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

[Mitchel McAllister]

True, the space is not reconfigurable very well, despite the efforts of some people to move piles of X from point A to point B for no discernable reason.

I know of at least two people who have crashed the entire night under the electronics benches. Butthe same can be said of bathroom 2.0, the utility room, the space over the utility room, and the defunct exit nextto the dark room.

I have been looking at some designs of reconfigurable-on-the-fly spaces, especially whats been proposed by MIT 

However -

Can we agree that someone who decides to host an event/workshop/class/etc. without looking at the "how to host an event" page (I will happily add a few dozen more links, to that page, on the front page if that is what it takes) is not excellent behavior? 

If your group/ class can't find a classroom or area to meet, then maybe you're meeting on the wrong night. This does not apply to small groups, like the forementioned 3 person group working on a project.

Frankly, if a 3 person group can't find a place to work, we might as well pack it in. Or start tossing out the folks whose contributions seem to be limited to clicking buttons on youtube/fakebook/mystalk.  

I will admit, I will sometimes pull up a game to preoccupy my mind so I can get back into the flow of the job at hand. But I don't sit there all day doing it. Some of us might check our emails or messages on geekdating.com from time to time. But I am talking about systemic, deliberate abuse of noisebridge resources.

I realize that folks are leery of confronting certain people, in fear of being labelled bigoted, sexist, elitist, or Republican. Get over it or do a "baggage check" with another person regarding the behavior you are frustrated with. Get back-up from another person that would make such a claim ludicrous. I am enough of an outlier on most demographics that labels like that won't stick, so talk to me and see what we can't work out.

However- I will refuse to apply a narrow definition of hacking in the space. I'm not going to toss out Tastebridge, or SCOW, just because it doesn't fit one person's model.

maybe more later on this when my sinuses stop punishing me....  
-----Original Message-----
Date: Wednesday, April 10, 2013 3:12:07 pm
To: "NoiseBridge Discuss" <noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net>
From: "Garrett Mace" <garrettmace at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Noisebridge-discuss] Who do we want to exclude? [Drama]

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 amoun