It just takes a bit of time.
This in a nutshell is what sustaining the space will always come down to.
If all we ever gave to the space was our money and never our time, there
would eventually be a collapse as too many people reached the conclusion
of "why should I pay money to access a space full of stuff".
Be it explicit volunteer time you could put on a resume or just hanging
out and being awesome, you're contributing to the space. There are many,
many ways to contribute your time. Hopefully the sell enough gift cards
to make the time put in by people set up worthwhile (vs them putting
their time elsewhere)
The real hard trick we all have to play on each other is the
meta-volunteering of getting other people to put in their time. We don't
have a staff of volunteer/programming co-ordinators!
Sometimes that means explicitly asking people to take their time to do
something, sometimes it means creating fun opportunities for other
people to make awesomeness without them even knowing they're actually
"creating community".
I for one am always willing to give talks -- but I need other folks to
push me to commit to a topic and date and to do the marketing.
(I have noticed that formal programming that receives an executive push
is more often well attended.)
Somebody please force me to give a long promised talk our about VM
server or Ripple in June. Ripple may be particular pertinent at this
time, I think its a technology that could offer Skullspace and the
Skullspace community some benifits of increased financial efficiency (no
get rich pitch) -- I'd love to have the opportunity to explain this to
an audience and even do some follow-on software development to support
some additional use-cases that would help us if I knew there was interest.
If anyone is entertaining the paid workshop idea, I'd suggest the same
revenue model Sara Arenson went with -- presenter directly charges their
attendees for taking their course/workshop and pays a rent to
Skullspace. (I think did $15 a night?). This approach puts positive
incentives in both the hands of presenter and the space.
Maybe, one day I'll do a paid python boot camp for existing programmers
or maybe in the very distant future full LPIC
(https://www.lpi.org/linux-certifications) course. (should get my LPIC-1
first!)
Mark
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