[Noisebridge-discuss] MongoDB Office Hours

[Praveen Sinha]

The issues of giving corporate free passes is centrally linked to very real
gentrification issues, inside and outside noisebridge.

Inside noisebridge:
    - we still don't have disabled or elderly accessible environments even
after years of being here.  Our members with accessibility issues often
have to go to great struggles to figure out if they can be at the space.
     - we are still a monolingual environment, with our wiki being english
only inside a strong bilingual community

The list can go on about noisebridge and the immediate neighborhood, like
providing mesh access to the low income in the community.

Having cash to do such things, beyond worrying about basic rent is of
immense value.

And yet we have actors like Jehan privileging free access to a cash heavy
corporation because they use the AGPL in their product.  It's very
admirable that a company should do such a thing, but by that logic would
you invite Oracle in to give demos because Mysql is open source?
Preposterous.

Noisebridge is not broken.  Our job is not to attract wealth people from
far away places like palo alto.  We have value inside our own communities,
in Noisebridge, in the Mission, that we have to develop and emerge to be
next cutting edge.

In so far as politics at noisebridge -- I'm sorry but NB is an explicitly
political space. We host and talk about issues that are of importance to
hackers that include digital rights, free internet, and yes gentrification
and tech class divide in urban areas like the mission district.  If you
feel differently, I welcome you to shut down Techno Activism Tuesdays and
the many other projects we've hosted here.

On Mon, Jul 20, 2015 at 10:55 PM, 2011PIguppy2011 <2011PIguppy2011 at gmail.com
> wrote:

> As far as I am concerned, free office hours are just that. I don't see the
> point in injecting SF city politics / hot button issues into this and I see
> it as blatant trolling. Noisebridge is not a political nonprofit.
>
> It would be great to have more responsible people in the space at a
> regular time using it to hack on tech. He said it was open office hours for
> whoever.
>
>
>
> On Monday, July 20, 2015, Praveen Sinha <dmhomee at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Jul 20, 2015 at 8:24 PM, Garrett Smith <dhtmlkitchen at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> > We usually announce on Twitter that we’ll be available at the venue and
>>> > typically expect about 10 to 12 people to drop in on average. Anyone
>>> with
>>> > questions about MongoDB are welcome. I’d like to start the first
>>> "office
>>> > hours” Thursday the 23rd, from 4-6 PM.  Do you feel that Noisebridge
>>> is an
>>> > appropriate please to host these small meetups?
>>> >
>>>
>>> I think that it's doocratic in the spirit of Noisebridge. You'll need
>>> to chec the schedule for room availability of Turing or Church before
>>> booking your room by editing the wiki.
>>
>>
>> I vehemently disagree  -- MongoDB is a for profit company that would
>> otherwise pay top dollar to have real estate to run where it can get
>> mindshare for other engineers.   While I support noisebridge to support our
>> own community members to launch their for profit projects (for example,
>> mitch altman pitching his electronics), it's frankly because of companies
>> like MongoDB getting a free ride from the city that not only is
>> Noisebridge's rent going up, but everyone in the neighborhood getting
>> kicked out as well.
>>
>> Noisebridge it  /community/ space - so I really have ask, what concrete
>> value does MongoDB add to this community?   Why not give Microsoft or Apple
>> free space to develop mindshare in our community?
>>
>> We may need cash, and once again our non-profit status does not allow us
>> to have in-kind donations.  But, if you really want to play ball with these
>> companies, we better make our benefit very tangible and make it *a lot*.
>> MongoDB would otherwise pay thousands if not tens of thousands to have a
>> deal somewhere else in the city.  We are a premium spot for it, and we
>> should make it such that even the poorest and most unconnected of us are
>> able to benefit from it.
>>
>
>
> --
> (Sent from cellphone)
>
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