A lot has happened since our community came to be. Here is a small overview — if you come around, we can tell you a lot more anecdotes and more detailed insights.

Milestones

• June 2015 At Jugend hackt Süd 2015 at the Ulm University (organized by and with the datalove group) the idea comes up “to offer all the good equipment that exists at the university to non-students in the center of Ulm”. The idea then is presented to the first mayor at that time during the event, who then proposes to submit an application to the city council.
• End of 2015 Stefan, some volunteers and other citizens are writing a concept for a Hack- and Makerspace that poses as a “playground” for the world of tomorrow" in Ulm, following the models of the Haus des Freien Wissens and many Hack- und Makerspaces.
• April 2016 The Ulm City Council decides to provide start-up funding of 70,000 euros for the project “Stadtlabor Ulm - das Experimentierfeld für die Stadt von morgen”. Rooms of the Sparkasse at the Weinhof are rented.
• July 2016 The “Stadtlabor” project is launched with the working title Weinhof9. With the regular Ulm-API meetings, the first event format is already moving in. Together with the regional civic tech scene, ideas are being developed on how to fill the new space with life.
• October 2016 Despite reservations on the part of the city, the name “Verschwörhaus”, that volunteers came up with in 2015, prevails.
• November 2016 Slowly more and more equipment is arriving. The “pioneers” of the Maker-Monday come together. The motto: CNC, CAD and dangerous equipment! Also: The inititative.ulm.digital starts to build up a LoRaWAN network in the city and surroundings. A group of volunteers gets together to continue working on the topic.
• December 2016 In cooperation with the sustainability university group, the sewing cafe starts, the first wikidata- and the first e.tage -workshops take place. The former bank vault becomes a wood and metal workshop.
• Beginning 2017 The first OpenStreetMap-Mapathon is organized from our ranks! Soon after the Ubuntu regulars’ table of the Generationentreff starts and the Café for job application for refugees uses the infrastructure provided by us volunteers.
• June 2017 Through a grant from the inititative.ulm.digital we are now also a full-time field office of the Open Knowledge Foundation Deutschland e.V.
• September 2017 Jugend hackt takes place for the third time in Ulm and for the first time in the middle of the city!
• December 2017 For the first time we send a delegation to Leipzig to the Chaos Communication Congress. From now on we will have our own area there every year as “Wikipaka-WG” together with Wikimedia Deutschland, Jugend hackt and some other civic tech projects!
• June 2018 The first CTF/PPP-Meetup take place.
• September 2018 we participate at Kulturnacht for the first time.
• May 2019 we are now officially a Jugend hackt Lab!
• August 2019 The Verschwörhaus e.V. is founded.
• December 2019 „Frauen Und Computer Kram“ (F.U.C.K.) has its kickoff.
• March 2020 A cloud set up and operated on a voluntary basis provides a free/libre infrastructure for the BBB video conferencing solution, which is used extensively by municipal departments and schools, especially during the first months of the pandemic.
• May 2020 As a community, we draw up a letter of intent for the Kluga research project at the University of Ulm, which has since been approved and has been implemented since 2022.
• November 2020 Our virtualization infrastructure enables numerous projects, such as the CfP submission system for the Wikipaka WG in RC3, the OpenBike project, which emerged from the voluntary radforschung project, or the Ulm DigiTransit instance translated into German and operated by one of our members.
• March 2021 A position funded by the city enables the permanent employment of an employee at the (then still called) Verschwörhaus e.V. for the purpose of organizing the Jugend hackt Labs Ulm.
• November 2021 A termination agreement ends Stefan’s employment as project manager of the Stadtlabor.
• December 2021 A significant grant from the DSEE allows us to buy an incredible amount of great new hardware and equipment for use by the citizens of Ulm & Neu-Ulm!
• January 2022 We discover that the city of Ulm has registered the name and logo “Verschwörhaus” as a trademark for itself in the European trademark register without consulting us. After a lengthy process of pros and cons, we file an objection to these applications in order to gain negotiating time. At the same time, after 5 years of free use of the Weinhof premises, the city suddenly seeks a restrictive usage agreement. Lengthy negotiations with the administration begin.
• July 2022 Negotiations fail and we have to leave the Weinhof premises. We start looking for new premises for our numerous activities and store our equipment.
• August 2022 The city sends us a cease-and-desist warning us to refrain from using the name “Verschwörhaus”, which we have used since 2015. We reply to the warning letter with a lawyer’s response.
• September 2022 The city sues us before the Stuttgart Landgericht (court) to obtain that we withdraw the trademark oppositions and stop calling ourselves “Verschwörhaus” in public in return for severe penalties. We draw up a detailed response and defend ourselves with a lawyer.
• November 2022 The city council decides to cancel the funding for the Jugend hackt Labs that was approved in March 2021. We are forced to pause the organization of the Labs a few months later.
• April 2023 The Stuttgart Landgericht issues a first-instance ruling that upholds the city’s lawsuit in all respects and prohibits us from continuing to use our old name.
• May 2023 We temporarily change our name to “Temporärhaus” following the city’s threat of provisional enforcement of the judgment, which was not yet legally binding at the time.
• May 2023 New premises are found! We move together with the House of Sustainability to the former Sport-Sohn building in Neu-Ulm.
• September 2023 After several months of renovations we open our new rooms to the public].
• November 2023 We were able to secure another grant from the DSEE. This enabled us to fill the gaps caused by our move from Ulm and to extend our capabilities
• März 2024 LokaliCon, the meetup of all German local Community Spaces took place at temporärhaus. Also, we began implementing an artist’s workshop
• April 2024 Jugend hackt Lab rebootet