[Noisebridge-discuss] Noisebridge-discuss Digest, Vol 32, Issue 10

[Jeffrey Malone]

Hey Jim,

I'm someone who has been involved with Noisebridge for quite a while
now, and have waded through all the drama that it has seen (and,
regrettably, participated in it on occasion).  I fear that if you
judge us by our mailing list, that you will have a skewed view of who
we are, and how our community acts.
We are a community with decentralised authority, which has been known
on numerous occasions to cause discourse -- our motto and "only rule"
-- "be excellent to each other" is quite unfortunately ignored on
occasion, especially on this list.
In fact, the Noisebridge mailing list is something of a dumping ground
for passive-aggressive behaviour (a common theme you'll come to know
in bay area).  About 90% of our fights seem play out on it, and it
unfortunately then airs it all to the world.  Noisebridge itself has a
great community feel, and even people you see bickering at each other
on the mailing list often are rather cordial in real life.
Ultimately, however, the mailing list reflects a very small percentage
of the Noisebridge community.  A significant number of us avoid the
mailing list, due to the SNR level, and others (like myself) merely
review it on occasion, and I now rarely post.  In total, I'd estimate
that only around 15% of the community is actually participating in the
posts here.

I hope that you can come by the space and not judge us by a vocal
minority, who tend to be far more brutish via email than they are in
real life.
If you show up on a night where there are a good number of people
there, I can guarantee you that people will greet you, and offer you a
tour.  We're a great community for meeting others, getting help and
offering help.
We do run things a bit quirky, and perhaps a bit uniquely San
Francisco, but I do believe most in fact walk away with a good
impression of us.

Jeffrey

On Thu, Jun 10, 2010 at 8:12 PM, - <noisebridge at splattercast.com> wrote:
> Hi.  You don't know me, and at the risk of making enemies of people i've never met, I wanted to say something about this recent thread.
>
> I moved to SF in January and have been looking for a good place to hang out, learn more tech skills, and work on "stuff". I checked out the Hacker Dojo down in Mountain View - and found it to be really cool in its own disorganized ad hoc busy-busy-busy way. I would be glad to pay $100/mo to be able to plop onto a couch with my laptop and work there, go to the informal classes, meet people. I need to meet people. Good lord, do i need to meet people. But its way too far away. Parisoma and the other places like it are much too expensive for my casual needs.
>
> Noisebridge sounded a lot like Hacker Dojo, and that was exciting, especially because other places "like" Hacker Dojo, here in SF, seem to have fallen apart and gone away.
>
> And so i write this note only cuz I loves ya, even if i doesn't knows ya:
>
> What i've seen on this list is tons of squabbles, people correcting one another in public and not in a happy way, someone accusing someone else of "illegally" offering accounting advice while not being a CPA (that's not illegal unless you charge for it and/or advertise that you're a CPA) and now someone is in trouble for trying to raise money for an organization that, in my limited experience, is about to face a cash crunch. I have a sense of who's senior and who isn't, and frankly, senior persons, take it from someone who has been "senior" in many roles - the most gracious way to be a senior person anywhere is to do it in a way that is not noticeable by anyone.
>
> All this grumpiness makes me sad.
>
> I've been involved with a number of nonprofits (formal and otherwise) over the years, from grunt to board member to president, with budgets from $-infinity to $millions. Some worked better than others. Some really were not very great at all.
>
> Anyway, I hope you guys can get back to having fun, because what I see (only through this list) is kind of off-putting and a little bit intimidating. If I was afraid of saying the wrong thing before, and not sure I'd ever want to enter the space. But i hoped that maybe an outsider's perspective might be useful. This is all I'm going to say about it.  My hunch is that someone who sees this will want to respond with a curt "goodbye" and ejection from the mailing list. I can't do anything about that. I just hope that there is some hope for a chill gathering place in bicycle range of SF, not just for my own sake, but for all the people like me, and this town is full of such people...
>
> Best
> - jim
>
>
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