On entering hacker space Freeside Atlanta a female voice coos, "welcome." The voice is triggered by a mostly homemade RFID key card security system, which automatically updates a Twitter feed tracking who is in the space. In addition to some pre-fab components, their security system employs an old boom box and a desk phone. It's a good example of what they do here and in the other hacker spaces proliferating worldwide: finding out what a few determined do-it-yourself'ers can create with limited resources.

Ken Wehr, founding president of Freeside, is showing me some of the communal work area's outfitting: stacks of servers, a metal foundry in its nascent stages, a foosball table. According to a manifesto on the nonprofit organization's wiki, the stuff and the stuff's tinkering owners are assembled to forge a union of creativity, curiosity and individual expression through technology. That could mean anything from the network security classes already open to the community to trying to design and build a fully-automated aquarium, as one member has suggested -- just because. Since the space opened four short months ago, right now, it means building more shelves and finishing their raw space in Metropolitan Warehouses.

Wehr started Freeside with James Sheheane, a specialized platform analyst with IBM Internet Security Systems, in December of 2008 with nothing more than a registered domain name.

"Almost without trying we got 30 people that were a core membership right away," he said. The group held weekly meetings at Manuel's Tavern while raising funds and scouting spaces. Fifty assorted DIY'ers had signed on by the time the physical space opened.

Overall, fun is a guiding principle. At the circuit bending work station, a pile of cheap synthesizers and children's toys wait to be short circuited essentially for the joy of making sounds not intended by the manufacturer. Then there's the group working on making easily breakable bottles, the kind filmmakers use when staging bar fights.

"I think they thought it would be a cool thing to do," said Wehr, a little sheepishly.

Earlier hacker collectives, like Boston's now-defunct L0pht, were primarily interested in network security, but Wehr finds the current wave of the last three years is much broader in scope.

Hackers of the network-security stripe make up about a third of Freeside’s membership, but the other two thirds are split between coders and makers.  The makers are a hard group to define, but many are like founding member John Weiler who built Freeside’s small CNC machine. He completed the PC-controlled light fabrication device for less than $1,000 using items such as skateboard bearings.

Weiler may be a little on the hardcore side, though. To draw makers of all kinds, there is a crafting/multimedia nook in the works under the direction of Madelynn Martiniere. She has a dual interest both in bringing traditional crafting into the mix and in luring more ladies into the fold.

"My first meeting, I was the only woman,” Martiniere said, though there are more women involved with Freeside now. Martiniere also actively seeks intersections between art and technology. When she lived in Chicago, she visited and lent a hand at the hacker space Pumping Station One where friends made things like a scarf wired so it could be played like a violin.

"That's the cool thing about hacker spaces," she said. "You’ll see a seamstress working with an engineer on some crazy, wacky project."

Similar projects are happening in collective shops like this across the country; San Francisco has Noisebridge, NYC Resistor is in New York, and our nation's capitol is home to HacDC. Hackerspaces.org, an online hub for the movement, lists 37 American hacker spaces and active spaces from Argentina to Malaysia. While there is no central authority for the movement, resources like Make Magazine and the how-to Web site Instructables.com help create new converts. And general interest is growing. Two Hands Project, a documentary on hacker spaces, is being filmed this month. 

Wehr, a manager with systems administrator with Google, has since transferred to New York but he will remain a member of Atlanta’s own hacker space. He said he is confident that things will hold together without him. Sheheane will act as president until a new one can be elected. As it stands, membership is somewhat selective but the group is actively seeking new members.

"You do a place like this, you have to trust all the people involved because you are dropping off all your expensive toys,” Wehr said. He said the benefits far outweigh any risks and clearly there are plenty of other DIYers who agree.

The communality of hacker spaces belies the stereotype of the socially avoidant computer nerd.  But that stereotype misses the highly idealistic side of geek culture that is downright obsessed with sharing. A spirit of collaboration is, after all, central to some of the geekiest things imaginable: open-source software, Wikipedia, LARPing. Hacker spaces simply bring the open-source philosophy into the three dimensional world.

"You have a group of people who are generally very awkward with other people. At the same time, here we are working our butts off to make this social space,” Wehr said of the seeming contradiction.

If it is a contradiction, it is not one that presents any practical issues. Freeside and places like it attract the kind of people who instinctively know what the space is about.

“During the cookout party people spontaneously started sorting and labeling things in bins. Core mission stuff we never really have to talk about. People just see the value of having something like this,” Wehr said. And there are more of those people every day.