[Noisebridge-discuss] [Drama] Fwd: [Noisebridge-announce] Important Noisebridge Procedural Changes

[Danny O'Brien]

On Wed, Mar 26, 2014 at 4:01 PM, Danny O'Brien <danny at spesh.com> wrote:

> Find proposals with large community buy in, expedite them (I can think of
> half a dozen that have been floating around NB). Be open and transparent
> about your actions and process; do solicit and consider some feedback
> before you implement changes. Err on the side of caution, but recalibrate
> as necessary. Rebuild the organization in a way that reflects the good in
> the values and culture, not as something entirely different.
>
> Yep, this sounds about right, and my position also.
>
> I'm still your loving treasurer, but I'm really not sure I can be a member
> any longer.
>
> I have a long email draft sitting around here which might be useful, in
> which I  helpfully offer to take off the hands of the current
> administration as many of the wild-eyed idealist,
> anarcho-bitcoin-decentralist-know-nothing, consensus-wielders, Plan 9
> users, and social-system-experimenters as I can handily carry[1], and take
> them off to some other Promised Land where they'll be less of an annoyance.
> People can let me know off-list if they're interested in that.
>

Having written this I realise that it comes across as at best a bit of a
non-sequitur, at worst undermining and sabotaging of the current process,
so let me rephrase.

I (personally) don't really want to be a member of a board-driven
Noisebridge, with beautifully written rules with top-down enforcement, not
because it wouldn't work, but because for me the challenge of helping with
Noisebridge was to do things that don't fall back on those ideas, but try
to experiment with other models. I do a lot of things that are extremely
effective using those systems, and I don't really need another one in my
life. Also, they are not a panacea, and they have some really well known
failure-modes, the solutions to which Dana has pointed out. I have dealt
with too many failures in this model as well, and if I'm going to be upset
and frustrated, it should be at least not be boring too.

Finally, one of the failure modes of both consensus and top-down is that
people get *really* committed to them, and I wonder if it might be fun to
find some other way to experiment with both governance and hackerness that
doesn't involve a giant org with lots of vested interest.

I honestly have no idea if I (or anyone else) has the will to do this, but
I had thought that once Norton Industrial Labs, Double Union and
Noisebridge stabilise, if there's still people out there that feel they
want a politically-diverse, decentralist, project-driven community based on
principles of transparency, experimentation, eccentricity and
cyperpunkery-bitcoiny-agoric-sciency axioms, that isn't satisfied by the
current market, I'd be up for brainstorming it. I am not sure what it would
be, but I have some ideas of what it wouldn't be. It wouldn't be as
radically inclusive as Noisebridge, nor would it have an explicit social
justice agenda as Double Union, but it would pursue liberation tech
projects, and would not be
dude-bro-reactionary-comfortable-in-pre-existing-prejudice. It would
probably aspire to be a bit weirder than a standard, maker-friendly
hackerspace, but more sensibly functional than Noisebridge at its weirdest.
It would probably do things like Liquid Democracy, but only for 9 months,
and then do Athenian Lottery-based Democracy for another 12. We might not
have a rule against cameras, as with Noisebridge, but we might have a rule
that we won't open until we fix the privacy-preserving camera problem. It
would aspire, as Noisebridge did at one time, to be aiming for Iain M.
Bank's Culture, but may end up being a bit more like the Zetetic Elench.

I somewhat assume that such a space would interest at max four people, but
I may be wrong, and anyway what I am saying here right now is that you
should not quit Noisebridge (I will not quit Noisebridge -- the DU people
did not, and neither are the NIL folks, and I think one cannot ever quite
Noisebridge entirely). But perhaps if your are frustrated by the coming
changes, perhaps a better solution is not to endlessly fight at every turn
with other people who are well-meaning but different, but to fork and
pursue your own vision.

d.
ps how many of these ragequit emails is one supposed to write?









>
> d.
> [1] and who aren't creepy
>
>
>
>
>
>
> d.
>
>
> On Wed, Mar 26, 2014 at 7:59 AM, Dana <dana-lists at sonic.net> wrote:
>
>> I've seen a co-op and several non-profits fail up close, this looks like
>> end-stage, not a turn around.
>>
>> Noisebridge is broken, but I'm skeptical that these actions will fix it.
>> Instead I foresee more acrimonious squabbles, a further hollowed out
>> membership and community, a space even less capable of supporting itself.
>>
>> In wake of mentioned failures I've thought long and hard about how things
>> might have happened differently. I honestly don't know if any of those orgs
>> could turn around, I'm not sure if Noisebridge can, but I think I did learn
>> how a board-driven reboot might be more likely to succeed:
>>
>> Find proposals with large community buy in, expedite them (I can think of
>> half a dozen that have been floating around NB). Be open and transparent
>> about your actions and process; do solicit and consider some feedback
>> before you implement changes. Err on the side of caution, but recalibrate
>> as necessary. Rebuild the organization in a way that reflects the good in
>> the values and culture, not as something entirely different.
>>
>> I feel like I'm watching a bad re-run. So long discuss :-/
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Noisebridge-discuss mailing list
>> Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
>> https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/noisebridge-discuss
>>
>>
>>
>
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