[Noisebridge-discuss] noise at noisebridge

[Josh Myer]

On Sat, Feb 28, 2009 at 06:54:36PM -0800, Paul Böhm wrote:
> ok, my brain is about to explode - there's people here at nb who
> constantly babble nonsense because they are attention starved
> this alienates newcomers (since they haven't learned to ignore these
> people yet) and makes me want to avoid noisebridge
> 
> opinions on this?

I totally agree with the frustration, and feel it acutely.  As for
fixes: Wear headphones?  Set expectations that you're not someone
who's going to just listen?  These two strategies have served me well
thus far...  Then again, I'm pretty comfortable with being a jerk.

In the same vein, we have a lot of people who think of noisebridge as
a place to hang out, not a place to come and hack.  It's frustrating
many of us, especially because we haven't found a good way to say
"It's awesome that you're here, and we'd love to help you work on
stuff.  What do you want to work on, and how can our community help
you accomplish that?"  It's sort of insidious: there's nobody who is
clearly abusing the space, it's just that people's behaviors are
shifting the way people use the space.  noisebridge is inadvertantly
becoming a place to come and surf youtube in the evening instead of a
place to hang out with others who are soldering, coding, or sewing.

Personally, I only come in to work/collaborate on specific things.
It's kind of a bummer, but it's not so bad.  I wind up being a
floating question-answerer (or, at least, reference-pointer-outer)
anyway, so I get sucked into interesting things beyond my little
focus.  If I was less flexible or pragmatic about how I used my time
in the space, though, this would be incredibly frustrating.

I think the general problem of people-who-are-distracting is solved
with a single question: how do we integrate people into our do-acracy
and minimize idle hands at 83c?
-- 
Josh Myer   650.248.3796
  josh at joshisanerd.com