
What Happened To The Freehackers Union? - inklesspen
http://www.zedshaw.com/blog/2009-03-16.html
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nihilocrat
Good example of geek get-togethers that tend to end well: game jams, such as
the Global Game Jam.

There's focus (games! making games! a theme!), so participants just need to
bring some skills (coding/art/music) and the willingness to awkwardly make
impromptu teams with complete strangers. It's unlikely that the community will
get swayed too far in one direction or another (all games need programming,
and it's nice to have good art). "Idea men" have to find some sort of talent
they can use for their team, otherwise they'll just be ignored or, at best,
used as a playtester or level/content designer.

Negatives are that you have to clear out an entire weekend, and find a place
with power and wifi that will let you stay (and potentially sleep) there.

~~~
apgwoz
I guess I've never heard of game jams, but am now intrigued... It seems though
that unless you've developed games before it might be hard to accomplish
anything, even with a team? Or no?

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inklesspen
The Honolulu FU meeting was kind of sad. Four guys, including me, and half of
them wanted to show off code they'd written for their employer. The "code for
code's sake" attitude seems to be pretty rare.

~~~
biohacker42
Maybe those guys are like me and while they love to code for code's sake,
their full time coding jobs and lives outside of work and the need for sleep
are keeping them from coding outside of work.

Trust me I keep trying to find a way to do it, but when you can only code for
either an hour or two or large chunks but only on the weekend, you just can't
get into _flow_.

I keep hearing about people that can do it, and they allegedly also have
friends, and fun away from the keyboard, and they supposedly are also not
sleep deprived. Let's just call me an atheist about people like that.

~~~
andreyf
I'm actually moving away from what you describe - a little less than a year
ago, I had just finished school, my wife had a baby, and I started a demanding
coding job at a startup. For about 6 months, I couldn't code outside of work
for my life - I'd doze off to news.yc, RSS feed, even reddit at times.

In those 6 months, though, two ideas have been snowballing - (1) that
(Greasemonkey) + (code repository with dependency resolution) + (some other
stuff) would be a revolutionary piece of software, and (2) that the great
thing about Lisp is vaguely similar to "Dependency Injection" and "Inversion
of Control" - macros (reader and otherwise) are dependencies which are
injected into the reader and compiler. If I was to figure out an elegant way
of doing this in JS, I can piggyback on the buzz of DI and IoC to help people
think deeper about programming.

Couple that with the frustration of "people don't get it unless you show them
code", and I've been spending more and more nights coding away again. So my
recommendation would be:

1) Get excited about something

2) Realize that you're very fortunate to have the resources to be excited
about something 99% of the world does not

3) Socially commit by telling people about it (even if they don't get it)

~~~
biohacker42
Thanks for the advice.

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michaelneale
Could it be use of the word "union" as well - libertarians (of a fashion) seem
to be common place in these circles, the word would grate for many I would
have though.

~~~
grandalf
I'm from Detroit and I've seen the way union thugs intimidate and essentially
coerce people not to cross the picket line. While there is a hint of nostalgia
for the early labor movement still present in the word, these days the word
Union is synonymous with backward, seniority-oriented, immigrant-hating, dying
industry working thugs.

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apgwoz
I think it sucks that something like this doesn't work. I'd love to be apart
of it, but even the groups I've been apart of are only good for a little while
before they start to fizzle out. It's a shame actually.

------
batasrki
I was part of it from the beginning and really wanted it to go somewhere. The
rules were a little stringent, but I thought it'd be good for people.

Too bad this didn't work out.

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shiranaihito
The FU seemed somewhat elitist when it started. Maybe that detracted from the
potential members?

~~~
there
from reading zed's two articles about it, it seemed way too organized.
something like this has to just evolve out of a few people meeting up, telling
their friends, meeting again with a slightly larger group, and so on.

otherwise you have all this meta-discussion about what the group's logo should
be (why the hell does it need a logo?) and how meetings should run and what
color the bikeshed should be, when all people want to do is get together, meet
new people, and hack on stuff. why would anyone want to attend a meeting where
you are forced to give a presentation in front of strangers? where's the fun
in that?

in the openbsd group, when some people want to create something new or hack on
something complex, we don't create a wiki and an irc channel and take minutes
on the meetings. we organize a "hackathon", invite the relevant people there,
and sit in a room together and hack. when we get tired, we go out for beers
and talk, then go back to hacking.

~~~
bkudria
This is a good point. Also, you can avoid the large public crash-and-burn that
happened here. Growing up from a few people lets you test out ideas without
failing catastrophically.

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andrewbadera
Zed Shaw is an egotistical, angry, irrelevant loser. FU was simply his ego and
attitude embodied. Nothing like that is bound to succeed.

~~~
batasrki
Dude, have you met the man? Or are you regurgitating fables told to you at
bedtime?

Seriously, calm the hell down.

~~~
Shaitan_Apistos
My childhood wasn't particularly horrible, but I've got to say that I'm
jealous if there are people out there who actually got to experience bedtime
fables about Zed Shaw. That would be _awesome_.

~~~
swombat
No.

It would be _so fucking awesome_.

Get it right.

