[Noisebridge-discuss] All I want is 51% :)

Dana dana-lists at sonic.net
Fri Mar 28 21:37:12 UTC 2014


Al, I appreciate you laying out your thought process on this. I wish a 
conversation about how Noisebridge can move forward could have started 
from here instead of from unilateral actions on the part of the board.

What is called consensus at Noisebridge is broken, I think many Members 
and community members agree. When I learned about consensus I was told 
blocking was something serious and rare, reserved for circumstances when 
you fundamentally believe a proposal undermines the integrity of an 
organization's values or there is improper process. If you don't like 
something you articulate your objection, dissent with a stand-aside.

In January I shared alternative consensus model we used at student 
co-ops. At the meeting, on-list and privately I received an exceptional 
amount of positive feedback (then, I got busy and did a poor job at 
following up). I don't think end-point but another option worth working 
from:

Weekly meetings - 1 block or Math.round(Members*.1) stand-asides stop a 
proposal. Those blocking have a responsibility to try to work with 
proponents towards something mutually agreeable (outside of the meeting)

If an issue can't be resolved it can be brought up at a quarterly 
membership meeting where it goes to majority or super-majority:

https://www.noisebridge.net/pipermail/noisebridge-discuss/2014-January/041803.html

- dana

p.s. Running something at the intersection of hacker culture & public 
space, with a funny decision-making model, in a city under a lot of 
social and economic pressures is not easy. I think it's ENTIRELY 
REASONABLE to just want to hack without all that, a more 'normal' model 
would thrive in this city too, maybe even eclipse NB in popularity or 
equipment or technical accomplishment (oh, what I'd give for a nice 
laser cutter that wasn't (a) at Tech Shop, (b) in the East Bay, but I 
digress).




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