I had terrible experience meeting people from London Hackspace back at Cremer Street.
I do software. When I lived in Vienna, I frequently visited Metalab, which truly embraces hackers of any sort -- doesn't matter if you're into robotics, cryptography, Linux kernel or Ruby. I met great people there and after moving to London hoped to get into hackers community through London Hackspace.
Well, on my first visit, someone wearing white lab coat with London Hackspace logo told me that (literally) "software people are not welcome here -- they may as well work at Starbucks! We would prefer having more members who do hardware stuff because they require access to hardware tools and we provide this to them". Needless to say, I never came back. Starbucks, yeah.
So, great to hear you've moved, hope that now you are more tolerant towards software people.
Oh for goodness sake, that is complete nonsense. The two co-founders (of which I am one) are primarily software people - as are about 40% of the membership.
The problem is that with over 700 members opinions of what the space is differ widely. The person you spoke to was almost certainly not someone who usually gives tours, and if it was known they were saying idiotic things like that they would have been corrected.
Saying "software people are not welcome" in a hackerspace is especially idiotic given that much hardware development requires custom code in the first place.
Honestly, I apologise for a bad first impression. Take me up on my offer of a personal tour and I'll show you around the new place.
Interesting experience, as a "software person" coming to LHS while being based at TechHub my experience couldn't be any more different. It's important to note that the experience you've had was with that specific member, and not the hackspace as a whole. My guess is whoever you talked to had a gripe about the influx of members at the time, who came to the hackspace purely for cheap desk space, without engaging with the community or helping around.
As somebody who's worked with volunteers quite a lot, there's always a risk that the people that end up interacting with the public aren't necessarily ideal representatives of your project. I wouldn't necessarily assume that one person's opinion is a fair representation of organisational policy.
I do software. When I lived in Vienna, I frequently visited Metalab, which truly embraces hackers of any sort -- doesn't matter if you're into robotics, cryptography, Linux kernel or Ruby. I met great people there and after moving to London hoped to get into hackers community through London Hackspace.
Well, on my first visit, someone wearing white lab coat with London Hackspace logo told me that (literally) "software people are not welcome here -- they may as well work at Starbucks! We would prefer having more members who do hardware stuff because they require access to hardware tools and we provide this to them". Needless to say, I never came back. Starbucks, yeah.
So, great to hear you've moved, hope that now you are more tolerant towards software people.