[Noisebridge-discuss] Early days of noisebridge

[Elizabeth Hubbard]

In the early days of Noisebridge, I shook hands, learned hacking, and made business connections.  Complimented people for their fashion choices.  Got to know more transgendered people, which was cool because they're not as large of a population where I'm from, and diversity enhances wisdom.  Collaborated with other writers and exchanged numbers for an editing exchange.  Began writing an excellent screenplay.  Took that screenplay to the Writer's Digest Conference and was told pretty much unanimously that this was an excellent idea.  Began looking for actors.  Went to the Noisebridge mailing list to find some of them, because they had played the roles in my mind.  Found one; she was thrilled to have a role written for her where she was the star.  Bantered on the forum with some trolls, which was expected given the project name.  That was when you showed up and said my project idea was not excellent and the fewer people responded to it the better.  I was shocked.

I showed my husband.  I'm like, "Look at what this crazy person wrote!  Obviously, they have no concept of what excellence means."  He said, "I'm really sorry baby, but when it comes to Noisebridge, after this, your project is fucked."  I said, "My project isn't fucked!" and then I burst into tears.  Hard to argue with an IQ that high but I do manage it (he has a hard time arguing with me).  Sure enough, after your post, one more person e-mailed me.  (All the people who were interested stayed off of the mailing list and e-mailed me directly.)  "What's wrong with my project?" I asked him.  "The people at the Writer's Digest Conference thought my idea and my writing was great."  "There's nothing wrong with your project," he said.  "Did I respond wrong in the forum?"  "No!  You just found the one place in the world where somebody would shit on your excellent comedy start-up."

Also, in the early days of Noisebridge, I befriended quite a few homeless people and wrote funny acting roles for them that would be easy to act because I kept their personalities in mind.  (Already one actor out of the homeless population; gotta find the rest of them.)  Obviously that isn't an excellent thing to do!

So I said, "Fine!  I'll find actors and staff members at art colleges, and they get the magnificent experience of working for a producer who is laid back, fun, and positive, and furthermore pays them as much as she gets paid, which is going to be a whole lot, because now I have a point to prove."

Good luck to you on your comics and whatever you do.