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

[Todd Hawley]

On Thu, May 23, 2019 at 1:21 AM Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> 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.  ;->
>

I know the area and if memory serves me correctly, it's certainly NOT a bad
area
(unincorporated Menlo Park is still Menlo Park after all) but certainly a
rather
LONG drive to and from SF. Not to mention trying to find parking.

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.  ;->
>

Oy! That must have been and still is incredibly frustrating! <sigh>

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

It does seem incredibly ambitious and only to be tried by those who have
lots of
spare time on their hands. Even a monthly meeting can use up a lot of
time and energy.

>
> [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.
>

Oh by no means was I criticizing the NoiseBridge folk's attitude! I was
merely repeating what I saw posted. Of course they have every right to
be suspicious. And btw the few times I've been there, I've always been
treated politely by the folk there. When I saw the poster's comments, I
was tempted to post a reply and ask if they had brought along maybe a pizza
or two for the folk there to consume or dropped a few dollars in their "tip
jar."
Perhaps they did, I have no idea.

One thing I do remember about the space. On one of the walls in the men's
restroom
was an absolutely brilliant explanation (complete with diagrams) of the
proper angle to whizz into the toilet. Clearly someone there got very
annoyed with folk missing the toilet while attempting to pee. Sadly, it was
taken down sometime later.

> 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.
>

I can well imagine. Again it sounds like the CCSF LUG President was
being overly ambitious. Anyway, thing is the NB group clearly has been dead
a
long time and thanks to your comments, mine and one or two others, the line
on the SFLUG web page about it is finally gone and that's a good thing.

-th
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