Joining The F.U.

When The Freehackers Union was originally devised, it was going to be 10 geeks in a local New York City coffee shop hanging with me and showing off cool gear they made. Right away FU took off around the world, and while there weren’t many people in each little city, there were enough people around the world to get something going. This changed how we wanted to structure things. We still wanted it loose with only a few rules but now we needed to make it global.

Starting A Local

We decided to go with the concept of an “FU Local” or just “local”. A local is a Freehackers Union group that’s in a particular area and run by a Curator. The Curator might change, but the local’s location and general feel should stay stable over time. The locals should run themselves mostly, and should share their meetings with others so that we can all learn even though we’re spread out.

Since this is so new, we’ll have to just let people run things and then report back on how it all went. By recording the shows and sharing them with others we’ll be able to build a global community that will adapt to what works.

Joining Takes 5 Minutes (Of Terror)

Alright, not really terror, but what we’ve decided is that to join, you have to present the first time you show up. Here’s how we think it should work:

1. At the beginning of the meeting, the newbies are rounded up and told they have to perform.
2. They’re given the rules to remind them, keeping close watch on the no powerpoint/website only rule (powerpoint+website+code is cool, weird hardware is better).
3. Then, they each go, rapid fire, with 5 minutes each. They have to do their performance without getting “gonged” off.
4. People watching the presentation get to ask questions and try to trip up the newbie.
5. If the Curator sees that it’s a blood bath, then they can call the newbie done and they get to try again next meeting. They of course can stay for this meeting for being good sports. No hard feelings, they just come back next time. Make sure they know that.
6. As long as they make it through without getting called off stage then they’re now part of the Freehackers Union. The Curator can announce to the /converse list that this person is now in their local.

We also think it might be a good idea for each local to require that “newbie” means to that local. This means that even if someone is a long time member in one city, they have to try out again in the new city. That’ll keep things interesting.

Recording The Show

We want people to record their show and share it with other FU Locals around the world. This will share the experience with many more people and make the show even better.

Recording can be done with video, sound only, and if you have nothing, you can take good notes and post a detailed blog post. Take some pictures too.

When you’re done, the Curator should take the recording and put it online so that The Freehackers Union can get it and put it in the main podcast. Try to clean it up and get it nice, but we’ll do work to make it better (if we can).

Suggestions For The First Show

The Freehackers Union is so new that everyone will be a newbie. It’ll also be weird because people will want to start their own local which makes the person starting it a newbie too.

For the first meeting, I suggest that you just get some friends together and do your newbie meetings. It’s just like the first game of D&D. You have to make someone be the Curator, and if they hate it someone else can do it next time.

Record your meeting and send it to us for the main podcast and then we’ll make a page for your local. You should obviously tell us the information we need to make the page.

Read about starting your own local for more detailed instructions on getting started.