[Noisebridge-discuss] Noisebridge: Death and Taxes

Danny O'Brien danny at spesh.com
Wed Dec 22 19:58:17 UTC 2010


Oh, I already sent it out to two people. I'm doing this the slow and
personal way.

Sadly, I am not actually very famous[1] so I do not think it will
really work on people I don't personally know, but you can write one
yourself! It's like making penpals with the coolest people in the
world!

[1] I can prove this -- yesterday somebody published an old interview
with me that lovingly
described me as "not even well known": http://www.lifehackingmovie.com/ebook/

d.





On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 11:39 AM, Praveen Sinha <dmhomee at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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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