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

In those months we faced a great problem: the risk to see all our work being LOST in a day. Because of that, we HAD to move all our historical computers into a new place.

And so, we decided to put hands in our pockets and rent a space!

So, here we are, at the new place, in Palazzolo Acreide (Via Carnevale 17), Italy; a first floor apartment and a deposit, to start our main project: the "Museo dell'Informatica Funzionante", our Computer Museum made of restored computers!

Since November, when we started, we have now a library full of books, manuals, schematics; a tape and media section (old operating systems and data to be restored, recovered, preserved and shared for the joy of everyone), two show rooms (not so big but it's a good starting point!), an electronic lab and a kitchen.

We have stored and saved almost 2000 historical pieces (some of them dated even back to the '60); 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. During those 2 months, we moved and stored here all the museum hardware and now we're working hard to clean and fix the space, finding old furnitures, mounting shelves, creating the Electronic Lab, the Biblioteque, the Media Recovery Room and two Exibithion Halls... we have a lot of work to be done!

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.

So, 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 New York or Boston or Paris or in a big city everywhere; we lay in the middle of Sicily; many of us don't have any kind of regular job and we are costantly fighting for being understood by local authorities, that literally ignore our work, giving no help at all, despite many visitors and enthusiasts that are now joining us at the Museum.

We are looking for contributions that will help us dealing with our expenses in the first phase of our project. The amount we are looking for consists of 6,000 EUR for the first year, an amount which will be spent in renewing our rented locals.

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.

We have a Membership plan here: http://museo.freaknet.org/index.php/Membership

Also, you can contribute by LICKING OUR ASS. (DA FINIRE)

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

We will pay your trust back with the gratitude of our enthusiast people and the opportunity to write together the story of hour working museum of computers. We are certain that sector of "working computing museums" where we are allocating ourselves will gain importance in the coming years and we are committed to respect the memory of whom, in this initial phase, will be able to believe in us and in our operate.

contacts: museo@freaknet.org

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