[sudo-discuss] thoughts on helping new members get up and running with SudoRoom (non obvious approaches to diversity)

I have some thoughts about helping new members get up and running at SudoRoom. - I haven't been participating in discussions as much as I could have because I get everything in a big email summary. It's hard to see when people are replying to me, I guess over the years I forgot there's an easy web panel board. Maybe we could link to this more directly? https://sudoroom.org/lists/hyperkitty/list/sudo-discuss@sudoroom.org/ - Helping out women and non binary folks Over the years people have asked me to help get more women and cool people get involved in hackerspaces. This is a noble cause, but a lot of the approaches like celebrating diversity etc. might not be the right approach for hackers and nerds. How do you get more women and minorities and hackerspaces while keeping the spirit of the hack? It's quite complicated, true, because SudoRoom is not for everybody. There was a time when there were a lot of brogrammers working on startups who were interested in joining. They were not interested in any social good causes or making the world a better place - I think they were looking more for something like WeWork, and that was fine! Maybe they could join a "tech incubator space" At the same time there has been a cool drive to get more minorities and women into tech spaces. I think this is very cool! It's obviously "complicated", with so many social and class and gender structures going on. I've seen a lot of these initiatives, and there are some easy wins that nobody can deny that mostly focus on: (A) People trying to break into tech to get a good job that pays well. These initiatives have a lot of corporate and branding pep talks. They have their place, and we definitely want to help people learn to fish so they can fulfill their basic needs. These kinds of initiatives involve a lot of interview training, career development initiatives, and basic intro to coding or git courses. I should know because as a self taught programmer I participated in these, and I benefitted a ton from these! The downside to career-focused tech diversity causes is that they focus on money and careers. We all know that the obvious money and career topics are actually not the best choices for people who are truly interested on creating and learning about programming. Even for long term career growth you want people who want to learn programming, not just how to build websites on Ruby on Rails and javascript shopping ecarts. (B) Initiatives around teaching local youth to get into tech or workshops to tutor kids. Who can argue against these? It's very feel good. The only downside with teaching and volunteering with kids is that the pressure is heavily set upon women in tech to lead these, and I personally don't think there is anything about women that makes them more appropriate for taking care of kids or teaching them. Also, societally we need more male or trans folks to teach kids for diversity as education below the university level is heavily skewed to females. So if SudoRoom wants to tackle the diversity topic, I think we have to find a more unique way to do this. (A) careers for minorities breaking into tech and (B) educating women are well served by people outside of hackerspaces. (A) and (B) are not what SudoRoom is particularly great at, and I do not see how most people can become their best hacker doing either (A) or (B) when they are not suited to it. We also come to one of Omni Commons' greatest weaknesses - a love for administration and endless meetings. I know it's the nature of the space, but I'd like to help get people who are hackers to come and hack here without having to get involved in endless meetings and discussions. A hackerspace should provide an environment in which hackers can come, socialize but also reach their ideal flow state and creativity. If people are going to a lot of administrative meetings, are coordinating meetups, or hyping other hackerspaces in red states in the United States, that doesn't leave them the opportunity to develop themselves as hackers and create and add to the vibe of the space. (It is also extremely irresponsible to hype any place in a red state at this time, or tell any hackers it is a good idea to move there, especially women or anyone who has a woman in their family. Women are literally getting prosecuted for murder for having miscarriages! oh my!) OK so this was all long winded but the gist of it is: Let's try to get the diversity ball rolling in hackerspaces in a non obvious way, something different from the diversity non profit complex. Let's help people get ramped up and into the flow state. Let's free women from the obligation of volunteering to educate kids or do noncreative work. Let's make complex technical projects easy to understand and ramp up on, and not cage women and minorities into endless beginner's projects in the name of making technology more accessible for all. There are many ways to make things better, and one of those ways is being the best hacker you want to be!