The Hospitality Pattern

This page is a part of Design Patterns.

Its content is derived from the presentation "Building a Hacker Space" by Jens Ohlig and Lars Weiler.

Sustainability Patterns	Independence Patterns	Regularity Patterns	Conflict Resolution Patterns	Creative Chaos Patterns
Infrastructure Grace Hopper Community Critical Mass Strong Personalities Charitable Member	Landlord and Neighbourhood Anti-Roommate Séparée Kitchen Coziness Shower Membership Fees Anti-Sponsoring	Plenum Tuesday Sticky OpenChaos U23 Sine Curve	Consensus Democracy Command sudo Responsibility Debate Culture Anti-Bikeshed Private Talk Spooky Action Anti-Pattern	Old Hardware Key Club Mate The Library Pattern Flat Surface

Background

Has this ever happened to you?

"Wild visitor appeared! Every one is kinda busy, so maybe the visitor stands around uncomfortably for a while before trying to strike up some conversation. The atmosphere in the room is slowly getting awkward, and the visitor leaves, probably never to be seen again."

"All your members seem to be friends or friends of friend. For some reason, people outside your circles don't stick around."

"Some members complain about being disrupted by unexpected visitors, while others don't seem to interact with new people at all."

Problem

You want your space to be welcoming, maybe as a value on it's own, maybe as a means to attract more diverse or just more members. It seems hard to uphold this spirit on a day to day basis.

Implementation

If hospitality is one of your hacker space's core values, the responsibility to create a welcoming atmosphere has to be on every member, every day. On the other hand people want to get stuff done, and entertaining unexpected guests can be disruptive and time consuming.

• There are too many ways to be hospitable for a design pattern. Look for someone with a strong innate sense for hospitality as one of the strong personalities and have them lead the discussions around the topic.
• Bring up the topic on a plenum.

• Talk about on the perspective a person entering the space for the first time might have, and what type of treatment you would want in their place.

• Discuss the minimum attention any visitor should get, no matter the circumstances. This can look something like this:

"If a visitor appears, they should be acknowledged with a friendly greeting by a member ASAP. The member should inquire about the aim of the visit. They should invite the visitor to the visitor's day. They can show the visitor around. They can invite the visitor to have a look around on his own if busy. if this is too disruptive, they should apologize for having to send the visitor away, hoping to see them at visitor's day."

• Decide on the minimum attention. If possible try for a consensus decision.

• Decide on a regular visitor's day. Every week or every two weeks works. Communicate to members that on this day, entertaining every visitor is the main priority. The goal should be for a visitor to feel comfortable, to understand what led the visitor to your space, and to try to cater to it(e.g. if the visitor has a topic of interest, introduce them to a member with similar interests). Have your strong personality lead by example on visitor's day.

• Watch the membership numbers go through the roof!