[hackerspaces] Hackerspace drama, oh my!

[Naomi Most]

"One should be permitted to hack a hackerspace, though in a non-
destructive fashion."

Permission implies that the right can be denied or that the activity
in question can be prevented...

On Wed, Jul 2, 2014 at 6:32 AM, Torrie Fischer <tdfischer at hackerbots.net> wrote:
> On Wednesday, July 02, 2014 13:44:01 David Potocnik wrote:
>> There's another perspective to this.
>> I guess Torrie & the hackers of Ackron are going to be okay - they
>> started a new space right? They moved their stuff and got another
>> lease and all is well?
>
> Nope. Board took everything. They also took the $15k in the banking account
> and moved it to some other bank without informing the membership or anything,
> and is disregarding the portions of the bylaws that explicitly state such
> things need to have transparency.
>
>>
>> "Advice I give most folks starting a hackerspace, start a community
>> first.  Find the people you want to start the space with.  Worry about
>> that.  because at the end of the day, even if you don't have a space,
>> that community is worth way way more."
>>
>> ...Or just simplify building spaces (sharing protocols & know-how),
>> build a lot of them and cross-pollinate (travel, hang out). Fork,
>> collaborate, merge. Set up varieties, name them and setup
>> instances of them. Find and argue about good practices and patterns
>> with whoever comes to this platform.
>> As the thing progresses on we'll keep having a clearer and clearer
>> cartography of different hacker belief systems, and a better idea of
>> how they can and cannot coexist.
>>
>> There is the more stable isotopos: Coworking spaces, Makerspaces, Fablabs.
>> I believe Hackerspaces and Hackbases (live-in hackerspaces) should be
>> unstable, and definitely not without politics.
>> They should be, and sometimes are, avantgarde experimental political
>> machines.
>
> Well said. One should be permitted to hack a hackerspace, though in a non-
> destructive fashion.
>
>>
>> David
>> from CHT#1 hackbase /\/ http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/Cyberhippietotalism
>>
>> On 2 July 2014 04:07, Ryan Rix <ry at n.rix.si> wrote:
>> > matt <matt at nycresistor.com> writes:
>> >> I think this boils down to the dichotomy of hackerspace vs co-working
>> >> space.
>> >>
>> >> If you build up infrastructure and expect a community to show up in
>> >> it, don't be surprised if more than one community shows up, or the
>> >> community that shows up is not one you want to be a part of.
>> >>
>> >> Noisebridge suffers the tragedy of the commons in a pretty severe
>> >> way... having had mole people living in their basement and bi-polar
>> >> homeless people show up and and claim they are 'sleep hacking'.
>> >>
>> >> That's not what I am talking about. What I am talking about is the
>> >> last line in that piece :
>> >>
>> >> "A lot of this can be traced to our collective inability to remember
>> >> our core pillars of consensus, excellence, and do-ocracy. There is no
>> >> one person or event that can be blamed. As a community, we failed to
>> >> hold close the values we had. We were hacked by policy hackers."
>> >>
>> >> Now I don't know anything about synhak... so I am just going to speak
>> >> to the perspective brought forth by the person who wrote this piece.
>> >> This is a person who enjoyed the community that arrived at synhak in
>> >> the early days. As the space grew and changed and time went on, so did
>> >> the culture and so did the community.
>> >>
>> >> I think Torrie is talking specific solutions but not seeing the forest
>> >> through the trees. When torrie talks about common values along side
>> >> mission statement, and limiting growth of new membership. What she is
>> >> really talking about is fostering a community rather than
>> >> infrastructure. She's focusing more on being with the people she wants
>> >> to be with, than focusing on building a space.
>> >>
>> >> And I think that has worked out very well for NYC Resistor. We like
>> >> each other. We've liked each other with fairly decent success for 5-6
>> >> years. And while folks have grown apart and there has been some
>> >> inevitable culture shift. The community has remained strong.
>> >>
>> >> So, the answer is simple. Synhak like noisebridge built a space. And
>> >> communities fought for it, and some took it and some lost it. Much
>> >> like noisebridge. NYC Resistor built a community in a coffee shop...
>> >> everything else came later.
>> >>
>> >> Advice I give most folks starting a hackerspace, start a community
>> >> first. Find the people you want to start the space with. Worry about
>> >> that. because at the end of the day, even if you don't have a space,
>> >> that community is worth way way more.
>> >
>> > Well written, Matt.
>> >
>> > r
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > 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
>



-- 
Naomi Theora Most
naomi at nthmost.com
+1-415-728-7490

skype: nthmost

http://twitter.com/nthmost