[hackerspaces] how to deal with tired staff, with hackespaces blues

[Bert Hartmann]

I usually find visits to other hackerspaces to help with this. I'm sure
there are other spaces near you that have had to deal with similar
problems, and can offer advice or at least commiseration. It's also helpful
to see another space as an outsider and realize which problems you're
having are important to the mission, and which are maybe less important and
don't need as much of your mental energy.


On Tue, Jan 21, 2014 at 9:06 AM, Florencia Edwards <floev22 at gmail.com>wrote:

> It's a different culture here. We have people in charge of coordinating
> workshops, of putting in a spreadsheet who are attending, another preson in
> charge of buying workshop materials, a person a in charge of the community
> to make blogposts, and general posts informing workshops and memberships to
> people out there who aren't member  and coordinating the general forum. A
> person in charge of content layout. This is the staff. The members are just
> doing their own projects, they don't have time for doing stuff for the
> makerspece. Where I live, people are not even used to wash their own
> dishes, we wash a lot for them
>
> And since rent is not cheap, we can't make memberships free or just a
> "donate what you can"  thing
>
>
> 2014/1/21 Joshua Pritt <ramgarden at gmail.com>
>
>> What kind of work are you doing?  I've always thought of a hackerspace as
>> a bunch of volunteers anyway. If anyone sees the trash can overflowing just
>> take it out. If you see a giant pile of dirt or something on the floor
>> sweep it up.  Then once a month or every third month hold a clean up day on
>> a Saturday and everyone pitches in on a pizza and soda. The other bit of
>> work would be running the space which is usually handled by the treasurer
>> and president and secretary and facilities committee. These positions are
>> elected by the members every quarter or semi annually.  This way someone
>> who doesn't want to our doesn't have the time to run the place can let
>> someone else do it. Of course there has to be someone to nominate
>> themselves for each position and they know they are doing it for free so
>> they have to really want to see the space continue to grow and thrive. I'm
>> not sure how that would work if everyone has this survivor attitude...
>>
>> On Jan 21, 2014 8:45 AM, "Florencia Edwards" <floev22 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > Dear hackerspaces, how do you deal with a tired staff. I'm one of them,
>> it seems like we work work work, and every day there are less members, less
>> people willing to give something back to the space and  we get the feeling
>> that the majority just wants to take and doesn't share , wants discounts,
>> and  to get  free materials but they never give anything to anyone. There
>> are  people that think we are millionaires and want to take part of the cut
>> any way they can.
>> >
>> > Here where we are from people don't trust each other, they are like
>> survivors, try to get what they need and than they escape.
>> >
>> > And in fact, we are losing money every month. As staff we are badly
>> paid, we are more sort of  volunteers, we can't get through the month with
>> what we win. I work here at the space full time, than i get home and i keep
>> working , I can't afford lunch anymore . We can sense that the whole staff
>> is tired and in a bad mood, and the more time it passes it's worse. And I
>> wish I could see more people happy with this, changing, wanting to share,
>> wanting to make a community... But sometimes it feels like a illusion
>> >
>> > Any advice, or just share our pain hehe, we should make hackerspaces
>> blues.
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Discuss mailing list
>> > Discuss at lists.hackerspaces.org
>> > http://lists.hackerspaces.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>> >
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Discuss mailing list
>> Discuss at lists.hackerspaces.org
>> http://lists.hackerspaces.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>>
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss at lists.hackerspaces.org
> http://lists.hackerspaces.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.hackerspaces.org/pipermail/discuss/attachments/20140121/a665060e/attachment-0001.html>