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| | LASTA NOVAĴO: | |
| | VI DEVUS ESTABLI | |
| | KOMPUTILAN KLUBON | |
| | EN LA LOKO, | |
| | KIE VI LOĜAS | |
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i’m glad someone finally said it
WHAT IS A COMPUTER CLUB?
a computer club is where a group of people hang out and do computer together
WHAT IS “DOING COMPUTER”?
doing computer is whatever you want…on computers, together. our bias is towards programming and diy shared computing infrastructure. but there’s also art and music and open data science and circuit-bending and a million other things we don’t know about
WHY SHOULD I START A COMPUTER CLUB?
the political economy of computing is awful. have you read palo alto? me neither. we should read it. we deserve better than the darpa-funded visions of xerox parc technologists
make the political economy of computing less awful and bring it home to you and yours by starting a computer club in the place that you live
RULES
we can’t make you do anything, so do whatever you want. but these are the things we think are really important
- hang out in real life: online has rude vibes, real life has
10 Comments
Mistletoe
One of my fondest early memories of computing was going to my uncle’s computer club held at a school I think after hours. All they did the whole time was copy Commodore 64 games and it was awesome.
rickcarlino
I run a maker space in Saint Charles, Illinois. We have space to host these sort of things. If you live near here and (like me) are interested, please reach out. My contact details are easy to find.
pickledish
This whole site makes me happy. Thanks for sharing it :)
knuppar
Computer Club in Seattle, anyone?
genewitch
>The social rules are:
> No well-actually’s
> No feigned surprise
> No backseat driving
> No subtle -isms
referred to by the post link, i like it. The link is also cc0, which is the only license i'll put on something, really. This sounds like it would be challenging and rewarding and fun; but the only places a "group" can get together and have space is churches around here, so i'd have to travel like an hour to get someplace more amenable to "several computers running" even if laptops that are wall powered.
I have enough spare computing hardware that realistically i can provide equipment for quite a few people. lugging it around would be a pain.
Two other things i've been seriously contemplating is a hyper-local podcast http://adam.curry.com/html/HowtoStartAHyperLoca-16wQvxtGFbH0… and stand up either a static blog server or something "like a wiki" but just for managing information. I saw that johnny.decimal post earlier and maybe i can put something together that is like a "notes and data" blog but organized with johnny.decimal or one of the other alternatives for organization mentioned in that thread.
I should really get started.
monocasa
If anyone in Denver is interested, hit me up.
rtpg
Similar to computer clubs, I really liked doing coding days in various small communities in Tokyo (in Japanese they're called moku moku kai).
The Python minihackathon[0] group model was particularly great. You show up, write a line or two of what you're thinking of working on onto a whiteboard, and towards the end people go up and present what they worked on for a couple minutes.
It's usually "learning how to use this library" or something, but it's a great way to schedule some OSS work.
This is a bit different from a computer club, but if you have a space you can lock into and can get even 10 or so people together once every couple of weeks (or once a month), then it's a great way to be sure you _at least_ work on something 12 times a year.
[0]: https://pyhack.connpass.com/
t_mann
> meetups about "how to node.js apolitically" are sidelining people who want "how to node.js pro-socially."
This statement did turn me off a bit. "how to node.js apolitically" would in practice ofc just be "how to node.js", which should be perfectly fine for a computer club, just as a pro-social computing course. Maybe someone wants to use their computing skills for social good, maybe they want to use them for bioscience, smart contracts, home automation, or maybe they just want to create a website for their corner shop. I feel like all of those should have a place in a computer club.
pkdpic
> the recurse center social rules foster collaboration and psychological safety, consider using them
> No well-actually’s
> No feigned surprise
> No backseat driving
> No subtle -isms
There seems to be something really magical about the Recurse Center social rules. Or maybe their admissions process. Or both. I did a batch a couple years ago and I was stunned at how fun and drama-free people are there. I've heard occasional stories of negative experiences but nowhere near what Id expect for a group of passionate intelligent creatives working at vastly different levels of expertise.
Anyway glad to see the RC rules propagating and love this idea. I'm inspired to try to start a computer club at my 5yo's school! *crossed-fingers
datadrivenangel
Shoutout to the DC Python Doju meetup for basically doing this for python computing