[dorkbotpdx-blabber] Who is NOT going to make it to the TechShop meetup?

[paige saez]

Argument for the sake of argument here:

What if (like me) you don't have a garage. Or a house. Or a car. But you
still want to make things with tools. Portland _in particular_ is home to
many, many talented, creative people that simply do not fit the normal
american middle-income bracket framework of house, car, garage and money. It
is what makes us unique.

Many of these talented, creative people do not ever WANT to have these
things.

Tech-shop _should_ pay attention to the audience they will have in PDX. And
further more they _should_ accommodate the fact that the audience in PDX is
going to be different than the audience in California or anywhere else for
that matter.

We can help them figure out that these distinctions exist by alerting them
to this fact.
This is not a slam against Tech-shop for picking a wrong place to hold a
meeting per se but more of an opportunity to help them understand their soon
to be ENORMOUS user group is perhaps not entirely whom, or where or how they
predicted it would be.




On Feb 12, 2008 12:50 PM, Donald Delmar Davis <ddelmardavis at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Also and more importantly if you are comfortable in your car in the
> burbs you can put a torch in your garage.
>
> The point of tech shop is to provide communal access to resources
> that would require a house in the burbs if not a shop.
>
> Where I grew up everyone at least had a torch, grinder and, drill-
> press in their garage if not a fairly well equipped shop.
> (my father repaired his own planes)
>
> But that isn't sustainable.
>
>
>
> On Feb 12, 2008, at 12:38 PM, Thomas Lockney wrote:
>
> > dan p wrote:
> >> ...and how many would not make it if it was on the east side? Is
> >> everyone who is not going also planning on not becoming a member
> >> if it is on the westside? and will if it is in their neighborhood?
> >>  My point is, no matter where it is it is far from somebody. I
> >> heard a comment at one of the meetings that one of the reasons for
> >> moving from Vendetta to Backspace was that it was "closer". I know
> >> someone who has been to a couple of meetings that lives about a
> >> mile from Vendetta. I live and work in Hillsboro, so it works out
> >> for me, but I've not had any illusions about having a dorkbot
> >> meeting out here (though I would guess there are quite a few folks
> >> out here that would be interested)
> >>
> >> I just happy that they are thinking/planning/going to have a
> >> Techshop closer to me than the bay area (or Seattle).
> > Well, as an example. Moving the dorkbot meetings from Vendetta to
> > Backspace (and now LL NW) was not nearly as big of a change as
> > moving, say, to Hillsboro or Canby. Both are extreme for a large
> > number of folks. The fact is that the Dorkbot crowd is one of the
> > groups they made a specific point of trying to target for this
> > meeting. I know from talking to most of the group that the large
> > majority of people are on the Eastside. I also know from talking to
> > people in a lot of other tech groups in town (I'm an organizer and/
> > or member of quite a few) that the majority of members are actually
> > on the Eastside. Maybe it's just that the meetings tend to be
> > downtown or on the Eastside, but that's where they are.
> >
> > On the other hand, maybe that's not who TechShop is really trying
> > to target. Based on demographics I've read, the tech crowd on the
> > Westside tends to make a bit more money and have more dispossable
> > income. I guess they're probably more likely to pay the fees for
> > TechShop.
> >
> > It's hard to say. I guess maybe we'll find out more tonight.
> > Anyway, there has been a lot of discussion here and on the IRC
> > channel from people who have an issue getting out there, so it
> > seems reasonable to assume that people are not happy about the
> > choice of location. And it's far louder than the grumbling I've
> > heard when moving the Dorkbot meetings, so...
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