I've recently moved back to Ann Arbor and one of the goals I set was to create some type of social club that is in a similar vein as the one described in this article. Essentially I hope to create a chill 'third-spot' for the mingling of smart minds from different disciplines and age groups. Somewhere to openly argue or perhaps share the wealth of their obtained knowledge. Has anyone on HN attempted anything similar? Any advice on what worked well and what failed?
> Has anyone on HN attempted anything similar? Any advice on what worked well and what failed?
I used to be on the board of a local Hackerspace for couple of years. Hackerspaces are sort-of similar places, they encourage a lot of smart people to get together and tinker with stuff. However, in context of interdisciplinary exchange, due to the technology and community focus, there's way too many programmers and way too little beer involved.
The main downside of the Hackerspace is the tragedy-of-the-commons aspect. Lots of tools and toys just asking to be lost or broken. Tends to create lots of rules and dampen the social atmosphere a bit.
Maybe buy-your-own-tools hackerspaces are the way forward. This would also generate revenue and presumably facilitate the mushrooming of new hackerspaces.
Noisebridge seems to do a decent job of keeping tools available and impressing on people that it's not their stuff. I'm constantly surprised by the quality and functionality of what they have.
Keeping tools highly available and having 'elders' ensuring they are used well and respected was my observation.
Noisebridge are true believers in the democratisation of tools - they have workshops and collaborations have at every level of expertise - it is an awesome social good.
Guests were thankful for the knowledge gained and things mostly worked out.
This heavily depends on your audience and where you are located. In my experience it has always been mostly to get people to be present consistently: Without constant effort a lot of the regulars can occasionally just drop away for a few weeks and if you don't have a huge amount of people that will dampen the social aspect a lot.
Sadly this sort of thing wouldn't work where I am, it's almost entirely a list of veiled threats and those are not generally abided culturally. The hacker community is if anything even worse at it.
If it does work I imagine this is one way to solve the problem.
I'm not a Mason but I always assumed this is what Freemasons are about (rather, the lodge setting and a deep/understood openness between brothers - "builders" from all walks of life). I'm probably completely wrong (never inquired, but have known plenty!) so take that with a boulder of salt
It looks like the group described was fairly exclusive: members were voted in. That probably contributed a lot to making sure that the community was reflective of the best qualities of the members.
That's an admirable goal. No idea about Ann Arbor but I suppose the first step in herding cats is finding or attracting them. Figure out what they want (other cats, fun toys, bonus lives) or where they live and maybe go pillage the local hackerspace/academic/arts crowds for characters. Intellectual social clubs like botanical, aeronautical, mushrooms and so forth can also turn up interesting types.
The key seems to be the same with these as everywhere else: you have to recruit and hold onto smart people, and be able to tell actually smart ones from people who love to talk.
In the setting described here, joining such clubs conferred considerable status and status was a desirable commodity. That made both attracting and retaining people who by and large had a lot to do much easier. On the other hand, it sounds like they struggled to keep the talkers from talking.
Today I think the situation is reversed. You have essentially no way to generate anything valuable for your members outside of the direct value they get from the club, which is necessarily inversely proportional to their contribution to it. And because specialist knowledge is so much more valuable now, your focus probably has to be on keeping the people who don't want to talk talking rather than shutting up those who would talk to an empty room.
The closest I can name to something like this is toastmasters, which has an aspect of self-improvement that seems to keep it going, or the Rotary Club which provides business connections. Neither (AFAIK) is in a growth period.
You’d think that a highly educated benevolent dictator could solve the problem of picking the right people for the club.
They must be aiming for the discourse, rather than their own power though - so that they could pick people hated by themselves or the other members of the club, if those people are bringing something new to the table.
> Hackerspaces are wrong -those are educational institutions, not "getting things done" institutions for grownups.
Depends. There's a lot of organizational dissociative identity disorder happening in HSes I know (including ours). On the one hand, people would absolutely like to "get things done". On the other hand, educational outreach is what brings in new people and funding, so it can become the main focus simply out of necessity.
I invited a collection of friends, not all of them knew each other, to meet every couple of weeks at a mediocre pizza shop in SF and discuss machine learning papers and articles. Some are PhD level experts, some are newbies, founders, all are engineers in industry or academia.
The group has devolved (or evolved) into lots of discussions of ethics in machine learning, online ads, etc. The last two sessions have been entirely centered around philosophy papers.
We've strayed a bit from math but it's a good group to learn with.
I think the choice of a shitty pizza shop is key. It's not popular so we always have room for the whole group of 9, we don't get distracted with exciting food options or drinking a lot. The only thing I don't like is that it's an all male group but hopefully that will change.
Sometimes you need to step outside yourself and let your guard down on your normal routine to see things more clearly.
Humans and sedation have always been a part of one another, it can lead to realizations. A good place or group of friends/debaters can help understanding, analysis and lead to quality of life improvements.
Sometimes you need to take the scenic route and just take it in to see things from a new perspective more open than closed.
Scenic route is definitely enjoyed especially in todays society. Even better if you are a little bit fucked up on drugs and traveling safely (train, passenger etc).
I'm lucky to be a part of something like this. I get together every Tuesday with a group for a whiskey tasting. We talk about the drink of course, but we also end up talking about politics, social issues, day to day nonsense, etc.
I'm significantly more left leaning that anyone else in the group, and most of them are also 30 years older than me, with the other two still being a few years my senior.
We bicker a lot, but it's gotten me to see things from a ton of different perspectives. And even if we don't agree, it gives me a chance to better argue against those points later or at least better understand why someone might think that way.
Obviously I don't think we're the brightest minds in town or anything like that, but I think there's something to be said about this sort of social gathering. It's almost like sparring with people I just disagree with but (mostly) like so that I'm better equipped against the real thing.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 37.8 ms ] threadI used to be on the board of a local Hackerspace for couple of years. Hackerspaces are sort-of similar places, they encourage a lot of smart people to get together and tinker with stuff. However, in context of interdisciplinary exchange, due to the technology and community focus, there's way too many programmers and way too little beer involved.
Noisebridge are true believers in the democratisation of tools - they have workshops and collaborations have at every level of expertise - it is an awesome social good.
Guests were thankful for the knowledge gained and things mostly worked out.
If it does work I imagine this is one way to solve the problem.
In the setting described here, joining such clubs conferred considerable status and status was a desirable commodity. That made both attracting and retaining people who by and large had a lot to do much easier. On the other hand, it sounds like they struggled to keep the talkers from talking.
Today I think the situation is reversed. You have essentially no way to generate anything valuable for your members outside of the direct value they get from the club, which is necessarily inversely proportional to their contribution to it. And because specialist knowledge is so much more valuable now, your focus probably has to be on keeping the people who don't want to talk talking rather than shutting up those who would talk to an empty room.
The closest I can name to something like this is toastmasters, which has an aspect of self-improvement that seems to keep it going, or the Rotary Club which provides business connections. Neither (AFAIK) is in a growth period.
They must be aiming for the discourse, rather than their own power though - so that they could pick people hated by themselves or the other members of the club, if those people are bringing something new to the table.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gentlemen%27s_clubs_in...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Clubs_and_societies_i...
Hackerspaces are wrong -those are educational institutions, not "getting things done" institutions for grownups.
Depends. There's a lot of organizational dissociative identity disorder happening in HSes I know (including ours). On the one hand, people would absolutely like to "get things done". On the other hand, educational outreach is what brings in new people and funding, so it can become the main focus simply out of necessity.
The group has devolved (or evolved) into lots of discussions of ethics in machine learning, online ads, etc. The last two sessions have been entirely centered around philosophy papers.
We've strayed a bit from math but it's a good group to learn with.
I think the choice of a shitty pizza shop is key. It's not popular so we always have room for the whole group of 9, we don't get distracted with exciting food options or drinking a lot. The only thing I don't like is that it's an all male group but hopefully that will change.
Sometimes you need to step outside yourself and let your guard down on your normal routine to see things more clearly.
Humans and sedation have always been a part of one another, it can lead to realizations. A good place or group of friends/debaters can help understanding, analysis and lead to quality of life improvements.
Sometimes you need to take the scenic route and just take it in to see things from a new perspective more open than closed.
I'm significantly more left leaning that anyone else in the group, and most of them are also 30 years older than me, with the other two still being a few years my senior.
We bicker a lot, but it's gotten me to see things from a ton of different perspectives. And even if we don't agree, it gives me a chance to better argue against those points later or at least better understand why someone might think that way.
Obviously I don't think we're the brightest minds in town or anything like that, but I think there's something to be said about this sort of social gathering. It's almost like sparring with people I just disagree with but (mostly) like so that I'm better equipped against the real thing.