The author shows a tendency to give colorful, but opaque names like "gutterballing" to things that can themselves be explained in a short phrase ("working on something that is similar to, but not exactly what you actually want, and getting predictably frustrated").
Where does this tendency come from? My first guess is self-help literature. Or maybe this is a personality trait to write this way? Or a kind of marketing, becasue only your writing has these colorful fun terms?
I was once watching an old school survivalist talk about Native American/First Peoples legends.
These legends often had a bumbling main character who would usually cause some kind of problem b/c he forgot to do the key thing required for survival. For example, he would pick wet wood that wouldn't work for making a fire etc while his smart friend would pick the dry wood or the wood with lots of oil in it. Let's say bumbling dude is name "Chintatook" (made up name).
Now, when someone is starting to do the wrong thing or not think things through, you can say "Hey, don't be a Chintatook!" and everyone knows what you are talking about.
> That's why having goofy names for them matters so much, because it reminds me not to believe the biggest bog lie of all: that I'm stuck in a situation unlike any I, or anyone else, has ever seen before.
Toward the bottom of the article in case you didn't get that far.
“That's why having goofy names for them matters so much, because it reminds me not to believe the biggest bog lie of all: that I'm stuck in a situation unlike any I, or anyone else, has ever seen before.”
This is backwards. You have the privilege of curating who's not there, by not inviting them. The fascinating people you do invite aren't obligated to show up.
Respectfully disagree. COVID and WFH really was a brick wall to Meetup's momentum.
WeWork bought Meetup because tons of tech Meetups used WeWork spaces to host events.
This acquisition made a lot of sense, IMO. Many companies at the time were much more employee-friendly than now and liked having their employees (who mostly worked in the office) host cool events with free food. Nearly everyone was already downtown, free pizza is free pizza, and talking about Ruby or DevOps or whatever sure as shit beat traffic. This was especially true for startups, which were in WeWork offices.
COVID lockdowns were a huge collective wet blanket atop all of that for obvious reasons.
Moreover, everyone working from home added huge inertia to what was previously a very natural chain of events. Driving downtown for events (and dealing with traffic) was/is a huge commitment, free pizza or not (which isn't really free anymore after you account for gas). Those events being in worse spaces (since event space got harder to find) didn't help.
All of this affected social Meetups too, albeit less so. You used to be able to build a calendar of the Meetups you wanted to hit in a day. If you were already at NY Tech Meetup for something, hitting up a social meetup afterwards was easy.
You've got gentlemen's clubs of the kind that Phileas Fogg from "Around the World in 80 Days" belonged to. They were leisure spaces where the rich could socialize with each other, dine from a wider menu than their own domestic staff could offer, access a bigger reading library, and organize group activities like automotive clubs and regattas.
Then you've got private societies like the Freemasons and the Rotary Club, which were usually segregated by gender and race, had a religious component, and offered services like mutual aid and insurance.
A different take: joining one of these spaces (in the bay area) has exposed me to a weird and unpleasant underbelly of society that I barely knew existed. It's like the worst of Reddit, but in real life. People who want you to work on their projects "for the exposure," crypto scammers and people who are very naive and enthusiastic about crypto, depressed unemployable people, people who secretly live on the lobby couches, elderly people just watching videos all day, get-rich-quick people, people who are always "starting to learn" for years at a time, it's quite an array.
Maker spaces declined over time. When I first started going to TechShop, it was people making nozzles for X-Prize rockets, Stanford grad students who needed better machine tools, Burning Man people making props, steampunks making props, and very serious model railroaders making model locomotives. Four milling machines in use all the time, CNC mills, plasma cutters, water jet cutters - heavy equipment. All the usual woodworking stuff.
A paint shop with proper ventilation.
Autodesk Inventor on all the computers. Lots of very smart people with interesting skill sets. The serious maker spaces were descended from the Center for Bits and Atoms at MIT.[1]
By the time the maker movement collapsed, it was people grinding out crap to sell on Etsy, "hand made" on a CNC laser cutter. High school students doing the maker thing to get it on their college resume. Printing trinkets with a 3D printer. Classes for teenagers where everybody built kits. Arts and crafts at the advanced kindergarten paper folding level.
Yup, your second paragraph describes the place I'm talking about pretty accurately. Nothing wrong with Etsy trinkets in isolation, but not if that's the limit of what the tools are used for.
I've had the urge/idea to start a maker space in the Los Angeles area on and off for years. My motivation isn't as much as a source for social engagement as much as starting to lay out a path to retirement that will have me busy at a lower level of intensity. My work does have me engaging with thousands of people every year through trade shows and sometimes a dozen trips every year both nationally and internationally.
I own enough equipment to start a very nice maker space with nearly zero cost to outfit the place. What you and the other poster have said is, however, of concern. Have generalized maker spaces died off or turned into something unappealing?
I've had varying ideas about this over the years. I was a mentor for our local FRC (high school robotics) team for about five years. I enjoyed that very much. Yes, my kids were involved. I tried to re-enter that world and was faced with, well, stupid obstacles that very much telegraphed that, at least here, these teams have turned into unappealing political/ideological nightmares --rather than the "let's build cool robots!" feeling from the pre-pandemic era.
One thought was to create a maker space with specific focal activities. Three that come to mind are robotics, auto racing and RC flight. I wonder if that type of focus might mitigate the Etsy crowd effect you mentioned. I have nearly zero interest in having a bunch of people use my Haas CNC machines to mass produce crap for Etsy. One way to mitigate this might be to attach a cost to using the equipment for making anything to sell anywhere. For example, using a Haas VF-2 might cost $200 per hour plus consumables, etc. Not sure if that would work. You could also limit this sort of production-level work to a certain schedule and, maybe, it can only be done by or with staff. Not sure.
The business problem with maker spaces is that the "gym model" didn't work. The gym model is that you pay some fixed fee per month, and don't come very often.
People who bought TechShop memberships showed up too much. Many were using the place as their day job.
There are some successes. Maker Nexus in Silicon Valley pivoted to after-school activities for teens. Humanmade in San Francisco is mostly a job training center, and gets some government funding. There are some library-based maker spaces, but they're mostly basic 3D printing and crafts.
There's also pricing. Techshop started at $100/month and rose to $125 before they went bust. Humanmade is at $250. That's too high for casual users. If you raise the price too much, you mostly have customers who are there all the time, and now you don't have enough capacity.
The financial numbers just didn't work out. Most of the remaining maker spaces have some degree of public financing, as part of a college or work training center.
Yeah, that makes sense. I wonder if a more transactional model might work better.
Perhaps something like FedEx Office (formerly Kinkos). No membership. You go in and you pay to use equipment and resources. Of course, there would have to be levels of qualification someone would have to pass before being allowed to touch certain equipment. I suppose you could have classes (Solidworks, 3D printing, CNC machining, welding, etc.).
Writing that, at some level, it starts to feel complex. I say this in the context of my stated objective, which would be to stay busy at a low stress level after retirement. I am not sure that what I just described fits that model.
There's also a reality most don't want to think about. While, for the most part, dealing with the public is fun and interesting, there's always a very small percentage of people who behave badly. It's the old Tragedy of the Commons story. That's the part that none of us enjoy at all.
Noisebridge was a free, open maker space in San Francisco, and they had too many people just hanging out there. Twice, they had to shut down for over a month, clean out all the crap, and start over. The maker spaces that charge don't have that problem.
At TechShop, the big operational problems were tool deterioration and staff burnout. Tools tended to stabilize at the point where they're just above worn out. The drill bits and milling cutters were dull. The sandpaper on the belt sanders was worn almost smooth. The CNC mill needed a coolant change. The laser cutters had laser systems performing at about 50% of rated power, and you had to halve the feed rate. In a commercial shop, you'd fix things before they got that bad, because you're losing production. The same business logic does not apply to maker spaces.
The staff problem with TechShop was that they paid slightly above minimum wage, which is nowhere near enough to keep people with a broad range of shop skills. The big employee benefit was that you could take classes for free, so it was sort of an apprenticeship program.
Over time, the staff tended to become the ones who couldn't get a job in a real shop.
Those are some of the operational problems you have to beat.
Yeah, this is why I never moved on this idea. There's a lot of potential for it to derail into something that isn't pleasant at all (or self-sustaining/profitable).
This has absolutely never worked for me in cafes, not in decades of trying across multiple states. Cafe regulars either bring their own company or "laptops open, headphones on, heads down."
Amusingly, the rec league pinball people are absolutely ferocious about promotion. Pretty much every thread in r/bayarea about looking for friends gets a pitch from a pinball person.
Yeah I don't think bumping into random people in public places is a great strategy. It's not a social situation, and it's a complete crapshoot.
I think the best thing is to have a hobby or interest that has a local place where you can find other people that like it. Music is a good one, go to some shows by yourself and talk to people. Or tennis courts, a makerspace, some kind of special event, etc. You will already have something in common and something to talk about with the people there.
Coffee shops are definitely tougher than bars. I've made friends with baristas in one of three ways: The shop wasn't busy and they had time to chat (these shops don't usually last long), I recognize them outside of the coffee shop and get to say hello, or I worked at the coffee shop with them.
I wonder if Yemeni cafes would be a bit more bar-like in terms of socializing. They're usually open until midnight or later, but I think it'll be a while before they come to where I am in Iowa.
As for the pinball evangelism: I think it's because pinball is a great shortcut for making friends for introverts. The level of structure, competition, socialization, and just about everything else about it can be dialed in to each individual's liking.
I'm surprised Yemeni cafes have already built a reputation. We have several in the area, and they are indeed open very late, although they attract a customer base that seems less open to interacting with strangers.
This suggestion is common to the point of banality, but it really does benefit hugely from having "a mailing list of several dozen friends and acquaintances" to bootstrap it.
I've been trying something very similar to the author's approach for three years now: a casual tech meetup. My results are way worse despite putting hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars into the endeavor.
The people you attract might themselves have no local friends. That's why they're showing up to your meetup! But it also means that they won't help to expand it.
The people you attract might not be alcohol-drinkers. A lot of people who suggest organizing casual meetups usually have a pub in mind as the venue. Bringing 12-15 people to a restaurant takes a lot more planning. Getting 12-15 people to agree on a restaurant that meets their diet and budget needs is, well...
You might attract people who are much younger or much older than you. The average author of this kind of article is 36. Do they like the company of people who are within ±20 years of age from them? And do those people like each other's company?
Long story short, you might end up like me, having invested years of your life and a surprising amount of money, to make 3 casual acquaintances who you're sort-of-but-not-super-friendly with.
Advice may not be what you are seeking, but a few things jumped out to me:
Pouring thousands of dollars into a casual meetup, even over the years, tells me of it being less casual than what is described in the OP.
I have never had more success trying to cater to different diets, budgets, asking for opinions on restaurants. Organizing a club needs, at least at first, a near totalitarian approach. _You_ pick a nice place, hopefully decently affordable, assume e.g. that everyone will drink and if not the club soda or coke will have to do.
Eventually, the group self-optimizes for the sweet spot in things such as age gap between its members. The ones who don't like the types of places you pick, the tone of the meeting, demography, etc. will drop over time.
A $10 pizza from Costco a hundred times is a thousand dollars. Coworking space fees for a couple of years is a sum of money. Meetup organizer fees add up.
Tell me when they stop hiring 80% of their devs from the same 5 top CS schools.
Not "FDEs," not solution architects, not SREs, not BD/"Echos," not tech support. I get that it's a consulting org with a "boots on the ground" mentality. Tell me where their devs come from
Where does this tendency come from? My first guess is self-help literature. Or maybe this is a personality trait to write this way? Or a kind of marketing, becasue only your writing has these colorful fun terms?
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