[Noisebridge-discuss] My name is Al Sweigart and I am here to recruit you!

[Al Sweigart]

Hi everyone. I'm Al Sweigart. I've been elected to the board of directors
of Noisebridge. If I ever find out which of you jerks voted for me, I will
haunt you and your children and your children's children. For three months.

There are a lot of problems with Noisebridge that have been stagnating for
a long time. To reiterate: I don't want Noisebridge to become TechShop or
Hacker Dojo. The bay area already has those. But if "be excellent" was the
only guideline we needed, these problems would have long been solved. I
want the board to take a more active hand in making policy in accordance
with Noisebridge's bylaws. (Available here:
https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/bylaws )

Here are my priorities:

1) Safety and security - This is top priority. Noisebridge needs to be a
safe place that won't burn down and where members are free from harassment,
and if they are harassed, feel confident that their problem will be taken
seriously and with urgency. Tools need to stop disappearing from the shop.
And the entire space needs to be ADA compliant.

2) Getting more members - Noisebridge is an awesome place. More people
should become involved with the space. We need to open up membership to
more people and make becoming a member more accessible.

3) Cleanliness - Noisebridge is also a filthy place. No other way to say
it. The bathrooms need to be kept clean. The mouse problem needs to be
fixed. The clutter needs to be tossed out (and kept from reforming). The
kitchen... oh man, the kitchen.

4) Organization - Noisebridge has a lot of great resources, but most of
them are unusable due to disorganization or knowledge barriers. We need to
organize the dirty shop, catalog the library, set up an easy scheduling
system for the classrooms, organize the member shelves, and most of all
document how to use this stuff. (I've long forgotten how to thread the
sewing machine and I've never used the laser cutter.)

5) Accessibility - People come to Noisebridge and are really in awe of all
the stuff here. But getting into the door is difficult. Finding out how to
become a member is difficult. Finding out what equipment is usable by the
public, or even what kinds of equipment is available, is difficult. For
every hurdle we have, we are losing more and more potential members. People
come to Noisebridge, but they don't come back.

It'd be great if you could volunteer some time to help out with these
things. I don't mean by sitting through boring meetings or being left with
vague directions: I have a bunch of low- and high-commitment tasks that you
can help with.

The first of which is the monthly cleanup this Sunday at noon:
https://noisebridge.net/wiki/Noisebridge_Monthly_Cleanup

(Punch and pie!)

Thanks! Feel free to email me any questions, death threats, comments, or
criticisms. Wait, not that... third to last one.

-Al
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