[hackerspaces] Inter-Hackerspace Cooperation and Membership

[quemener.yves at free.fr]

----- "Paul Bohm" <paul at boehm.org> a écrit :

> hey koen,
> 
> that sounds great - it seems like you're solving a real problem in
> .nl, and i think that might make a lot of sense there, especially if
> people from these hackerspaces already know each other well or some
> people travel a lot between the spaces. i wasn't trying to discourage
> you from finding a good solution for these people that want to
> support
> and be a part of multiple hackerspaces in your area at all. what
> you're talking about sounds like a pragmatic solution, and i commend
> you for that.
> 
> however regarding the larger discussion that spawned this thread, i
> believe that agreements like this only work if they're making a
> structure that is in essence (in this case through strong social ties
> and physical proximity) already there, explicit. people at
> hackerspaces generally are already very welcoming, and i don't think
> a structured program that vastly exceeds existing social boundaries
> could improve this. you can't decree that strangers will be friends -
> all you can do is introduce friends to each other and hope they'll
> become friends in turn.

I think that this works well when the number of visitors is lower than the number of members. In a situation like the aforementioned C-base during a Chaos Congress, having more visitors than members can cause problem and require a policy of some kind. I think the current discussion is useful if we want to avoid the "members only" policy from becoming more and more common.

I agree that it should work by making social ties explicit. What is asked for is maybe nothing more than a hacker's social network or a profile a la Couch Surfing : they solve quite gracefully a problem that is close to this one : "I'm ready to give people a place to crash as long as I at least know someone who says he/she is not a psychopath"