[Noisebridge-discuss] Are people okay with people sleeping at the Noisebridge space?

Sat Oct 15 05:00:01 UTC 2011

Thanks Liz,
This answer is going to be bit personal. I'm happy that someone still have an energy to write a reply, even if I do not see any effect on Al, as usually. I've very strong feeling, based on both my personal experience (sleeping/living at Noisebridge) and general experience (being involved for around half year on nearly daily bases), that Al is basically unable to realize that if somebody has different opinion he should respect it and just gave up sometimes. I see him to argue the same points again and again like a stuck gramophone LP or waiting for several months to bring the same topics up. I've to say that I really do not think that this is OK and when I see so many people trying to tell him "please leave it" and he just goes on and on and on, strange. It seems to me that his threshold of taking "no as an answer" is way somewhere else than for majority of the people. It actually resembles, at least to me a behavior of Patric quite a bit.

I do not like to bring out old things but I should point out that bringing my behavior to the public by Al in that time was done in way which I think was inadequate based on Noisebridge social norms. I was woken once by Al in the morning and he talked to me briefly about me sleeping in the place, whey, when etc. the same day I've seen threat with my name "that I'm moving out of the place" on Noisebridge discuss. No another discussion, no another members talking to me or having a chat all together, no meeting, nothing. My name in open directly without any possibilities to change my behavior etc. This resulted in a big drama because many people realized that this way of treating the situation was poor and many people were happy with me being in place because of various reasons. It is history, solved. I brought this up because I've a feeling that basically the same pattern is on again, and actually quite similar story. 

Sadly because of this "poor social behavior" we are loosing a constructive energy from one of the dedicated members and because of "quality" of this thread many potential and possible currently active members.

Please do realize that there are and will be people who do not want to be "official members" even if they are very active/key members of the community. The openness of Noisebridge is enabling us to harvest their potential. I think that we should be very careful with "only official members policies".

Anyway it looks like that openness of Noisebridge is going to prevail, Hallelujah!

Sincerely,

Frantisek

PS I'm sorry if this is going to feed the drama even further but I really do not like the way how Al is handling the opinions of other Noisebridge members.

________________________________
From: Liz Henry <liz at bookmaniac.org>
To: noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
Sent: Saturday, October 15, 2011 3:31 AM
Subject: Re: [Noisebridge-discuss] Are people okay with people sleeping at the Noisebridge space?

On 10/14/11 5:42 PM, Al Sweigart wrote:

> I think the members-hours thing would be a good way to short-circuit
> the whole thing. It prevents sleeping overnight by people who don't
> even want to become members, and nobody has to directly confront
> sleepers. And I think if we plan it out, we can work around any of the
> downsides to members-hours too.
>

Al, I don't see how making NB a members-only club after a particular 
time changes the dynamic at all. Someone still will fall asleep and 
someone won't like someone else and someone, member or not, will need to 
get kicked out of the space sometimes and people will just let other 
people in. There is nothing magic about "being a member" at all! The 
same tensions will be present, but you seem to want to relocate them to 
a single membership meeting or moment of acceptance, past which a person 
gets to do whatever they want and push around the people who aren't. 
That's just weird.

Are there specific people you are trying to exclude here, because you 
think they won't make it through a membership meeting and then you can 
kick them out with that as your backing? If so, I wish you would just 
say who you think shouldn't be in the space past whatever the magic time 
is. Anyway, the whole thing is silly since people will just come sleep 
during the day if they are that desperate.

We just had some difficult incidents which I think were successfully 
resolved over a few meetings.  Noisebridge is financially solvent and we 
have new members joining every week or so and good projects are 
happening. We had stuff stolen and people responded by being more 
vigilant and backing each other up. I don't see that there's a crisis 
such that we need to change the fundamental nature of the space.

There are other hacker and maker spaces which limit entry more strictly 
to members only.  We have built one that is different and with politics 
that lots of people value.  I actually can't see why you are being so 
negative and heavy handed. It's completely unnecessary, and honestly, 
you're starting to sound like you're on a total power trip.

Here are the things NB people have done recently in response to people's 
concerns about safety and inappropriate or disruptive behavior, which I 
think are successful:

- 311 backup number which anyone can join to help with immediate response
- Lots of people have talked about how to back each other up and when to 
/kick some one and seem to feel individually empowered
- Friends of NB photo wall so people are encouraged to talk with each 
other and recognize each other better (strengthening community)
- Basically letting Rob/dank, Wish, and Jay know they are not welcome 
until they can convince the community they can behave differently

We did that without losing our radical inclusion stance.

And other ideas brought up that you are ignoring as possible solutions:

- How about lockers?!
- Homeless hacker task force (help with core problem of housing rather 
than polarize people around class)
- I am sure there are others....

Al I also just wonder how the irony of you acting like this while half 
of NB is actively supporting the OccupyWallStreet movement can escape 
you...  Come one! Really!?

Cheers

- Liz

------------------------
Liz Henry
liz at bookmaniac.org
http://bookmaniac.org

"Without models, it's hard to work; without a context, difficult to
evaluate; without peers, nearly impossible to speak." -- Joanna Russ
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