[sf-lug] Status of SF-LUG / Linux meeting(s) @ Noisebridge? & SF-LUG web site (mis?)information thereof

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Todd Hawley (celticdm at gmail.com):

> Interesting. I went there once or twice to see if the LUG meeting was
> on (it wasn't) and had no trouble walking in. The door was unlocked
> and I let myself in. I asked one of the folk there about the LUG
> meeting and he said that the group hadn't met regularly in some time,
> but I was welcome to stick around and see if anyone showed up. After
> waiting 30-40 minutes, I then left. I was rather annoyed that I'd
> spent the time getting over there and then waited for anyone to show
> up and effectively wasted half of my evening.

TBH, in this matter, distance (and travel time) matters _a lot_.  If I'd
still been a resident of 744 Harrison Street, San Francisco, as I'd been
until early 2000, I'd certainly have given the alleged Noisebridge Linux
Discussion Group meetings several more tries.  At least.  Before giving
up.

For my sins, I've become a suburbanite.  {sob}  Chez Moen is on the west
side of friggin' Menlo Park, technically in unincorporated San Mateo
County.  The imagination scarce can comprehend this.  I mean, it's even
south of Daly City.  ;->

Anyway, please forgive the railery:  I'm still jetlagged, and my sense
of humour inclines towards amusing shtick -- but, FWIW, I greatly
respect your, Maestro's, and Joseph Puig's past (and near-future?)
efforts to keep a discussion group going.

Yr. humble servant has the honour to be maintainer of the Linux
Documentation Project's 'Linux User Group HOWTO' (online) document.  As
such, and as someone who's been involved in LUGs all over the world
including _all_ of the ones in the Bay Area since the very beginning,
I've seen and heard-tale of an amazing variety of ways LUGs have
haplessly screwed up and committed seppuku, giving myself something of a
mild Cassadra complex, i.e., rightly or wrongly, I keep remembering the
times I've advised someone like CCSF LUG's then-president against a
LUG-fatal error and been ignored.  Oh bloody well, I guess.  ;->

But, anyway, I keep trying to pass along what I perceive to be hard-won
wisdom from LUGs all over the world.  Sometimes, LUG leaders take heed;
other times not.  FWIW, I perceive the trend to be rather like the old
IT joke:

Patient:  'Doctor, doctor, it _hurts_ when I do this!'
Doctor:   "well, Don't Do That, Then.'

A weekly meeting schedule, for example, strikes me as an accident
waiting to happen.  But you be the judge.   


[someone after Jan 2016 tried to re-establish the Noisebridge group thing:]

> Apparently no one did and after a few weeks seemed to feel like he got
> a less than friendly reception from the NoiseBridge folk. Eventually
> he stopped posting about the meeting and up until this thread, was the
> last I'd heard about it.

If you think for a while about the politics of publicly exposed
hackerspaces, it will becomes utterly unsurprising that the gatekeepers
tend, over time, to become a bit hardcore about perceived
possible-interlopers.

Hackerspaces must contend with, among other things. (1) people who will
'liberate' anything not nailed down (if permitted to do so), (2) people
sleeping there nightly because they can, and nobody has yet gently
kicked them out, (3) people continually defecating in the stairwells(!),
and (4) other dumbfsckery I can't even remember.  But don't take my word
for it; browse through the noisebridge-discuss (IIRC) mailing list
archives, and see the (doubtlessly toned-down) insider sniping about
that and more.  You'll be amazed.

The reality is:  Entitlement to use a hackerspace _will_ continually be
challenged and questioned.  If you're not prepared to deal with that
challenge, then someone else will end up with your time/space
allotment, and you-plural will be given the bum's rush.  Cope or lose.


[CCSF LUG:]

> Which is a shame. 

It's been years, but it still hurts.  I really, really hate being
correct in these matters.  Nothing would have made me happier than for
weekly meetings to have been a huge success.  But, sadly, no.

It may be that the CCSF LUG mailing list still exists even though the
LUG is long dead.  Check BALE, and see whether any link for that still
resolves and still connects to a working Mailman instance..