[Noisebridge-discuss] Noisebridge: Death and Taxes

[Praveen Sinha]

Beautiful Danny! Let's send it out! :)

On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 11:34 AM, Danny O'Brien <danny at spesh.com> wrote:

> Okay, this is fun! I now have l33t haxx0r access to the membership
> spreadsheet!
>
> Channelling Julian A., I will now cut and paste their email addresses
> into this mailing list. THE WORLD MUST KNOW
>
> No, actually, what I deduce from this spreadsheet is that despite lots
> of scary potential horrors, our main problem seems to be largely that
> PayPal is flaky, subs didn't go in, and we didn't catch it. I may be
> wrong and we need to start staging coups or rounding up hippies or
> writing special software that makes us cleverer or something, but that
> seems to be the main problem.  This is totally a big problem in
> non-profits btw, ORG in Britain, my second equal favourite non-profit
> has the same annoying problems. We've essentially fixed that
> organizational problem that led to this by noticing and FREAKING OUT
> JUST IN TIME.
>
> Oh I just read Andi's note and he said all of this stuff but better.
> DAMN YOU FOR YOUR TENACITY
>
> I'm sure there were other great suggestions at the meeting yesterday,
> but my main one would be to relax the rules for membership or suggest
> that one of the conditions for membership is to start paying the money
> FIRST, before the membership acceptance.
>
> Alright, let's get mailing!
>
> MY FIRST TEMPLATE LETTER, SENT TO TWO PEOPLE THAT I ALREADY KNOW AND
> ARE AWESOME:
>
> Hi, I'm Danny O'Brien, famous celebrity and Internet  bon vivant. You
> may know me from my roles in the Internet's "It's For The Lulz III",
> and "HTTP: 503 Service Unavailable!"
>
> I'm writing to you personally,
> $FIRST_NAME, and $YOUR_SPOUSE_OTHER_FIRST_NAME because I know that you
> two both jumped through insane amounts of loops to become a
> NOISEBRIDGE member in the past, and that means you *care* about poor
> orphan hackers in the Mission district. Perhaps a little too much. But
> not in a creepy way.
>
> Wait, this isn't going so well. I'll start again.
>
> Turns out this Summer PayPal lovingly cancelled a bunch of recurring
> subscriptions to Noisebridge, and we got a bit flakey (who knew!)
> about chasing down regular subscribers*. As a consequence, the Bay
> Area's third equal bestest hackerspace is in financial trouble. If we
> don't catch up on the payments and refill our coffers to the tune of
> $5K or so in the next month, and $15K in the next few months,
> Noisebridge will be shut down, thrown out onto the streets, kaput, END
> OF LINE.
>
> This means that you will no longer have a steampunk
> gentleman/gentleladyhackers club, and San Francisco will be home to
> roaming packs of homeless, but self-replicating, fabrication devices
> with a grudge. I don't think I have to spell out the risks there, Mr
> Cyberpunk, do I?
>
> You can make this go away by either
> * GIVING US ALL YOUR MONEY, PLZ K THX
> * Paying up the dues that you may have accidentally not paid thanks to
> robot error,.
> * Making an awesome one off donation to help us out of this hole.
> * Starting up your $80 monthly donation again (Noisebridge may still
> vanish)
> * Or just tell me why you're not paying, so I can make up good excuses
> for my next mailing.
>
> We've been so scatty that you might even have been paying us and we
> didn't notice (though this only happens if you don't use PayPal). Mail
> me about this too, and I'll not send you more email/send you funnier
> jokes as you wish.
>
> Here's how to do pay us:
> https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Donate
>
> Please pay. Apart from supporting an awesome hacking resource in San
> Francisco, you'll also ensure I have somewhere to sleep.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> The Internet's Danny O'Brien
> +1 [MY PHONE NUMBER]  if you want to call and ask me about this, or for
> sexy
> talk (calls cost $5000 per minute)
>
> * (We may also have blown some of the petty cash on quaaludes and
> kombucha too, but that's water under the bridge, we did it by
> consensus, and no-one can prove nothing. NOTHING WE SAY)
>
>
> On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 1:41 AM, Andy Isaacson <adi at hexapodia.org> wrote:
> > On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 08:25:20AM -0800, Danny O'Brien wrote:
> >> I'm still on for gently hassling members. Somebody point me at a
> >> spreadsheet or send me a list of emails or home addresses and set me
> >> at them. I can be very persuasive!
> >
> > Done.  (I didn't realize I could do that.)
> >
> > -andy
> >
> >
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>
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