[Libreplanet-us-wa] Free Geek Seattle- yea or nay?

[Andrew Kane]

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Free Geek Seattle has reached something of a crisis point. It's an
opportunity for anyone who is interested to help shape and build the
type of organization we'd like to see in Seattle.

The crisis comes because of a chronic lack of participation and
interest in Free Geek Seattle as it's existed for the last few years.
People come and go, but almost no one is sufficiently excited about
FGSEA to take time away from other things to be involved with it. This
has led to a situation where a small handful of volunteers have kept
the group limping along for the last little while, and so many members
of the Board of Directors have left that we can't get a quorum nor
maintain the group's structure or legal status.

In order for this to change, the group (or any potential replacement)
must become more attractive to potential volunteers. I've thought
about it, and the sort of volunteers I wish to attract to a group of
which I'd want to be part are people who are passionate about Free
Software, are already involved in local GNU/Linux/etc-related
organizations, and who want to help out local communities while
perpetrating various fun hacks in software and hardware. That's why
I'm cross-posting like a big idiot, and I promise I won't keep it up.

As it stands now, we don't have enough people involved to keep going.
Not all of us who are currently involved even *want* to keep going
with a group of this type. We're having a Saturday workshop this week
as usual, and some of us plan to talk about how we intend to move
forward at this workshop. I can't be there in person, but I'm planning
to attend via IRC. I invite everyone who reads this to join in- come
to the Center if you can, and meet some of the people with whom I've
been privileged to work in the context of Free Geek Seattle; or join
us on IRC during the workshop (or at any time.) The relevant details
follow:

Saturday workshop:
3PM - 6PM
Filipino Community Center
5740 Martin Luther King Jr. Way S
Seattle, WA 98118
206-722-9372
https://freegeekseattle.org/wiki/2015-05-09_FCS_Workshop

IRC:  #freegeek-sea on freenode.net
https://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#freegeek-sea

I'll briefly detail here what I plan to bring up at this meeting.
Among those who have volunteered with FGSEA over the years, there's
been some diversity of opinions and priorities. Some people care about
FLOSS more than others; some are focused on education, some on
recycling, some on other stuff, and so on. For those who just want to
recycle and reuse old hardware, there are at least two other
organizations: InterConnection and the NW Techology Alliance (that's
from memory and the latter is probably the wrong name, but I'm sure
they are out there somewhere.) There are also for-profit companies
that do it. That space is pretty well filled.
Meanwhile, in order to use the name "Free Geek", we have to meet
certain conditions set by the owner of that name:
http://wiki.freegeek.org/index.php?title=How_to_Start_a_Free_Geek
As far as we can tell, Free Geek (the original in Portland) is willing
to let others use the name as long as they abide by certain rules.

The problem is, the information on their wiki is out-of-date, and they
are in the process of moving all their information into Google Docs
(last I heard- I quit trying to keep track after I heard that.) We
don't have any way of knowing if Free Geek will continue to let others
use the name in the future.

For this reason and others, I will propose that we dissolve the Free
Geek Seattle organization and eventually re-form under a different
name. If enough people participate in the discussion about what this
new group should be, then hopefully we can shape something that will
be sufficiently attractive to volunteers that we can get some neat
things done.

I have some ideas about how I'd like such a organization to look.
I'm very invested in Free Software (without it I would have no use for
computers), and while I'm willing to work with proprietary code I'm
not willing to do it for free and I don't recommend it to others.
I'm interested in reusing old stuff, and, to a lesser extent,
recycling it. I'm interested in new ideas for old equipment: turning
old Windows boxes into old Linux boxes is fun, but we can do a lot more.
I'm interested in non-hierarchical social organization and radical
openness. (At the same time I'm a bit of a security wonk. Go figure.)
I could go into much more detail on these things but this email is
already too long. If any of you reading this is interested in any of
these things, I hope that you will consider joining us as we decide
where to go next, and I hope we can help you get where you want to go.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope to hear from
some of you Saturday and after that.
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