[Noisebridge-discuss] why would hackers come to noisebridge?

Thu Mar 13 18:44:56 UTC 2014

As someone who reads and votes on Double Union membership applications, I
can tell you right now that the single most common phrase we see on them is
"I went to Noisebridge...once."

Almost all of these women tried Noisebridge first, and didn't feel welcome
here.  And there are a LOT of them.  They came out of the woodwork so fast
that we had to shut down applications after just a few months.  Double
Union can't take them all in, our space is just too small.  So, if you
think we need more members, there's a giant untapped market of really
passionate, active people who want this.  Make Noisebridge more welcoming
to women and you'll fill rosters fast.

Oh, and by the way: referring to us as "females" is generally one of those
signals that tend to make women go "NOPE!"  It's also not, strictly
speaking, accurate; DU has a lot of trans women who feel pretty alienated
by that term.

On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 11:24 AM, Al Sweigart <asweigart at gmail.com> wrote:

> The way I see it, there's plenty of hackerspaces in the bay area that men
> are welcome to, and UU itself has open house nights open to men. And from
> the fact that they had to stop accepting new members for now because they
> were flooded with new people, there's plenty of demand for a women-only
> hackerspace.
>
>
> On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 11:18 AM, Ronald Cotoni <setient at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I am not. It is cool and 100% necessary due to other circumstances I
>> stated above.  Its a place female identifying people can go and not feel
>> threatened and just work on cool stuff.  It is great!
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 11:07 AM, Jessica Ross <jessica.r.ross at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> Feminist doesn't imply "only other females", just that it respects women.
>>>
>>> Hm, after going to the website, the mission statement strongly implies
>>> women-only. I'm almost offended about that.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 12:53 PM, Ronald Cotoni <setient at gmail.com>wrote:
>>>
>>>> I am with what hep said.  I am also with Naomi.  This is a hackerspace.
>>>>  Lets hack the system and figure out how to solve problems.  I am also with
>>>> Al that I feel sad that UU had to even exist because noisebridge was not
>>>> safe enough or good enough.  I also understand that some people just like
>>>> working with other females and don't even want to bother at this stage of
>>>> their lives.  I just feel it was mostly a response to Noisebridge not being
>>>> safe and not the latter.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 10:49 AM, Naomi Most <pnaomi at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I am openly biased towards anarchism and lack of top-down control.
>>>>> But we can't keep shouting down the idea of "oversight" to address
>>>>> problems that Noisebridge has had for YEEAAARRRSSS when we've
>>>>> certainly given the Noisebridge traditional methods that long to fix
>>>>> things.
>>>>>
>>>>> For the record, I don't agree with the idea of direct
>>>>> people-management or in changing the way we arrive at decisions at
>>>>> Noisebridge.  My idea of a positive change would be to have the board
>>>>> managing facilities and facilitating participation -- e.g. forming
>>>>> working groups.  I believe these improvements will make a lot of the
>>>>> other crap die down naturally.
>>>>>
>>>>> And as it turns out, that's what we're going to do first.
>>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 10:46 AM, hep <dis at gruntle.org> wrote:
>>>>> > And that would be different from what noisebridge has had in the
>>>>> last 5yr
>>>>> > how? as it stands, many women do not feel safe at noisebridge
>>>>> because of
>>>>> > sexual assault and the past somewhat failure to deal with it in a
>>>>> manner
>>>>> > where women felt safe and listened to at nb. many valuable
>>>>> contributing
>>>>> > people have left nb because of its failure to address major
>>>>> infrastructure
>>>>> > problems. if having a more active board helps to stop sexual abuse
>>>>> and makes
>>>>> > the culture more welcoming to those who would positively contribute,
>>>>> then i
>>>>> > am 100% down with active management. i would like noisebridge to be
>>>>> > somewhere i can bring friends to interest them in hacking, bring my
>>>>> > childrens' school championship robotics team to inspire them to the
>>>>> next
>>>>> > victory, not a place where i am fearful to go on my own because
>>>>> there are no
>>>>> > protections or infrastructure to ensure basic safety.
>>>>> >
>>>>> > -hep
>>>>> >
>>>>> >
>>>>> > On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 10:09 AM, Torrie Fischer <
>>>>> tdfischer at hackerbots.net>
>>>>> > wrote:
>>>>> >>
>>>>> >>
>>>>> >> I think it is important to note that in the context of a
>>>>> hackerspace,
>>>>> >> there is
>>>>> >> a difference between managing the infrastructure and managing the
>>>>> people
>>>>> >> who
>>>>> >> hack on the infrastructure.
>>>>> >>
>>>>> >> From experience, just saying "active management" easily leads to
>>>>> bad times
>>>>> >> and, uh, rather verbose mailing list threads.
>>>>> >>
>>>>> > --
>>>>> > hep
>>>>> > hepic photography || www.hepic.net
>>>>> >     dis at gruntle.org || 415 867 9472
>>>>> >
>>>>> > _______________________________________________
>>>>> > Noisebridge-discuss mailing list
>>>>> > Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
>>>>> > https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/noisebridge-discuss
>>>>> >
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Naomi Theora Most
>>>>> naomi at nthmost.com
>>>>> +1-415-728-7490
>>>>>
>>>>> skype: nthmost
>>>>>
>>>>> http://twitter.com/nthmost
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Noisebridge-discuss mailing list
>>>>> Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
>>>>> https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/noisebridge-discuss
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Ronald Cotoni
>>>> Systems Engineer
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Noisebridge-discuss mailing list
>>>> Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
>>>> https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/noisebridge-discuss
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Jessica R. Ross
>>> jessica.r.ross at gmail.com
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Ronald Cotoni
>> Systems Engineer
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Noisebridge-discuss mailing list
>> Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
>> https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/noisebridge-discuss
>>
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Noisebridge-discuss mailing list
> Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
> https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/noisebridge-discuss
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.noisebridge.net/pipermail/noisebridge-discuss/attachments/20140313/8bcd287c/attachment-0003.html>