Alex is smart. Listen to Alex. :-)
Gah, I love this group!
On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 5:57 PM, Alex Hillman
wrote:
> I'm gonna flip this around for a second and describe a different scenario:
> multiple of times a month we have someone show up with clear "business"
> intentions...and that's really that they just wants to pitch everyone on
> their startup. They're here with *business* intention (at least in their
> mind), but they're going to be a disruption. We rarely have to tell them
> flat out "no" but instead we tell them what our expectations are, and
> invite them step up to those expectations. Some people head elsewhere, to
> be another coworking space's problems. Others step up to that high bar, and
> become great community members.
>
> See what I'm getting at? That kind of behavior maps across all kinds of
> sectors. There's bad actors everywhere. Some are worse than others, but it
> really depends a lot on the person/people, their cultural expectations, and
> what *they *understand is acceptable.
>
> Now, politics *is* interesting in a different way, and the last 18 months
> (and even more recent 6 months) have given me a strong taste of that in a
> new way. In the wake of our last election, I was met with BOTH sides of the
> conversation.
>
> I had people telling me (mostly in private) how thankful they were to have
> a community of likeminded people to turn to during a confusing, difficult
> political situation. We had members organize amongst themselves to protest.
> We had members collaborate on forming PACs. Organize fundraising (I think
> we collectively raised over $10k during the holidays across a few different
> efforts).
>
> In a lot of ways, it was super inspiring to watch people become active
> citizens in the context of our community.
>
> I *also* had people telling me (mostly in private) that they felt like
> politics had become the dominant narrative, and they were frustrated by it.
> They missed the other conversations, or found it harder to find signal
> through the noise. It wasn't even *"that person has views that I disagree
> with"* (that did happen a few times, but that's called being an adult) it
> was more *"can we talk about something other than politics?"*
>
> I talked with those folks about ways to boost the signal on non-political
> topics. In most cases, they were pretty quick to recognize that the best
> way to boost signal is *always* to *create more signal. *Do more of the
> stuff you want to see more of, talk about more of that stuff, and *that*
> becomes
> the dominant narrative.
>
> Another way I'd look at this is that if a single group with ANY interest
> (politics, startups, whatever it might be) is able to come in and
> permanently disrupt your community, then maybe you have work to do on
> making your community more resilient. Or give your community more credit
> for being resilient. Or both.
>
> -Alex
>
>
>
>
> --
> *The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself.*
> Better Coworkers: http://indyhall.org
> Weekly Coworking Tips: http://coworkingweekly.com
> My Audiobook: https://theindyhallway.com/ten
>
> On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 2:58 PM, Eric Datanagan
> wrote:
>
>> Hello Folks,
>> Anyone have experience with allowing political groups to become members.
>> Politics can be a very touchy subject which I could forsee potentially
>> disturbing or upsetting community members. The focus of our coworking
>> community is growing, sharing, and networking with business, not politics.
>> I'm curious how others may have or would handled this.
>>
>> Cheers!
>>
>> --
>> Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com
>> ---
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
>> "Coworking" group.
>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
>> email to coworking+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>>
>
> --
> Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com
> ---
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Coworking" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to coworking+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>
--
Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Coworking" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to coworking+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.