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

[jim]

     From about 2007 to 2010, give or take
a year, I hosted a Linux study group,
two afternoons a week, at Noisebridge.

     The Noisebridge weekly Monday evening
Python class originally began as an SF-LUG
weekly Python tutoring class, first at
various coffee places, then at Noisebridge's
first physical location, finally in the
Church classroom ln the current Noisebridge
space. I went a few weeks ago and joined
fourteen others.

     The once-a-week evening meetings at
Noisebridge lasted for over a year, maybe
two years, hosted by Joseph Puig in the
last year or so. Most of the times there
were zero attendees other than Joseph.
     The real crimes may be lack of
communication and certainly neglect.
     Joseph eventually discontinued hosting
the meeting (a reasonable choice--he'd
hosted the empty meeting for many months
and should have quit sooner. I am not sure
if he let me know "officially" that he'd
quit.
     Certainly I'd discovered at some point
that no one was hosting the weekly NB SF-LUG
group meeting. I have not updated the SF-LUG
web page for several years; I just let it
drop out of my mind.
     It's entirely my fault, and, to repeat,
the problem is strictly my not updating the
SF-LUG web page.




On 5/23/19 4:14 AM, Rick Moen wrote:
> 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..
>
>
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