[Noisebridge-discuss] noise at noisebridge

[Rubin Abdi]

On 2009 Mar 01, at 140103, Mitch Altman wrote:
> On the other hand, one of the reasons I love being at Noisebridge is  
> to help others with their projects, or to inspire others to explore  
> what they may want to work on or play with.  I realize that's not  
> everyone's desire or role.  And we all have different desires for  
> what we want out of Noisebridge.  I hope we can respect all of each  
> others' desires and goals and roles.

I've been holding back on replying to this thread, but I think I'll  
feel a little happier if I just threw in my two cents here. More or  
less want to build on what Mitch just said.

Noisebridge is what you want it to be. In my mind Noisebridge is a  
space where I can come to socialize with other like minded people  
while also working on some of my own projects. If I feel social and  
others in the space feel social, socializing happens. If I feel social  
and no one else in the space feels especially social (they're doing  
their own thing), I end up going somewhere else. If I feel like  
working on things and other people in the space feel like socializing  
with me, I either ask them know that I'm not in a socializing mood (as  
in make Noisebridge be what I want it to be during that time for  
myself) or end up going somewhere else (it wasn't worth my time and  
the effort to make Noisebridge be what I wanted it to be at that time).

This is a shared space, this isn't my house. I've kicked people out of  
my house because I've found them annoying. I've left gatherings  
because I found some people annoying. Since Noisebridge isn't my house  
I don't force others to act as I think they should. I can ask them  
(and have in the past) or I've opted to leave because as it turns out  
there are other places I can go and do work and socialize.

A story to use as an example: A housemate of a friend of mine spent  
two days complaining to the rest of the house about how a neighbor's  
dog was keeping her up at night (her room was right next to their  
yard). The next day she ended up calling the police and it turned into  
a rather big deal. She didn't bother with actually going up and  
talking with the neighbors and letting them know the dog barking was  
an issue. As it turned out the neighbors would have been extremely  
reasonable if she simply would have just gone by as a human being and  
explained to them that the dog being left out was a noise issue for  
her (this communicated through one of the housemates), but since the  
police was involved it ended up being a rather big deal.

What I'm observing right now is some folks wanting to create  
boundaries so that certain situations don't arise in the future. What  
I don't see is an understanding between folks on "guidelines" with how  
to approach such situations so one doesn't feel intimidated. If this  
continues being a problem (i.e. someone invites a whole bar over to  
Noisebridge even after several people asked whoever was behind this to  
stop) then I don't think it unreasonable to ask for assistance from  
the group as a whole.

As much as I'd like to say "Noisebridge is a space defined for only  
this list of things..." so I don't have to deal with myself being  
annoyed at folks using the space as temp housing, I remind myself this  
this is a shared space and not my home. If I can't reasonably bring  
myself to deal with this personal issue on my own, then I have no  
place asking the whole group to deal with it for me.

--
Rubin Abdi
Rubin at Starset.net