[hackerspaces] What do you do in open tuesdays?

[Steven Sutton]

We're pretty much continuously experimenting with our open house.

When I started, we were doing open house meeting where people would talk
about different projects and pitch classes and ideas. Those meetings
eventually grew from 5-7 attendees to 20-30, and became painfully long and
boring.

For a while, we tried just an open, undefined open house, but often people
would just take a tour and then leave. If members didn't actively engage
people, they would just leave confused and never come back.

We tried the happy hour thing too, where it was much more of a social
hangout feel, where people would bring in a six pack and chat about tech.
That works for some, is intimidating for others, and is a total turn-off
for some.

We cycled back around to doing a quick meeting where everyone briefly
introduces themselves and what they're into. Then it's a free hangout where
those folks can chat with the people who are interested in interesting
things or work on whatever. The night gradually devolves into "Freeside
after dark" where after several hours, the music and media start to get
weirder until we finally head out to a bar or something with the six or
seven remaining weirdos. It's a pretty good balance that seems to be
working for us.

We've just started another experiment where we do a public open house on
the 2nd and 4th Tuesdays and a member night on the alternates. The idea is
to do cross-training and equipment maintenance etc... on those nights.
We'll see how it works out.

We do a Board meeting monthly, a Member Meeting every other month and a
build-out day on the alternate months.

Steven Sutton
President, Freeside Atlanta
www.freesideatlanta.org
On Jan 27, 2014 10:38 AM, "Florencia Edwards" <floev22 at gmail.com> wrote:

> What sort of activities do you do in open tuedays? Is it with members
> and.not members meeting and talking? We are having a open tuesday soon and
> people ( and i admit, me too) dont understand what it is about , its
> abstract. We just say our doors are open everyone is welcome. But what sort
> of activities do you usually do on open tuesdays? Like a meeting where
> people.introduce themselves and say what they hack?
> Id love some examples
>
> Cheers
>
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