new place. And that was not a simple task,
believe me!

In a stormy and windy night, we all met together around a fire,
brave mens and womens in the woods, and decided to put our hands
in our pockets, extract those few gold and silver coins we had,
go to the village, rent a new space and move everything there!
\o/

So, here we are, at the new place, in Palazzolo Acreide, Via
Carnevale 17, Italy; a first floor old 4 room apartment and a
deposit, to start our main project: the "Museo dell'Informatica
Funzionante", our Computer Museum made of restored computers,
media, documentation, a living museum full of happiness!

Since we moved in November, we have now a biblioteque full of
books, manuals, schematics; a Media Room full of tapes, reels,
disks, and all kind of media (old operating systems and data
waiting to be restored, copied, recovered, preserved and shared
for the joy of everyone in the world), two show rooms (not so
big but a good starting point after years of PANIC!), an
electronic lab for repairing stuff, and a kitchen.

We have stored and saved almost 2000 historical pieces (some of
them dated even back to the '40); some of them have been fixed,
thanks to our effort, and are now perfectly working, while other
are still waiting to come back to life.

We want a museum full of life: people using those old computers,
people in our Biblioteque, seeking for manuals, copying
software, installing, joining us in restoration activities,
workshops, experiments... A lot of work has to be done, all with
almost no money, but a lot of happiness and joy!

The vision of a museum of this kind has been motivating us for
years, making us pioneers in this emerging area. Museums of this
kinds are popping up all around the world, acquiring attention
and help from both private institutions and single supporters;
having visited some of them, we found out that the uniqueness of
some of our pieces, together with the software we produced in
the past, our own history and the ideas we have, could bring our
Museo dell'Informatica Funzionante as an excellence in his
field. In fact, in the recent past we've been able to attract
the attention of national and international media and to bring
in Palazzolo Acreide experts from all around Europe, people to
whom we are happy to offer access to some of the computers in
our old small and inadequate spaces.

We're sustaining all expenses by our own pockets, and by
donations of other nice people that help us; but unfortunately
we're not in a city like New York or Boston or Paris; we lay in
the middle of Sicily, in the center of the Mediterranean Sea!
(and you can understand what this mean!); many of us don't have
any kind of regular job, we struggle to survive in this hostile
ambient, costantly fighting for being understood by local
authorities, that literally ignore or misunderstand our work,
giving no help at all, despite many visitors and enthusiasts
that are joining us at the Museum.

We are looking for contributions that will help us dealing with
our expenses in this first phase of our project. We estimate an
annual budget of about 10,000 EUR for this first year, which
will be spent in renewing our rented locals and to pay bills.

We are asking, to anyone interested and willing to support, to
sponsor us and discuss with us something that wouldn't only be a
simple donation, but also an investment opportunity, which could
have a important impact in the long term.

HOW CAN I HELP YOU?

4 simple ways to do this:

* ONE SPOT donation, use our page here:
http://museo.freaknet.org/index.php/Donations
* COLLECT: Make an happening or a dinner and collect
donation for us!
* BECOME A MEMBER: Check out our Membership plan here:
http://museo.freaknet.org/index.php/Membership
* DONATE STUFF: We also need THINGS, so please read here:
http://museo.freaknet.org/index.php/Shopping_list

Remember, donations are tax-free, we can release a regular
receipt, being recognized by the Italian Government as a
Cultural Association!

AND AS A FINAL NOTE: Being an hackerspace/bricolab/hacklab for
natural attitude since years, we can HOST people at our spaces!
We WELCOME anyone who want to share some time with us, working
work old computers and also visiting a very interesting part of
Sicilia: Palazzolo Acreide is a beautiful town, with an ancient
Greek Theatre, and full of history! Wanna come visit us?

Please HELP our dream; thank you and happy hacking, together!
\o/

------- asbesto

(Share this mail everywhere you think it can be useful, thank
you!)

contacts: museo@???

Links

http://museo.freaknet.org
http://freaknet.org
http://dyne.org
http://poetry.freaknet.org
http://dynebolic.org
http://dyne.org/museum
http://lab.dyne.org/ComunicatoMuseo/en

--
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