[Noisebridge-discuss] talked about the hackmeet incident in meeting today

[Danny O'Brien]

I'm sure Tom will be along in a bit with some notes (he's your new
secretary, by the way), but I thought I'd quickly post something about
what I saw today as the moderator.

It was a good meeting. We spent a lot of time with Susan and others
talking about what had happened, other hackerspaces where this was (or
had been) a problem, and grinding over solutions. Nobody was sucky.
There were no trainwrecks or raised voices. Everybody was unhappy with
how the mailing list discussion had played out.

It was a bit uncomfortable in parts, and we didn't laugh much. Someone
came up to me afterwards and said that it was the best case of a
community coming to terms with issues of harassment they had seen (and
I got the feeling they had seen a lot). It didn't feel very exemplary,
but it was a lot better than I thought, and far better than it seems
some people expect of us.

I think for me, the key point was the connection between exclusion and
potential harassment. We talked about how it is people aren't
connected with the main community that are the most vulnerable, and we
often don't get to hear about them. We thanked Susan for standing up
and saying what she said. Daravinne's point about solutions lasting
two days or so at Noisebridge before it fading away was taken on board
with no argument either.

Rayc and others talked about the idea of increasing our mentoring of
new people, and both being more welcoming, and more explicit about the
kind of attitude and involvement we expect from new members of the
community. Martin talked about ATX Austin's experiences, and how
they'd actually had to do a mirror approach when they hit similar
issues -- circle back among the existing membership to renew  and make
clear to them the ideas, expectations and obligations that they take
on when they are part of that hackerspace (and actually, of the
society they live in beyond that hackerspace).

The word that kept cropping up with everybody was "systemic". People
also noted that the issues we struggle with are not just systemic to
Noisebridge.

Anyway, the important thing is not the ideas, but that we proceed with them.

The meeting's biggest idea (and probably long overdue) was to begin
mentoring more consciously. We're going to start having a
meet-and-greet/orientation event on Sundays. It'll be the sort of
explicitly social event that Tuesday meetings were intended to be, but
we also want to include elements of teaching people about how
Noisebridge works, too. It won't be obligatory or anything, but I
think we all hope that if you*haven't* been to a Sunday meet, many of
your answers about how Noisebridge works, who you should speak to if
you have a problem, and how best to resolve things without resorting
to hammers will be aided by you attending the Sunday Syslog (or
whatever we call it). And if you do attend, you'll feel a lot better
about asking those questions. We'll also be inviting some external
people to speak about solutions to what ails us. It might take us a
bit to boot this up, but that's the plan.

Rayc was asked to start collecting a list of members who wouldn't mind
being contacted by him to spend some time with new people one-on-one;
I think we may have to group together a bit to remember what that
actually does mean before that helps, but if people want to volunteer,
that would be great. We'll probably be mailing members to talk
one-on-one to them about Noisebridge, and try to bring them more into
active involvement.

The other feeling was a bit harder to wire into the existing
Noisebridge structure, which is more explicit roles. Hackmeet, weirdly
is an exception to this, we knew the organisers, and could probably
have found them in a pinch. But often it's hard for people to know who
is running what, or who to turn to if they are in the space and
something bad (or good) happens. The membership hide away because we
want to encourage independence and prevent hierarchy, but new people
don't know what to do without a hierarchy, and it's remiss of us to
not help them.

Do-acracy is something we should be *teaching* and sharing, not
throwing people in at the deep end, and watching them do or drown. We
all *do* have roles and strengths, and we might as well let people
know who they are. Just because we don't want permanent titles doesn't
mean we can't offer temporary roles for people to latch onto. Consenso
can't do it all.

Anyway, my personal commitment to this is that I'm going to reboot
soceng. I know I always say this, but I will be restarting the week
after next, when I get back from Mexico. I'll think a bit more about
the format, but it'll be on Thursday evenings. And I'd like to openly
offer to mentor people in moderating Tuesday meetings. People have
said I'm good at it now, but I used to suck, and I have some ideas
about how that changed.

I'm sorry if this all sounds terrible po-faced. Somebody I know also
mailed me today saying that he wanted Noisebridge to be a bit more
fun, and I think that's important too. I've said before that the
Noisebridge community is self-trolling, and self-gaming: we look to
find out and exploit our own flaws before anyone else does. I actually
think we do this both for entertainment and for our own sense of
safety. We think if we don't expose the weaknesses of each other,
someone nastier will. The risk is that after a while, people don't
want to admit their weaknesses, in case others will leap on them. And
others start attacking everyone else, forgetting or betraying their
original good intentions. We end thinking we're being friendly, but in
fact we've just become the nasty ones, and claiming that we're doing
it ironically or for the lulz isn't going to cut it any more.

When I left Noisebridge at 11, Jake was talking to Susan about power
conversion, others were drinking beer with Brandon our new member. A
completely different group of people were in the kitchen talking
technical, and the Dorabot was gently heckling the humans. The new
paintjob looks amazing. The buzzer was broken, but folks were trying
to fix it.

Stuff is always broken, but that's okay, because we like fixing things here.

d.