[Noisebridge-discuss] Sunday morning sleeper.

Tom Lowenthal me at tomlowenthal.com
Mon Dec 9 18:47:24 UTC 2013


On 9 December 2013 09:25, Jeffrey Carl Faden <jeffreyatw at gmail.com> wrote:
> So I've been meaning to ask - how has the new associate membership idea been
> working? One of the main drives of the concept was to prevent sleeping by
> only allowing members or vouched guests in, but this seems to have failed.
>
> It's a failure on my part as well as on any other associate member who has
> entertained people in the space but not asked them to leave along with them.
> I don't think any of my students are sleeping at the space after classes,
> but I haven't been explicitly asking anyone to leave. I either don't feel
> comfortable, or simply forget to ask.
>
> If people are feeling safer and the amount of violence and drug abuse has
> gone down, then that's enough to warrant keeping these policies in place.
> But if the limited-hours approach was shot down in order for associate
> membership to take its place, it certainly seems less effective in
> preventing sleepers.

My experience has been consistent with the reports I've seen on this
list, and heard by word of mouth. Noisebridge feels cleaner and calmer
during the day, and folks are more able to get on with their projects
without having to consciously ignore someone engaged in disruptive
behavior. Specific folks, have told me that there are fewer people at
Noisbridge who make them feel on-edge, or unsafe. I think that's a
(specific, confined, qualified, initial) success.

I agree with you that this change hasn't stopped all sleeping (&c.) in
the space. I think that there are a number of limitations. It does
seem to be the case that the last member/associate member to leave the
space in the evening only sometimes “closes up” by asking everyone to
leave.

However our principles can only go so far: just because we say that
someone who is neither a member nor an associate member should show up
at 4am, get into an otherwise-empty Noisebridge and crash does not
make it so. I think that it's time to get to work on backing up our
social engineering with some actual engineering.

Following our 2013-11-12 consensus that Noisebridge should be secure
when not in use, JC volunteered to start work on this, but I think
he's still in the planning stages. JC?



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