[Noisebridge-discuss] My 2 cents. An extremely long rant for whoever wants to read/listen

[Alan Rockefeller]

>  I feel like not everyone necessarily has to be hacking something within
the hackerspace.

I think everyone should be expected to contribute to the community.    If
we don't have any expectations, the street people will tell their friends
that it is a good space to occupy, and people will be correct in thinking
that it is ok to sit around and do nothing, day after day.

The best solution to this problem is to expect everyone to make positive
contributions.   The people who belong in the space don't mind working on
cool stuff and making noisebridge a better place.

The current  "occupy" people who have been hanging around the past few days
(Amber and Jesse) are very excellent, friendly, polite and genuine people.
  The community has made it very clear to them that they can not just take
up space - If they are going to spend more than a little time at
noisebridge, they need to be doing something productive.   They have
responded positively to this message - They know we have expectations, they
understand that we are a hacker space, not a drop in center for the
disadvantaged.   The past few days the occupiers have been productive -
getting involved with the community, taking things apart, soldering new
things with the parts, and cooking excellent gourmet food with
limited ingredients.

If they used to consider noisebridge a free-for-all, they certainly no
longer do, and they will surely not represent the space that way to their
friends.   I told them in no uncertain terms not to bring anyone over to
the space unless they are creative and honest.   Message was received loud
and clear.

Anyone who spends "too much" time bumming around should be politely asked
to hack something.  If they can't or won't, it can politely be suggested to
them that they would fir in better somewhere else.

After reading the mailing list, I had a certain perception of some of the
people who names came up. I considered asking them to leave, for no good
reason really.   After spending a few hours talking to those people,
I realized that many were unfairly maligned due to their crazy friend Delta
(they can barely stand Delta either) and others I haven't met.  Others have
been fairly maligned, the 85 and 86 pages are a good summary.

In summary, I have been hanging out at noisebridge  several hours per day
for the past 4 days.  I am happy with the quality and quantity of people
the space is attracting.   I have really enjoyed my time there.  We have
been doing a good job weeding out the bad ones and properly setting
expectations for the good ones.  Based on some of the posts on this list,
it is easy to get the impression that things are going downhill.  They are
not - The hacker to slacker ratio has been really quite good for the past
few days, and is now much better than it was 6 months ago.   Our attention
to the issue has brought about great improvements, and our continued
attention in the future will ensure that the hacker to slacker ratio
remains acceptable to the hackers.




Crazy people require a different approach, of course.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.noisebridge.net/pipermail/noisebridge-discuss/attachments/20120216/b8baa98b/attachment-0002.html>