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

[Mike Dierken]

Thank you for this write up. I can't be there today, was planning on being at 
Third Place Books on Monday.
I'm interested in supporting the organization under any name in any way I can. 
I'm interested in software education for than hardware but do have a line on 
hardware to donate (5-6 year old desktops).






> On May 8, 2015, at 11:07 PM, Andrew Kane <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
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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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