29 Aug
2023
29 Aug
'23
10:17 a.m.
Hi all,
I think this is an important conversation to have as we're trying to become
a more inviting space for the community to gather.
I volunteer with a non-hierarchical collective
<https://www.berkeleyneed.org/> in Berkeley, and while their system isn't
perfect, it might be closer to what we want. Anyone can drop in to
volunteer. If you want to be a voting member, you have to volunteer for at
least 3 shifts and do an interview with at least two other members. To
maintain membership, you have to show up to at least two shifts per month
and follow the community guidelines.
My thoughts:
- It might be nicer to schedule interviews with people who want to be
members rather than putting the burden on them to "get recommendations".
- NEED does a lot of work tracking and scheduling, so more work on the
parts of established members (myself included) may be required to make the
organization more transparent and inclusive.
- The mission of Sudo Room, as I understand it, is currently less about
doing some kind of work than it is about being an available space for
people to gather and find community. Maybe that could change?
Just some thoughts. Again, I'm not saying that the NEED model is perfect or
anything, but I think there is a lot of value in being more organized and
transparent. I really appreciate Andy's continued efforts to nudge us in
this direction.
Thanks,
--Elaine
El vie, 25 ago 2023 a la(s) 14:00, Jonathan Cadle via sudo-discuss (
sudo-discuss(a)sudoroom.org) escribió:
Thank you for getting this conversation started,
Andrew!
While I think the easiest place to start is with the language we use when
promoting our events (emphasizing that membership is not required to
attend), perhaps we can also make Sudoroom's status as a public (or
semi-public) space more explicit in our communications as well.
Also, since we've been working to find uses for the other 3 Wednesdays of
the month, what if we had a day that was specifically aimed at newcomers to
Sudoroom? We could have a loose structure for the evening (it doesn't have
to be a Wednesday; in fact, perhaps it shouldn't be, as that doesn't seem
like a convenient day for most folks).
Example:
7pm: Sudoroom Introduction/tour of the space
7:30: Individual introductions (current projects? projects you want to
start but don't know how? how can we help?)
8/8:30pm: Workshop/Presentation/Movie - e.g. screening of Hackers/Johnny
Mnemonic/etc., Demonstration of Sudoroom AI art projects, Workshop on
hardening your web browser against ad tracking
------- Original Message -------
On Friday, August 25th, 2023 at 11:54 AM, Andrew R Gross via sudo-discuss <
sudo-discuss(a)sudoroom.org> wrote:
Hey everyone,
I've been focusing on serving the membership working group for a few
months, and I'd like to highlight some issues I see with our new member
joining process.
*1. It's not clear what membership means.* Longtime sudo room members
have told me that membership isn't necessary to participate, it's just a
designation that allows you to weigh in on consensus proposals and endorse
members. This isn't the impression the word has with any new members I've
spoken to, though. The term for most people signifies belonging, and an
allowance to attend events, and this misunderstanding is particularly
accute in my experience when dealing with BiPOC folks, women, anyone new to
tech or hackerspaces... just anyone who doesn't arrive with a preexisting
sense of belonging to the dominant cultural ingroup.
*2. The new member process puts up a lot of barriers to joining.* When
people discover Sudo Room, they often arrive with a sense of excitement to
dive in, and then when I start walking through the steps, I watch all that
excitement dissipate. The endorsement process, for instance, feels like a
massive mud patch on a foot track. It seems to interrupt people's ability
to focus on learning about who we are by creating an open-ended social
challenge. Once again, I don't think tech bros who show up or have been
members since the begining experience this at all, but if you're new to the
town, or you've never been part of a hackerspace, this is stressful and
confusing. I felt this way when I joined, and a new member just told me
exactly this: they're non-white, their non-male, and they've never felt
like tech spaces were built with them in mind. They really went outside
their comfort zone and met people at events and got the endorsements, but
it seems to be working completely against our interests to put up an
obstacle that selectively filters people like this. Then there's a long
wait where nothing happens, and often no one ever tells a new member that
their membership was approved.
As an exercise I would like to invite people to respond to this email and
answer these two questions:
*What roles you think exist in our community?* and *What processes are
effective for helping people enter into it?*
I'm not interested in hearing defenses of the current system. That's not
the exercise. Imagine we're starting from scratch. Maybe, we'll come to
find that the current system actually fulfills certain aims well, but I
don't want to frame this as a change, I want to imagine the process for
helping people become at home at Sudo from a blank page.
Cheers,
Andy
*Andrew R Gross, (he/him)*
412.657.5332 - shrad.org <http://www.shrad.org>
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