In uni I participated in a 20+ person hackerspace in Australia. It was great, you had tons of space to set up your project, event nights were a group of loosely allied friends, and there were never more than 5 people using the space at any time.

When I came back to the states I joined the local 100+ member space and absolutely hated it. Met some really cool people but the majority were a bunch of jerks who either couldn't give you the time of day or just wanted to do things the hard way.

Maybe the idea of a hackerspace should be like 3.2 bars were in 20th century midwest. One in every neighborhood that served the values and needs of a small core group.

Would you be willing to share which area you were in while in Australia?

It was the Artifactory in Perth

> Too much awkward males

That's being a bit ableist towards people with social anxiety disorder and people on the autism spectrum.

These tend to be common around hackerspaces, and are mostly a result of society rejecting them (bullying at school, being stigmatized as 'nerdy', etc). You have to accept it as being part of the technology scene in general.

I do. I just don't go there anymore and they can be however they want.

It's just too much for me, when I go there with female friends and suddenly were ringed with peoples who ask them dumb questions.

Or that they "are not racist" but still have to make dumb remarks about the Turks living in their block.

Well, agreed, the last part is just them being assholes.

What do you mean by "too much image cultivation."?

I've experienced the awkward males part, and the difficulty for newbies to feel welcome. But there's also a kind of social club factor to it with unwritten rules, for example, don't expect to turn up with your windows xp laptop to get a hacker to fix the keyboard.

I mean, the whole IT sector is about "Look what I've done!"

Ahh! Yes, I see what you mean - interesting. In my limited experience with a hackspace I'd say it would be kind of true amongst themselves, but there is not much evidence of them wanting to show what they are doing to the outside, no blogs, no tweets, videos, conferences etc. It appears that all showing off is done within the group.

What does the gender have to do with people being "awkward"?

Nothing.

Just 99% of the people in a hackerspace are males and most of them are awkward in social situations :)

Its not that surprising to see mostly men since all technical fields consist mostly of them. And the social part is pretty common among tech-enthusiasts.

I think a little Bill Burr is in order:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Pn1RVZu-24

The bits that stand out for me is "If you had your own big club and I was standing outside of it you'd never fucking let me in," --- "We are all eating a giant shit sandwich out here, nobody cares, I don't care".

Good luck.

Well Burr's no George Carlin, that's for sure.

Yea, they are like, different people.

I'm sorry to read about your experience, that's not how a hackerspace should be at all.

You have a chance to help change the way the culture works there.