Looking for a project to get involved with in the bay area.

[sparr]

I'm new to the bay area and having trouble finding anyone who needs help with big projects. I like working on things people can climb, interactive art, electronics, and software. If you've got anything like that going on and your project isn't already fully staffed, I'd love to hear about it.

PS: I've been spending time mostly in SF, Oakland, and Berkeley, and haven't decided where to settle down yet.

[Captain Goddammit]

How about this?
http://www.mars-one.com

[sparr]

It took another 4 months, but I finally started seeing posts by camps and project groups looking for help, and have gotten involved with a few of them.

[Elderberry]

Good news. Glad to hear it.

[Jovankat]

So what everyone on reddit said about it being a time of year thing was right then?

[sparr]

So what everyone on reddit said about it being a time of year thing was right then?

Sadly not. As I start to see people posting about work parties and such now, almost all of them are things that were in progress over the winter. I'm walking into shops where 5-50 people have put in tens to thousands of hours of work over the last 6 months. That is, the *posts* are a time of year thing, but the projects aren't.

[Jovankat]

You mean projects don't spring up in April out of thin air? I am SHOCKED.

Yes people often put a lot of work into projects before they get to the stage of asking for volunteers to help, that doesn't change that the BULK of the work happens April to August. If you want to be working on something outside of those times you pretty much either need to be in core planning team (by already knowing the people involved) or do it yourself.

[trilobyte]

+1 to what Jovankat said. While a lot of projects are in development in the fall and winter, they are typically not in 'random volunteer' mode. They're still forming up their plans, or working out their creative vision with partners and core team members. I'm glad to hear you've found some things to connect with, and there should be no shortage to great projects or work needed with some pretty awesome art heading for the playa. Good luck!

[sparr]

If you want to be working on something outside of those times you pretty much either need to be in core planning team (by already knowing the people involved) or do it yourself.

Or live in Boston/Atlanta, where a standard MO is to walk into a community workshop/makerspace, see someone working on a big project, and ask "need help?". I've written elsewhere in more depth on the significant difference between the communities in those cities vs in Chicago and SF where things are much more insular.

[Jackass]

Go to Boston then... Your savage expertise is in great need Back East.

[BBadger]

Sparr, it may be less about the culture and more about the type of projects where you're trying to get involved. Some projects are such that a walk-on person can help out with low-skill tasks that don't require much training or management. Other times, the training, project ramp-up, and task management isn't worth the investment for someone who may not be dedicated.

It's the social effect of Brooke's Law, i.e., "adding manpower to a late (software) project makes it later", and Amdahl's Law, something to the effect that "speedup is limited by the serial portion (overhead) of a process, no matter how many parallel resources you may have at your disposal." In this case, the serial portion is the training and task management, whereas you're a parallel resource that can only really effectively help out if you can operate independent of the serial portion.

The overhead investment of making you an effective parallel portion of the project is the risk the project coordinators are weighing. Are you reliable? Do they need more people working on parts of the project? Do you mesh well with others? Are you competent? It's hard to know from a walk-on, and it takes time and effort to determine.

At the very least you can show you're reliable, and someone work at least time investment. Perhaps find out who is in charge, see if you can help out if possible, but then also find out if you can help out in a future work party/meeting if you show up and attend that. Then it shows that you're actually reliable and more useful than just someone who shows up and is given a job-for-the-sake-of-a-job task to "put away stuff" or other low-skill work.

Good luck man. You'll find projects that you can get involve in somewhere. It may just take longer and require more effort than you're used to.

[maladroit]

Insular or can smell a project drama-bomb a mile away.

I never had trouble finding projects in the Bay, and still work on some remotely.

[Sham]

Go to Boston then... Your savage expertise is in great need Back East.