Possibilities for new BerkeleyLUG meetup place?

[goossbears]

Hey all,

During today's meetup, a few of you threw out possibilities of where we might meet in the future, besides at the default 85C Bakery.

I did a bit of initial follow-thru and came up with both some conclusive and inconclusive results, as per the below.

1. Lanesplitter Pizza at 2033 San Pablo Ave b/t University Ave & Addison St, West Berkeley

https://www.yelp.com/biz/lanesplitter-pizza-and-pub-berkeley

+'s: expansive seating, WiFi, available Sunday PM hours

-'s: possibly high noise volume, location further away from centralized Downtown Berkeley

Based on the input of at least one active BerkeleyLUG participant, my own conclusion is that this location would probably not work out.

2. Red Tomato Pizza House at 2017 University Ave b/t Milvia St & Shattuck Ave, Downtown Berkeley

https://www.yelp.com/biz/red-tomato-pizza-house-berkeley-2

+'s: location near the heart of Downtown Berkeley, sufficient space and (presumably) WiFi and outlets

-'s: closed on Sundays

Since this location is closed on Sundays, my own conclusion is that this location would not work out.

3. The Berkeley Public Library's 3rd floor Community Meeting Room at the Central Library at 2090 Kittredge Street

Meeting Rooms info https://www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org/library/meeting-rooms
Meeting Room Use Policy (Rules And Regulations For Use Of Library Grounds, Buildings, And Equipment For Meetings And Other Events) PDF

https://www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org/sites/default/files/files/inline/meeting_room_use_policy_approve_06jun2018.pdf

+'s: location in the heart of Downtown Berkeley, very good WiFi, plenty of power outlets, can support a large number of meetup participants with their equipment, good overlapping hours for Sunday meetups (community room available to 5pm), very good restroom facilities

-'s: stricter eligibility rules and requirements for use of community facilities than for most (or all) other businesses considered here, can only RSVP for one meetup a month, non-guaranteed access to community room based upon other groups possibly RSVP'ing for overlapping timeslots, other minuses

My own tentative guess is that this probably would not work out, although this is inconclusive based upon viewing just the above pair of BerkeleyPL links.

4. Cafe Blue Door at 2244 Bancroft Way b/t Ellsworth St & Fulton St

https://www.yelp.com/biz/cafe-blue-door-berkeley

+'s: located less than a dozen short blocks Southeast of 85C Bakery quite near Downtown Berkeley and immediately across from the Southwest corner of the Cal campus, has WiFi, open all afternoon on Sundays

-'s: unknowns such as sufficient seating and table capacity(?), power outlets(?), decent restroom facilities(?)

Inconclusive results, pending those of us interested in this possible venue paying in-person visits to Cafe Blue Door to check it out.

5. ??

Please feel free to chime in and offer your own thoughts on the above and/or on other ideas any of you may have of alternative meetup possibilities.

-Aaron

[Alan Davis]

Just a random thought: is there a maker space with space devoted to groups?   I seem to recall there was one in the Mission District, where Linux meetups were held, at least I read about it, which suggests to me that such sites or organizations would be or might be amenable to such uses. 

As an infrequent flier, to make such a proposal is out of parameters, beyond my paygrade.  Absurd.   Is the Sudo Room a possibility?  I haven't been there, but plan to visit "RSN."  

Alan Davis

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[Michael Paoli]

Sudo Room ... that's in Oakland ... so I'm presuming a no-go for
BerkeleyLUG.

Cafe Blue Door ... Kim's checked it out a fair number of times,
I've also checked it out some moderate bit or so - including also
in the noon-3pm Sunday range (and curing regular UC Berkeley academic
session). Key -'s (if I recall correctly):
o available seating - only one large table (that can accommodate 6+ people),
and that table's often occupied, and there isn't power right at/by the
table, though a shortish distance away - and would require a
power/extension cord across walkway area - which *may* (or may not) be
a no-go depending upon venue's policies.
Also, in general there's often little free seating (zero to very few
unoccupied tables), and other than the one large tables, the others
only reasonably handle 2 to 4 people, and looks like it's not
configured to be able to easily/reasonably reshuffle tables to put
together a larger group (if venue even allows that, and if one can
find sufficient unoccupied tables close together).
o nose level - most of the time it's relatively okay / not too bad,
but it *can* get very loud in there - next-to-nothing in the way of
acoustics to deaden noise, and if, e.g. there's a quite loud talkative
group(s) there (sometimes happens/observed), it can be very annoyingly
loud/distracting/disturbing ... but *most* of the time it seems not
that bad as far as noise level goes.
I wouldn't (quite?) call it a no-go, but it may (at best?) be somewhat
more challenging than 85C.

[Michael Paoli]

A few more thoughts:
o UC Berkeley Academic calendar,
2019 Spring Semester Ends 2019-05-17
So ... for a while some things may be more open / less crowded,
compared to most of the academic year. Some things may also be closed
or have reduced hours. Anyway, that (following Spring and before Fall
Semesters) can be a good time to know what locations/venues may *also*
be viable through that period, however might also lure one into a
false sense of viability too (may be/become far too crowded or noisy
or whatever during regular Semesters).
2019 Fall Semester Starts 2019-08-21
o on (UC Berkeley) Campus ... it appears that there's generally (or at
least many locations) good reliable open visitor Wi-Fi - no
click-through or (pre)registration or the like required - that wasn't
the case some moderate number of years back. Publicly available power
may be somewhat spotty.
o Free Speech Movement Cafe (my Moffitt) ... peeked in on it maybe
about a month or so ago, relatively crowded inside - would be
difficult to assemble larger (6+ persons) group, outside space is
ample, but not a lot of AC power - but possibly "enough" - with
suitable extension cord(s) /power strip(s) ... though (mostly)
covered, outside might be too cold(/windy/hot/...) at times, and may
be somewhat unpredictable in those regards.
o Engineering Library (might've mentioned earlier?) - hard to assemble
larger non-student group(s) there, relatively full / limited seating
for non-students (UC Berkeley students, etc. have access to additional
group study rooms and the like).
o There may be *many* suitable places on campus *with* access - that's
not generally open to the public. The "right" UC (Berkeley) student
(or group) or other such campus connection *might* potentially make
such available ... but finding/making such a reliable connection
may be challenging.

[goossbears]

On Sunday, May 12, 2019 at 11:09:03 PM UTC-7, Alan Davis wrote:

Just a random thought: is there a maker space with space devoted to groups?   I seem to recall there was one in the Mission District, where Linux meetups were held, at least I read about it, which suggests to me that such sites or organizations would be or might be amenable to such uses. 

As an infrequent flier, to make such a proposal is out of parameters, beyond my paygrade.  Absurd.   Is the Sudo Room a possibility?  I haven't been there, but plan to visit "RSN."  

Alan Davis

 

Three follow-thru points on "maker space(s) with space devoted to groups".

1. I think that the one in SF's Mission District was and still is likely to be the Noisebridge hackerspace https://www.noisebridge.net/

- According to Noisebridge's events page https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Category:Events , Noisebridge doesn't hold meetups for Linux any more, even though the main SF-LUG page at http://www.sf-lug.org/ somehow lists these meetup events as actually occuring.

- Another ongoing aspect of Noisebridge is that they are actively seeking monetary donations as they "plan to leave [their] current location by the end of August 2019", so IMO I think this indicates that many of Noisebridge's more vocal members and regulars are and will be increasingly "nudging along" meetup event attendees (such as for Linux group meetups) for necessary funds.

2. Sudo Room https://sudoroom.org/ is part of the Omni Commons and is in the Temescal District of North Oakland. As Michael P already pointed out, this is further away from BerkeleyLUG, although little is preventing persons from Oakland starting their own OaklandLUG there.

- While the Sudo Room hackerspace is similar in many respects to Noisebridge, Sudo Room seems a bit more informal and less structured than its SF counterpart.

- Unless someone is visiting Sudo Room on a weekly and/or other longterm basis, there is much less of a push for visitors to actually join-up Sudo Room as members (it does have a membership webpage at https://sudoroom.org/membership/ ); one-off event attendees and drop-in visitors have in the past also donated food items to Sudo Room in addition to or in lieu of paying smaller amounts of cash per visit.

- I suspect that if a group (such as OaklandLUG if it were ever created) did plan to hold more formal bimonthly meetups at Sudo Room, then there would eventually be much more of a "nudging along" for such a group's regular visitors to provide monetary donations directed towards the space.

3. There is also Ace Monster Toys https://www.acemonstertoys.org/ over on the Oakland side of the Berkeley-Oakland city line, which describes itself as a place "where Oakland, Berkeley and Emeryville come together and just a short hop from Ashby BART"

- While Ace Monster Toys might very well consider hosting regularly-occuring external meetup groups (such as BerkeleyLUG), AMT would definitely request an outlay of significant fees for *all* LUG meetup participants as part of their membership model (see https://www.acemonstertoys.org/membership/ )

Could be mistaken on this, but I don't think that the vast majority of BerkeleyLUG attendees would even *consider* shelling out AMT's required $60-$80/month membership dues!

-Aaron

[Michael Paoli]

> From: goossbears <acoh...@gmail.com>

> Subject: Re: Possibilities for new BerkeleyLUG meetup place?

> Date: Mon, 13 May 2019 23:20:23 -0700 (PDT)

> 1. I think that the one in SF's Mission District was and still is likely to
> be the Noisebridge hackerspace https://www.noisebridge.net/
> - According to Noisebridge's events page
> https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Category:Events , Noisebridge doesn't hold
> meetups for Linux any more, even though the main SF-LUG page at
> http://www.sf-lug.org/ somehow lists these meetup events as actually
> occuring.

Thanks for noticing and mentioning.

The Noisebridge references have been removed from the SF-LUG web page
http[s]://www.sf-lug.org/
for reasons.

background:
http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/sf-lug/2019q2/014087.html
...
http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/sf-lug/2019q2/014118.html
http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/sf-lug/2019q2/date.html
http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/sf-lug/
http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/sf-lug.mbox/sf-lug.mbox

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Alan Davis (alan3...@gmail.com):

> Just a random thought: is there a maker space with space devoted to
> groups?

To paraphrase Jamie Zawinski's famous jibe about a awk, a computerist
once said 'I know! I'll solve that by relying on a
hackerspace/makerspace! Now, he had _two_ problems.'

As with 'I know, we'll just use a public library community room!', the
problem is that you're not the first person to have thought of doing it,
and it's a scarce resource with hoops to jump through and contention,
sometimes involving sponsorship money.

Sudo Room exists. Noisebridge exists. Hackerdojo exists (but is in
Silicon Valley. Unfortunately, if you imagine that lining up guaranteed
and publicly accessible space is easy and free, um, no. But check and
find out, if you don't believe me. The existence of gotchas is a
predictable consequence of their basic nature. You can see that, right?

The great thing about pizza parlours, as a general class, is that
they're accessible to the public during business hours (but not always
Sundays), they're happy to see you and provide lots of tables (because
otherwise you probably wouldn't buy a pizza), and tend to perpetuate
themselves through the genius move of having a credible business model.
Now, the trick is to find one that isn't ridiculously noisy or crowded
or too far away, doesn't have horrific bathrooms, and isn't plagued by
karaoke, garage bands, or blaring televisions. I'm betting the best
solution will lie with one of those.

(Forgive me if I'm not helping reconnoitre, as I'm in Menlo Park.)