One of my favorite discoveries when staying in Hong Kong in the past two years was the hackerspace “Dim Sum Labs” (DSL). It is the first of its kind in the city and opened its doors in 2010.

I initially discovered it via their weekly “HackJam” listed on Meetup. It’s a weekly “open door” event in the space where members and non-members come together and chat about their projects or all kinds of random subjects. Often people who travel or are new to the city drop by to see what the local community is up to.

In Hong Kong a lot of the “technology”-related events have a big corporate or finance related background and are more recruiting or marketing focused events (More on that in a moment). Nothing wrong with that, but not what I was looking for. Stumbling upon DSL was a breeze of fresh air.

Sometimes people do an improvised demo if people are curious, a recent example I attended was Iulian’s demo of TouchDesigner which was fun to follow and something I wasn’t familiar with.

You don’t have to be an engineer, a programmer, know how to solder or hack to join the space or the events. Everyone is welcome. I can highly recommend to join the weekly HackJam to see who’s around.

Supporting Dim Sum Labs

Unfortunately, renting in Hong Kong is expensive, and Dim Sum Labs is not exempt from this reality, especially after recently receiving a rent increase and by not having a big corporate backer. Currently the space is financed by member donations, but in reality by cash infusions from the founder of the space. All the accounts, balances and bills are transparently shared on GitHub, which is additionally a great place to support the space.

Currently Dim Sum Labs is running a fundraiser to continue operating, if you have the means, please consider becoming a member or help with a one-time donation through GitHub.

Becoming a member comes with 24/7 access to the space, on top of the warm fuzzy feeling of supporting the non-profit hacker community of Hong Kong.

Community

• Join the weekly HackJam in Sheung Wan
• Join us on IRC on libera.chat in #dimsumlabs. If you have last used IRC decades ago, there’s now easy services like IRCCloud that don’t involve compiling irssi and setting up znc. Additionally it comes with an app for your phone that stays in sync, the future!