[hackerspaces] Hackerspace drama, oh my!

[matt]

I got bored a while back and did some keyword analysis on noisebridge
archives.

Might be fun to analyze a few spaces mailing archives.  See what trends
emerge... what lulz.

-Matt


On Thu, Jul 3, 2014 at 3:03 PM, Torrie Fischer <tdfischer at hackerbots.net>
wrote:

> On Tuesday, July 01, 2014 12:24:31 matt wrote:
> > 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.
>
> If anyone is curious at all, here are the public archives of SYNHAK's
> discussion since we started it three years ago:
>
> https://www.mail-archive.com/discuss@synhak.org/
>
> Feel free to troll through it and figure out how the culture changed
> outside
> of the core members who founded it.
>
> Also to note: From what I can tell, very few if any of the first 12 or so
> members are still involved with SYNHAK since this happened.
>
> >
> > 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.
> >
> > -Matt
> >
> > On Tue, Jul 1, 2014 at 12:02 PM, Buddy Smith <buddy.smith at ieee.org>
> wrote:
> > > Saw this on /r/hackerspaces/
> > >
> > > https://medium.com/@tdfischer_/rip-synhak-7093ade6b943
> > >
> > > Anyone involved care to comment? Has something similar happened to
> other
> > > spaces? How did you get past it? How could it be prevented?
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > 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/20140703/5ac1fdf9/attachment.html>