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Thinkers and Drinkers

literaryreview.co.uk

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Re: Thinkers and Drinkers

#21

Post by TeMPOraL »

scottlocklin wrote: post #13
bluejellybean wrote: post #2

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?…

Join an old social club: you can use antique physical and cultural resources to jump start things like this. I did it; it works. 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.

> 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.

Re: Thinkers and Drinkers

#22

Post by vikiomega9 »

sbilstein wrote: post #20
bluejellybean wrote: post #2

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?…

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 e…

At the risk of sounding super weird and creepy this sounds like a fun group and I love pizza, mind if I showed up?

Re: Thinkers and Drinkers

#23

Post by arcticbull »

deepnet wrote: post #19
arcticbull wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, we’ll said. I’ve been thinking of teaching some beginner electronics classes there.

Re: Thinkers and Drinkers

#24

Post by krageon »

neilv wrote: post #16
krageon wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was looking into local hackerspaces the other day, and was surprised to see that one of the best-looking ones communicates this concern about "Presence": https://wiki.artisansasylum.com/index.php/Membership_Agreeme...

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.

Re: Thinkers and Drinkers

#25

Post by mkane848 »

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.

Re: Thinkers and Drinkers

#26

Post by heavenlyblue »

debatem1 wrote: post #11
bluejellybean wrote: post #2

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?…

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 li…

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.

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