[Noisebridge-discuss] Associate sponsorship

Al Sweigart asweigart at gmail.com
Mon Dec 30 01:55:41 UTC 2013


Hi Torrie! I think I saw you in the space today, were you wearing the
Dresden Codak hoodie?

It's good to have you. And thanks for giving folks a tour of the space. I'd
like to pick your brain about how we can improve usability at Noisebridge
for new people (what are common questions new people had, etc) and signage
we can add. It's hard to look at the space with fresh eyes.

Do-acracy is a pretty good general principle, you want to form a space that
encourages people to take initiative. I'd warn highly against using
consensus as the decision-making process. It's sort of the Noisebridge
electoral college, and not something I'd like to see other spaces mimic.
Giving each member a unilateral veto works well enough when a group is
small, but it doesn't scale and discourages adding new members to a space.
Currently I believe Noisebridge has around 30 or so active members, which
is smaller than it had in its first year. A lot of people got burned out.

You don't want to prematurely optimize, but don't be afraid to actually
have rules beyond "be excellent" (which is more of a platitude than
anything). Having stated rules sets expectations and prevents a lot of
small problems from becoming big ones.

Hope to see you around the space!

-Al


On Sun, Dec 29, 2013 at 4:19 PM, Torrie Fischer <tdfischer at hackerbots.net>wrote:

> Hi, Noisebridge.
>
> I was prodded to try my hand at joining noisebridge. Here's some details
> about
> who I am:
>
> I've visited a total of three times in my life:
>
> * 4 years ago during Camp KDE, where I was visiting for the lightning talks
> and had heard about hackerspaces but never visited one before
> * Last Friday, where I hung out with some of the folks while we watched
> 30c3
> on the screen
> * Today, where some newbies came in, there didn't seem to be any members
> willing to gave a tour, so I showed them around. They seemed satisfied.
>
> I'm not from anywhere near the SF area. I'm actually from Akron, Ohio,
> where I
> help out with the hackerspace we've been growing out there: SYNHAK. I try
> my
> best to encourage adaptation of lot of Noisebridge's essential elements
> there,
> such as do-ocracy, consensus, and excellence. Noisebridge has been a huge
> inspiration and role model for my goals of SYNHAK since the founding of it
> 2.5
> years ago.
>
> My next big projects are starting a coalition of northeast Ohio/northwest
> Pennsylvania hackerspaces, along with helping the folks start up uFabLab in
> Geauga, OH and CanHax in Canton, OH. Sometimes I'm known to say encouraging
> things to the people working on Maker's Alliance in Cleveland.
>
> I like to build robots, 3d printers, hackerspaces, infrastructure, and
> sustainable communities.
>
> If I was in the bay area for longer than a week, I'd contribute a lot more
> to
> Noisebridge. I do plan on visiting for a month sometime in 2014, provided
> that
> I can find some cheap temporary housing.
>
> Here is a wiki page: https://noisebridge.net/wiki/User:Tdfischer
>
> Thank you for your consideration.
>
> In excellence,
> Torrie Fischer
> _______________________________________________
> Noisebridge-discuss mailing list
> Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
> https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/noisebridge-discuss
>
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