[Noisebridge-discuss] what if we changed consensus a bit

[Praveen Sinha]

I just got back from my second consensus night this month.  I go
intermittently since the near start of the physical space, and these last
few times have been really challenging.  People are at odds with each other
in whole new and unique and diverse ways.  With that, I've been thinking of
some new practices we could incorporate:

1) *We actually need to make it even more theatrical.*  I suggest that we
have beginning and intermediate and end interludes where everyone just
becomes comically theatrical.  People can act out as Viking warlords and
take out their frustrations on each other.  People can recite/sing/ a mini
opera.  We can have a Lady Ada drag queen and a Richard Stallman drag king.
 Who the hell knows.  Let's blow some of our budget on ouchy the clown [1]
 or one of the other dozen clown dom moderators living in this city if they
haven't been gentrified out already.
*I know this sounds completely insane.  But hear me out*, there's logic
behind it.  a) it will be fun in a completely insane way which will b) make
people a little bit more in a good mood and take things a little less
seriously  and c) MOST importantly!  Such injections of random noise will
make people more playful and thus more creative and think out of the box
more!  There's even a name for it, it's called jittering, and it's used
often in machine learning and the source of the name of noisebridge [2].
 Wouldn't that be AWESOME [3] to have at consensus meeting?
2) Listen.  One of our primary goals as a culture in a space should be to
increase people's engagement.  One source of both disengagement and drama
is BURNOUT.  Studies have shown that burnout is caused by LACK OF
RECOGNITION/GRATITUDE.  In fact, frequent recognition, especially that
which is reward and not outcome based [4].  To address this,* I suggest
that we start a culture of recognition by having a modification of the
hippie/buddhist/therapist "tunnel of love"*.  In this, we go around all
giving each other what we are thankful for in each other -- and if you
don't know the person, you can give a compliment.  Over time, such a thing
would reduce burnout in core members.  We can start with building it into
the weekly introductions.

Yes, I know that other spaces will make fun of noisebridge.  Well, to that
I say, fuck 'em if they can't take a joke [5]!  No but seriously.  No other
space out there would be capable of this.

I appreciate any feedback and look forward to refining our stake in better
futures.

With love and hugs,
praveen

[1] http://www.ouchytheclown.com/meet.shtml
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jitter  I bet a lot of you don't really
know what a Noisebridge IS even though you come here all the time!  A
noisebridge and it's applications is truly fascinating:  the idea is using
randomess as a diagnostic/repair tools and it works in circuits, machine
learning, and physical neural brains like yours!  Ask around if you want to
get a better understanding!
[3] I can't say "awesome" without a plug for the awesome foundation
http://www.awesomefoundation.org/en/chapters/sf
[4] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23055916
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_SubGenius
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