[Noisebridge-discuss] Who do we want to exclude? [Drama]

[Garrett Mace]

On Apr 10, 2013, at 2:53 PM, John Withers <jwithers at reddagger.org> wrote:

> On 04/10/2013 02:18 PM, Andrew Byrne wrote:
>> 
>> In short, even the lack of action is a violence. -dru
>> 
> 
> Well, violence seems a little strong. But I think it is highly non-optimal.
> 
> Mik kind of hit on this during the last round of discussions when talked about a group of people meeting for a project moving into the area around the desk he was using and disrupting his workflow and/or shooting him dirty looks. I can't remember all the details, but that was the gist of it.
> 
> Mik sees one of the functions of the space (and I am not trying to put words in your mouth here Mik) as a coworking kind of environment. I see it in a perfect world as an educational and project working space for hackers first, other considerations second. Neither of these is a wrong view particularly, since we don't seem to choose to prioritize one set of activites over the other in reality (there might be a document somewhere that says, I dunno. The wiki has some words someone at some point put on it I think, someone else might change them). But these occasional clashes of understanding of how the space might be best used and what activities might reasonably take priority lead to situations like he described. Or as I have found where it is just easier not to have the group I am working with meet at NB to avoid the same hassle.
> 
> But there will always be resource clashes of one sort or another I guess. And possibly having a clearer agreement on what NB's community might consist of in a perfect world very possibly wouldn't really help much. I am not an expert on anything other than the stuff I need to do my projects, and given the vast amount of time it takes me to get projects done, possibly not even that.
> 
> 

A lot of the friction seems to revolve around limited space to work, meet, relax, and teach. All of which are perfectly valid functions, and none of which should be eliminated.

I observed that there really is a huge amount of non-optimized space currently being occupied by potentially useless junk and disorganized, over-specialized areas (though each piece may be precious to one or two people). OK, so it adds to the atmosphere. But it creates walls to obscure non-excellent behavior and takes up space that could be used for additional hackerly pursuits. It's not reconfigurable. Obviously a bare room full of folding tables is not a place anyone wants to be, but there may be a happy medium. All most people need is a flat surface to put stuff on and a place to sit, and they're happy.