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

30 May 2022

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!