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June 13-14 LGBTQA Rails Workshop (in SF) #12

Closed rachelmyers closed 10 years ago

rachelmyers commented 10 years ago

This workshop will focus on outreach to the LGBTQA community! :zap:

From the RailsBridge side, it's being spearheaded by @zspencer and @josephclaymiller. (Let me know if another organizer or mentor would be helpful, or if you have it on :lock:.)

More details will be forthcoming. For now, the simple checklist is:

:flags:

ultrasaurus commented 10 years ago

This will be the 5th anniversary of RailsBridge. I'll co-organize!

rachelmyers commented 10 years ago

Oh! Do you think we could try to have it at the same location of the workshop 5 years ago?!

ohminimarie commented 10 years ago

@ultrasaurus That is super cool! Nice to virtually meet you - I'm just starting to volunteer to help organize and would love to learn from a pro like you and help co-organize!

ultrasaurus commented 10 years ago

@ohminimarie that would be great! Can we chat on the phone or google hangout? email: sarah@ultrasaurus.com

rachelmyers commented 10 years ago

Gentle bump to make sure we're getting everyone we need for this workshop. It looks like we have two organizers for this, @ultrasaurus and @ohminimarie. Let me know if that's wrong and we can invite another organizer. And cc @jackdanger, who may be able to volunteer space and sponsorship for this workshop??

ultrasaurus commented 10 years ago

We're going to bump the BIG celebration to August.. need more lead time! @jackdanger intro'd me to someone for that and I will follow up. Will look into diff venue for June.

zspencer commented 10 years ago

@ultrasaurus / @rachelmyers I was talking with @josephclaymiller about putting together an LGBTQA focused railsbridge event in June. Would this collide with that or?

ultrasaurus commented 10 years ago

I'd be excited to team up. I would LOVE to help with an LGBTQA focused outreach!

ultrasaurus commented 10 years ago

Orange who hosted the very first workshop is doing weekend events any more, so we need a diff venue for June.

rachelmyers commented 10 years ago

@zspencer, One thing we could do is change this event to be the LGBTQA event. :fireworks: (I'll edit the content in the first post to reflect what's actually being planned; feel free to edit it as well so it stays up to date.)

@ultrasaurus, Awesome! I'll create a separate issue to plan for the August workshop: https://github.com/railsbridge/organizing/issues/20 :dolphin:

zspencer commented 10 years ago

I have interest from both DevBootcamp and Optimizely to host.

sidhene commented 10 years ago

We could in theory use both. I'm worried about accommodating everyone. We already fill up our workshops every time, and there's a lot of LWT members who are interested.

rachelmyers commented 10 years ago

Just to make sure I understand, this is specifically a workshop for the LGBTQA community and people outside that community can wait until the next workshop, right??

zspencer commented 10 years ago

This space is speciifcally for LGBTQA community members. Non LGBTQA individuals can attend as a guest of an LGBTQA community member; similar to how men can be guests of women at traditional railsbridges

rachelmyers commented 10 years ago

Cool! So maybe "we already fill up our workshops every time" is less of a concern here, because most of those people can't come this time?? And if there's a lot of interest we can always set a reasonable RSVP limit but repeat this workshop more often.

It sounds (to me) like it makes sense to push forward with this event with just one venue. Maybe could ask the alternate venue to host host the other July workshop, which is still setting a date and coming together.

zspencer commented 10 years ago

Dev Bootcamp has offered to host. I believe it can host 70 comfortably; but I'll be heading over there tomorrow to see how the office is laid out before putting it out.

sidhene commented 10 years ago

Great. Thanks Zee.

On Thu, May 1, 2014 at 11:58 AM, Zee notifications@github.com wrote:

Dev Bootcamp has offered to host. I believe it can host 70 comfortably; but I'll be heading over there tomorrow to see how the office is laid out before putting it out.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/railsbridge/organizing/issues/12#issuecomment-41943928 .

alexch commented 10 years ago

Any idea when this will be yet? My June travel plans are getting crowded and I'd love to attend this workshop.

sidhene commented 10 years ago

Yes. June 13/14.

On Thu, May 8, 2014 at 6:18 AM, Alex Chaffee notifications@github.comwrote:

Any idea when this will be yet? My June travel plans are getting crowded and I'd love to attend this workshop.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/railsbridge/organizing/issues/12#issuecomment-42548331 .

sidhene commented 10 years ago

FYI, I'm recruiting teachers and students, but I haven't posted to Bridgetroll or Meetup because the community is used to filling up the workshop as soon as its posted, and that will leave no room for the queers :) So I'm planning to collect a list of people who want to come and then let them know as soon as it opens

@zspencer - did you confirm with DevBootcamp? Is this something maybe I should be doing? I can visit them this coming week if that will help.

sidhene commented 10 years ago

confirmed with Zee yesterday in person that DevBootcamp is onboard. So we have a venue.

Also, the signup sheet that we're using to let people indicate interest is here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1YghT9wjUjm3vK067NugD0Bi7OxuL6wXidEM90g3WgQs/viewform

rachelmyers commented 10 years ago

I want to push back on not adding the event to Bridge Troll. It seems okay (to me) to say "This is for the LGBTQA community"; the vast majority of people respect those rules we set. And having people register on Bridge Troll means they answer questions about their experience, are automatically sorted by experience level, and that it's easy to send them feedback surveys. At this point it seems hard to do a workshop without Bridge Troll.

On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 10:59 AM, sidhene notifications@github.com wrote:

confirmed with Zee yesterday in person that DevBootcamp is onboard. So we have a venue.

Also, the signup sheet that we're using to let people indicate interest is here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1YghT9wjUjm3vK067NugD0Bi7OxuL6wXidEM90g3WgQs/viewform

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/railsbridge/organizing/issues/12#issuecomment-43360888 .

sidhene commented 10 years ago

If we do that, most of the members of lesbians who tech (who have not heard of this yet) will not be able to come. I want them to at least have heard about it and had the opportunity to sign up before we open registration. Otherwise we may experience a backlash of disappointed would-be students who hear about the workshop only after it has filled.

On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 11:55 AM, Rachel Myers notifications@github.comwrote:

I want to push back on not adding the event to Bridge Troll. It seems okay (to me) to say "This is for the LGBTQA community"; the vast majority of people respect those rules we set. And having people register on Bridge Troll means they answer questions about their experience, are automatically sorted by experience level, and that it's easy to send them feedback surveys. At this point it seems hard to do a workshop without Bridge Troll.

On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 10:59 AM, sidhene notifications@github.com wrote:

confirmed with Zee yesterday in person that DevBootcamp is onboard. So we have a venue.

Also, the signup sheet that we're using to let people indicate interest is here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1YghT9wjUjm3vK067NugD0Bi7OxuL6wXidEM90g3WgQs/viewform

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub< https://github.com/railsbridge/organizing/issues/12#issuecomment-43360888>

.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/railsbridge/organizing/issues/12#issuecomment-43366996 .

zspencer commented 10 years ago

Perhaps some phrasing such as:

This event is targeting the LGBTQA community. This means that if you are a woman who does not identify as an LGBTQA individual; you may only attend as a guest of someone who does. This is similar to our policy towards men at women-focused railsbridge events.

This is for several reasons:

  1. LGBTQA people have additional risk by appearing in a semi-public space. By restricting to LGBTQA individuals and their highly trusted, explicitly invited friends it increases the safety and comfort of LGBTQA people.
  2. LGBTQA people are underserved in the tech community. While there are several of large, well known diversity initiatives for women (women who code, girl develop it, etc.) initiatives focused on technical education for LGBTQA people are few and far between.
  3. ???

TL/DR: This event is for people who identify as LGBTQA. Please do not register to attend if you do not or are not explicitly invited by someone who does.

Thoughts?

On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 12:10 PM, sidhene notifications@github.com wrote:

If we do that, most of the members of lesbians who tech (who have not heard of this yet) will not be able to come. I want them to at least have heard about it and had the opportunity to sign up before we open registration. Otherwise we may experience a backlash of disappointed would-be students who hear about the workshop only after it has filled.

On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 11:55 AM, Rachel Myers notifications@github.comwrote:

I want to push back on not adding the event to Bridge Troll. It seems okay (to me) to say "This is for the LGBTQA community"; the vast majority of people respect those rules we set. And having people register on Bridge Troll means they answer questions about their experience, are automatically sorted by experience level, and that it's easy to send them feedback surveys. At this point it seems hard to do a workshop without Bridge Troll.

On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 10:59 AM, sidhene notifications@github.com wrote:

confirmed with Zee yesterday in person that DevBootcamp is onboard. So we have a venue.

Also, the signup sheet that we're using to let people indicate interest is here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1YghT9wjUjm3vK067NugD0Bi7OxuL6wXidEM90g3WgQs/viewform

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub<

https://github.com/railsbridge/organizing/issues/12#issuecomment-43360888>

.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub< https://github.com/railsbridge/organizing/issues/12#issuecomment-43366996>

.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/railsbridge/organizing/issues/12#issuecomment-43368478 .

sidhene commented 10 years ago

The problem remains that most of the 3k+ members of LWT have not heard of the event and will not for weeks. I do not own that list and the community messageboard (the only communique I have access to) only has about 200 people on it. Not to mention other local queer orgs that I am trying to figure out how to communicate to. It will take time to disseminate this information to the wider community.

I want to announce the workshop at the beginning of June, allowing two weeks for signup.

On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 12:35 PM, Zee notifications@github.com wrote:

Perhaps some phrasing such as:

This event is targeting the LGBTQA community. This means that if you are a woman who does not identify as an LGBTQA individual; you may only attend as a guest of someone who does. This is similar to our policy towards men at women-focused railsbridge events.

This is for several reasons:

  1. LGBTQA people have additional risk by appearing in a semi-public space. By restricting to LGBTQA individuals and their highly trusted, explicitly invited friends it increases the safety and comfort of LGBTQA people.
  2. LGBTQA people are underserved in the tech community. While there are several of large, well known diversity initiatives for women (women who code, girl develop it, etc.) initiatives focused on technical education for LGBTQA people are few and far between.
  3. ???

TL/DR: This event is for people who identify as LGBTQA. Please do not register to attend if you do not or are not explicitly invited by someone who does.

On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 12:10 PM, sidhene notifications@github.com wrote:

If we do that, most of the members of lesbians who tech (who have not heard of this yet) will not be able to come. I want them to at least have heard about it and had the opportunity to sign up before we open registration. Otherwise we may experience a backlash of disappointed would-be students who hear about the workshop only after it has filled.

On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 11:55 AM, Rachel Myers notifications@github.comwrote:

I want to push back on not adding the event to Bridge Troll. It seems okay (to me) to say "This is for the LGBTQA community"; the vast majority of people respect those rules we set. And having people register on Bridge Troll means they answer questions about their experience, are automatically sorted by experience level, and that it's easy to send them feedback surveys. At this point it seems hard to do a workshop without Bridge Troll.

On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 10:59 AM, sidhene notifications@github.com wrote:

confirmed with Zee yesterday in person that DevBootcamp is onboard. So we have a venue.

Also, the signup sheet that we're using to let people indicate interest is here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1YghT9wjUjm3vK067NugD0Bi7OxuL6wXidEM90g3WgQs/viewform

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub<

https://github.com/railsbridge/organizing/issues/12#issuecomment-43360888>

.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub<

https://github.com/railsbridge/organizing/issues/12#issuecomment-43366996>

.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub< https://github.com/railsbridge/organizing/issues/12#issuecomment-43368478>

.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/railsbridge/organizing/issues/12#issuecomment-43370878 .

zspencer commented 10 years ago

That's totally reasonable; I'm down with waiting to publish until June.

sidhene commented 10 years ago

BTW Zee - that was excellent copy, thank you :)

On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 12:57 PM, Zee notifications@github.com wrote:

That's totally reasonable; I'm down with waiting to publish until June.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/railsbridge/organizing/issues/12#issuecomment-43372974 .

missherico commented 10 years ago

Are volunteers ok if they're not LGBTQ? I am planning to participate as a teacher/ta...

sidhene commented 10 years ago

Yes, especially if they're female. The main thing I'm trying to avoid is having a classfull of lesbians and transwomen being taught by straight men(!) because that could be awkward :)

To that end, I'm reaching out to queer techie contacts individually and asking them to volunteer (I have 4 so far). But I figure we want about 50% Railsbridge veterans because most of the queer attendees will be new to Railsbridge and will need access to that collective wisdom.

On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 1:04 PM, Isa notifications@github.com wrote:

Are volunteers ok if they're not LGBTQ? I am planning to participate as a teacher/ta...

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/railsbridge/organizing/issues/12#issuecomment-43373676 .

rachelmyers commented 10 years ago

Is this workshop still looking for a venue/sponsor as the labels suggest??

zspencer commented 10 years ago

FYI, I handed this off to @sidhene because I am unable to continue coordinating it.

sidhene commented 10 years ago

Hi Rachel,

Zee is correct that I have taken charge. We do have a space sponsor, but since I have not visited and confirmed this for myself yet, I did not remove the label. Thanks for the reminder, since now that you mention it, she has not replied to my most recent email :)

sidhene commented 10 years ago

Just heard back from Keren. She thought it was June 7 and scheduled something else for that day. We need a new venue. I'll ping Pivotal Labs.

lilliealbert commented 10 years ago

I want to move a conversation that was happening in email into this forum instead. Amy set up a Google form to create a pre-Bridge Troll sign up, with the idea that we would somehow import those people into Bridge Troll. There is no such mechanism for doing this, and we must have student's OS and class level to have a valid RSVP.

Here are the options I can see:

In my experience with the first twelve months of Bridge Troll's existence, in which we did not have email announcements, a lot fewer people sign up when we don't announce it. Sign ups are waaaaaayyyyy slower. So I'd strongly advocate for option 2.

Another note:

If this is an event for LGBTQA folks, then it should be fine not to sync up perfectly with the announcement to Lesbians Who Tech. If this is a RailsBridge workshop for queer women, or a LWT RailsBridge, then it should be branded as such and NOT advertised as LGBTQA.

LGBTQA !== queer women, and having inconsistent wording on who is invited is gonna cause a lot of pain.

rachelmyers commented 10 years ago

We have custom software to make organizing workshops easier, and it makes the workshops much easier. We should use it. :confused:

We've organized several events in the past that were not targeted to women. People were cool when we said "This is an outreach event to people of color. If you're not a person of color, please only RSVP as the guest of someone who is." I'm not worried that a specific community will be unable to RSVP because all the straight women will rush to sign up before them.

FWIW, I think we should:

Potential action items:

sidhene commented 10 years ago

If Rachel is not worried queer women will be crowded out, then I am not going to worry about it either. As mentioned earlier in the thread, I planned to post this to Bridgetroll on June 5.

I think it's important to use Bridgetroll, because if the new people are not in BridgeTroll they will not learn about future Railsbridge events.

I understood the original purpose of Bridgetroll was to develop ongoing relationships between Railsbridge participants and track ongoing development of students and volunteers. Meetup was - and still is - a better event planning tool, but we did not own our data (esp participant emails) and could not track relationships over time.

I gather there's some confusion about my purpose in doing this, so let me state my main objectives here

  1. Fun. The Railsbridge workshops have always been fun for me. I had a lot of fun at the LWT Summit/Hackathon and wanted to make something like that happen again. Also, all the other LWT social events are crowded/noisy boozefests, and I was hearing from members I talked to that they really wanted quieter and more introvert-friendly ways to meet each other. They were very excited about Railsbridge when I told them.
  2. Outreach - We wanted to do queer outreach for Pride and a queer woman (who has been organizing events for queer women in the area since 1991) was available and willing to do it.
  3. Process development/Usability - According to Bridgetroll, we have had no new organizers (except for one guy, who I recruited) for the past six months. All of the work of organizing has fallen on the shoulders of a few people. That's a problem, I'm a process specialist, and by working through the process of organizing, I am trying to figure out why that's so and how to fix it.

As for the actual registrations:

I had hoped I would be able to import the registrations I have on my spreadsheet. That is why I make registrants enter their BT profile URLs. If this is not possible - either because BT cannot work that way or the people with the necessary skillset are unwilling to help me - I will email the registrants and tell them to register themselves. That is why there is a field on my form that says "I understand I will need to fill out another form later".

I'll answer any further comments on the weekend, I'm actually supposed to be with a client right now.

On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 10:31 AM, Rachel Myers notifications@github.com wrote:

We have custom software to make organizing workshops easier, and it makes the workshops much easier. We should use it. [image: :confused:]

We've organized several events in the past that were not targeted to women. People were cool when we said "This is an outreach event to people of color. If you're not a person of color, please only RSVP as the guest of someone who is." I'm not worried that a specific community will be unable to RSVP because all the straight women will rush to sign up before them.

FWIW, I think we should:

  • Market this workshop broadly if we're calling it LGBTQA.
  • Create the Bridge Troll event and point people there to RSVP.

Potential action items:

  • It looks like this workshop is two weeks away and venue-less. Should we be calling in favors and asking all our friends?
  • There are at least a few people who have been waiting for this, but still can't sign up because (I think?) it's only been targeted at one organization. Do we need to start planning a second LGBTQA event that we make available to people??

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/railsbridge/organizing/issues/12#issuecomment-44677429 .

sidhene commented 10 years ago

We have food & venue host. Tag updated.

lilliealbert commented 10 years ago

@sidhene — I'm still not sure if this is a RailsBridge workshop for LWT folks or a LGBTQA workshop. I'm not trying to say that making it one or the other is better or worse. We just have to be clear about it. If you want to organize a workshop just for queer women, awesome — let's make sure that's what we're calling it everywhere. We can work on getting another workshop scheduled for a broader group of people another time.

About process development: There are definitely problems with the overall SF workshop planning process, and I look forward to talking to you about it in the future. There's a lot of interesting information about how things ran when Rachel and I were metaorganizers and I think that context is pretty important when making process updates in SF.

About registrations: your hopes about how Bridge Troll works are unfortunately not reality, and importing is not an option. Please create the event on Bridge Troll and let me or Travis know when it's ready so we can publish it without sending the announcement email, so you can let your pre-registered people know.

(Putting in a story now to have email announcements be optional when creating an event, so that us publishing it in a different way isn't necessary.)

sidhene commented 10 years ago

Okay, this answers my question about how I was supposed to post to Bridgetroll without opening the floodgates. The event is now saved.

sidhene commented 10 years ago

UPDATE: Apparently the 'editor' fix that prevents events from going live doesn't actually prevent them from going live - it just prevents them from being announced and published on the main page.

This is PERFECT for my current needs - no one will find out about the event without the direct link, and it is relatively easy to make sure only the target audience sees that link (by only posting it in certain places). This is a great hack for future organizers.

sidhene commented 10 years ago

We're at 19 queer students, and given that there is no other June workshop, I've asked Lillie/Travis to publish the event (announcement and all) either Weds night or Thurs morning to allow seats to be taken by non-queer Railsbridge women.

I'm really pleased with what's happened so far. More later!

lilliealbert commented 10 years ago

Hey @sidhene, I think it would be a mistake to change the mission of the workshop at this point. If I signed up for a workshop for queer women, and then half of the attendees were straight because they changed the audience, I'd be super bummed.

I think announcing it to the RailsBridge community is a fine idea (there are almost certainly some awesome queer women who'd like to attend), but I really don't think that changing it to a RailsBridge for Women after the fact is a good idea.

If we don't have enough queer women to fill the space, we can do more outreach with other organizations to get the word out, right?

sidhene commented 10 years ago

It's not changing the purpose of the event by letting straight women in. Also, I think you should allow the workshop organizers to run their own events.

On Wed, Jun 11, 2014 at 8:29 AM, Lillie Chilen notifications@github.com wrote:

Hey @sidhene https://github.com/sidhene, I think it would be a mistake to change the mission of the workshop at this point. If I signed up for a workshop for queer women, and then half of the attendees were straight because they changed the audience, I'd be super bummed.

I think announcing it to the RailsBridge community is a fine idea (there are almost certainly some awesome queer women who'd like to attend), but I really don't think that changing it to a RailsBridge for Women after the fact is a good idea.

If we don't have enough queer women to fill the space, we can do more outreach with other organizations to get the word out, right?

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/railsbridge/organizing/issues/12#issuecomment-45757139 .

sidhene commented 10 years ago

I was really angry when I first read this for two reasons:

  1. Lillie is not just expressing her opinion. She controls the publishing platform and therefore whether the Railsbridge community hears about the event (and fills the empty seats) or not.
  2. As the organizer, I am the owner of the event. Aside from a few basic ground rules (students cannot be charged, childcare must be provided upon request) how it happens is up to me.
  3. My event and the relationship with Blurb is being threatened. This is the venue that hosted the event in March that went badly. I'm working with Blurb, partly in order to repair the relationship. Telling them to order food for 50 people and then being told I'm not going to be allowed to fill those seats is a threat to my reputation personally, and Railsbridge's venue relationship with Blurb institutionally.
  4. I strongly believe that minority outreach events should be headed by a member of that minority and their decisions respected. Even if (especially if) they appear screwy to the majority. Because believe me, this WILL happen. People of a different class, ethnicity, subculture, etc. by definition have different customs and values. We are not including or respecting them if we micro-manage them.

Now that I've covered why I SHOULDN'T HAVE TO get Lillie's permission, I'll address why I think making the empty seats available to non-queer women is fine:

  1. Integration - this is an outreach event. The branding, core teacher selection, and population have ensured the balance of power is decidedly queer. Mixing the new recruits with the existing population makes it likely they'll form bonds with each other and remain in the community.
  2. Nothing essential is changing. I'm not altering the branding or the target audience. Straight women (some teachers and the mentee organizers) have been included from the beginning.
  3. I'm sure the general Railsbridge population includes many queer women who have not heard about the event and will only find out once we publish this.

I'm really irritated that - given I've supposedly proven myself as trustworthy and competent - I am not being trusted to make good decisions. However, if you have strong opinions about what a queer Railsbridge event should look like, by all means feel free to organize one in August. There's the Oakland Pride event over labor day and the new Oakland chapter offering a perfect opportunity.

lilliealbert commented 10 years ago

@sidhene I offered my opinion as a leader in the RailsBridge community that you were making a mistake. I never refused to send out the announcement email. We can certainly send out the announcement email regardless of my opinion.

I misunderstood that straight women were invited from the beginning. I thought the rules were the same — people not in the target demographic had to be the guest of someone who is. My understanding is that you are opening attendance to all women, which is different.

Perhaps we should have a mediated in-person conversation so that we might be able to both work on RailsBridge despite our current interpersonal issues. We seemed to repeatedly misunderstand each other and if we are going to work on the same projects, something has to change.

sidhene commented 10 years ago

I'm glad to hear you're not refusing to publish the event or send out the announcement. That was not at all clear. Thank you.

Ideally, all of the teachers and students would have been queer women. Since this is the first attempt at such an event and Railsbridge is virtually unknown within the queer community, I wasn't aiming for perfection. I only aimed to avoid the two worst problems: filling up the event before queer women had had the chance to register and mostly straight male teachers. I've done that.

I agree that we need to work out our interpersonal issues if we're going to continue to work together on Railsbridge without creating more problems than we solve, and mediation is probably advisable. Let's schedule something after this workshop is finished.

lilliealbert commented 10 years ago

Okay, it's published.

sidhene commented 10 years ago

Thanks.

iisa commented 10 years ago

Hey friends! I'm sorry I'm late in doing helping spread the word, but I just posted the link on Meetup, Twitter, and Fb. If you can, RT and I will place more tweets/posts throughout the week at different times of the day - all, please RT far and wide!

The weather forecast predicts a typical 53°-65° SF day, perfect for biking as commute. =)

tjgrathwell commented 10 years ago

Note that there are seven people who can approve events on Bridge Troll, not just @lilliealbert and I.

Currently, anyone in the world can click "Organize Event" on Bridge Troll -- the approval step is here to make sure an email broadcasting about "RailsBridge workshop for FREEVIAGRA.COM" doesn't get sent to the entire RailsBridge SF chapter (900+ people). Event approval is not a hurdle that is only crossed when the event is blessed by the RailsBridge pope, and nobody considers themselves to be that.

This event is a special case because it was left as created-but-unapproved to gather signups from particular people. Nobody was ever going to hold the event hostage until the right set of moons converged over Jupiter. We're all here trying to make RailsBridge workshops happen, nobody is trying to use computers to stop a workshop from succeeding.

@lilliealbert was offering some constructive criticism that opening signups to the general public might change the character of the workshop. You can agree or disagree with that comment, but the escalation that seems to have happened here is not helpful.