<p>I disagree nick. In general yes, they absolutely have value. But, there's already a ton of outreach and exposure available for their contributions. At an event such as this, the focus should be on sharing working knowledge, and fostering collaboration.</p>
<p>In a discussion relating say to financing or insurance at a space, apart from professional experience ( maybe guest contributors? ) the average person who would show up would either not be able to contribute very much, or more likely inadvertently waste peoples time catching up to speed on "the basics".</p>
<p>I don't see what someone would get out of the event either, unless they had a working knowledge of hackerspace day to day operations.</p>
<p>It just strikes me as counter productive on both sides.</p>
<p>=/</p>
<p><blockquote type="cite">On May 18, 2010 12:38 PM, "Nick Farr (<a href="http://hackerspaces.org">hackerspaces.org</a>)" <<a href="mailto:nick@hackerspaces.org">nick@hackerspaces.org</a>> wrote:<br><br><p>
<font color="#500050">> I see immense value in getting organizers of spaces together to discuss<br>> issues related with spac...</font></p>Agreed. When someone steps forward to put an event like this<br>
together, we should encourage it, even if we can't attend it.<br>
<p><font color="#500050"><br>> An event like that however is not suited to "public access". It's not about<br>> exclusion or eliti...</font></p>I'm going to strongly disagree with this for three reasons:<br>
<br>
1) Ideally, anyone who puts forward an effort with hackerspaces is an<br>
"organizer". Anyone who bothers to show up to an event is likely<br>
motivated enough to be in a position to help encourage<br>
interhackerspace cooperation.<br>
<br>
2) Especially in this community, when you make an event anything less<br>
than entirely open, you lose potential attendees with (justifiable)<br>
charges of elitism.<br>
<br>
3) There are still many folks interested in building Hackerspaces that<br>
might not have an "official" affiliation but would add value to such<br>
an event. Especially for a first time event, anyone that shows up<br>
should get accreditation for that simple reason.<br>
<br>
I think the rest of your e-mail warrants a new thread...<br>
<p><font color="#500050">_______________________________________________<br>Discuss mailing list<br><a href="mailto:Discuss@lists.hackerspaces.org">Discuss@lists.hackerspaces.org</a><br>...</font></p></blockquote></p>