Room for More

What we stand for

Somewhere you can turn up on your own and it isn't weird. That's the whole thing.

This isn't a rulebook and there's nothing to sign. It's here so you know what to expect from me, and so the things that matter survive a busy year. If you're helping out, the practical side of your role is a separate conversation. This is the thinking behind it.

Why this exists

There used to be more places you could walk into alone, and there aren't many now. Turning up by yourself to the ones that are left is harder than it should be. So we make more of them, and we try to make them easy to walk into.

If you ever want to know whether something we're doing makes sense, that's the test. It should trace back to that in a sentence or it probably shouldn't be happening.

What we're trying to build

Regular, cheap, and genuinely open to somebody who knows nobody. That's the core and it stays the core however much else grows around it.

Beyond that, getting people in the same room who'd like each other and would otherwise never meet. Different ages, different countries, different first languages. That part is genuinely working already, it's the thing I'd point at if somebody asked what this is for.

Things I'd like to add and haven't yet: people teaching each other skills and languages cheaply or free, and eventually a place of our own rather than borrowing other people's. I'm saying that as something I want rather than something we do, because you'll get asked and I'd rather you had the honest answer.

The few things we won't do

Short on purpose. These stay fixed even when there's a good commercial argument, because the good commercial argument is exactly when they matter.

We won't charge anyone to be reachable. Coming to events, seeing who else is coming, getting a contact request and answering it, being part of the chat, all free and staying free. The membership pays for sending requests, not for being findable or being answered.
We won't make leaving harder than joining. No obstructed cancellation, no holding your data hostage, no exit designed to wear you down.
We won't get agreement out of anyone through deception, manufactured urgency or exhaustion. If somebody has to be tired or rushed to say yes, that isn't a yes.
We won't build things that only work because people don't understand them.
We won't punish anyone for raising a concern honestly, including when they turn out to be wrong.
We won't treat your time as free because you're enthusiastic.

Everything else is judgement, and judgement belongs to whoever's doing the work. If one of these turns out to be wrong I'll change it openly and say why, rather than quietly stopping applying it.

Since you'll get asked about the money

Somebody will ask you why there's a fee at all. The short answer is that the fee pays for the parts that stay free, and it keeps the spam down. It buys the ability to send a contact request, and to host your fourth meetup and beyond. It does not buy being findable, being messaged, being answered, or getting into an event.

Where money does come from: donations, the membership, venues paying us because we bring them people (the deals for that are still being agreed, so it isn't money coming in yet), and the occasional paid workshop or ticketed one-off that covers its own costs. What comes in from the community gets posted on the site, what it was and what it paid for.

About the last one on that list, since it's the obvious question

Helping out, the comms and moderation and admin side, isn't paid right now, and I'd rather say that plainly than have you find out. I'd like that to change when there's actually money to do it properly, and I'm not going to dangle it as if it's around the corner. What I can say is that when paid roles exist, the people already doing the work are the first I'll ask.

I'd also rather be straight about the other side of that. I want to see how something goes before either of us commits to anything, and I'd guess you do too. So we start with one thing, you do it twice, and then we both know a great deal more than we do now. That isn't a trial period I'm putting you on, it's the same thing in both directions: you find out whether you actually enjoy it, which is not obvious until you've done it.

Hosting ticketed events is different, and it's worth being clear about the difference. I used to plan this as a percentage of what the event earned, and I've changed my mind: everything here is such a collaborative effort that tying money to one event's takings creates the wrong incentive. So nobody earns a cut of their own event. Instead, when there's enough money in the company, people who contribute get paid for it, based on what they actually put in, how reliable they are, and what they help build here, with the same treatment for everyone and always properly, through payroll. If that's ever relevant for you, you'll get it on paper, not as a number over a drink.

What I cover for everyone helping, paid or not: costs you've actually paid out, food and drink at the event you're helping run, getting you into that event free, and saying publicly that you did it, including after you've stopped.

What I won't do is let an unpaid role quietly grow into a job and keep calling it volunteering. If what you're doing has turned into work, I pay for it, and if I can't afford that, we do less of it. I'm not closing a funding gap with somebody's free evenings.

Your time

Time is the thing I'm actually taking from you. Money can be given back.

Meetings have a point and an end, and if it could have been a message it's a message. We agree roughly what you're taking on and how much of it, and if that grows we talk about it again rather than me quietly assuming.

Nobody's on call here. You never owe me an answer at a particular time of day, and a message sitting until tomorrow is completely normal. If you see something and want to deal with it right then because it suits you, do that. It isn't work creeping in, it's how this works.

Safety is the one exception. Anything about somebody's safety gets sorted the same evening, and that promise is mine rather than yours. If you can't, tell me and I'll do it.

You can stop any time, no notice, no explanation owed, and coming back later is always fine. You won't lose standing here by stopping. That's obvious, and it's worth writing down, because in volunteer organisations it's very often not true.

And you're worth the same to me during a stretch where you're producing nothing. That's the real test of it. What I say when things are going well doesn't count for much.

How we talk to each other

Disagreement is welcome, contempt isn't. Say anything you like about an idea or a decision or a piece of work, including that it's bad and why. Just don't make the person holding it smaller while you do it.

Say it directly, to the person, even when that's uncomfortable. Hinting, letting somebody find out later, or going sideways to a third person are all worse.

Bad news early is a favour. If you tell me something's broken you've done me a service and you'll be treated like you did. Punish problems and you stop hearing about problems, you don't stop having them.

Changing your mind out loud is a strength here. So is saying you still think a decision is wrong while getting on with it anyway. What doesn't work is agreeing and then quietly not doing it.

When something goes wrong

Nobody's in trouble for getting something wrong, and that includes wrong in a way a guest noticed. We sort it with the guest first and work out what happened afterwards.

Mistakes don't end anything here. What would is doing something that makes the room unsafe for somebody, or covering something up. And if it's simply not working between us, I'll say that to your face rather than going quiet on you and letting you work it out.

How we use AI

We build with AI and intend to keep doing it. The limits:

You'll know when nobody checked it. If a person read it, judged it and sent it, it's ours and it doesn't get a sticker, that's just somebody using a tool. Where something reaches you without a human having looked at it first, like an assistant answering live in a chat, it'll say so. The point is telling you whether a person stood behind it, and a label on everything would tell you nothing.

Nothing here pretends to be a person. AI can do jobs in our spaces, answering questions, suggesting a time, summarising a thread, drafting a recap, helping somebody find an event, and where it does you'll be able to tell it's AI while you're talking to it. What we won't do is let something pass as a member.

We won't inflate the room. No invented members, no fake RSVPs, no seeded conversation to make something look busier than it is. If ten people are here it should look like ten people. That's the actual line for us. Not whether AI is involved, but whether it's being used to misrepresent how much life something has.

A person decides anything that affects a person. Membership, exclusion, complaints, money. A model can draft or summarise, but there's always a named human who decided.

We also prefer processing inside the EU and accept giving up some capability for it, and nobody's messages or details get used to train anything without them knowing.

Deciding things

Somebody has to decide, and right now that's me. None of this adds approval steps or committees. Waiting for sign-off doesn't make things safer here, it mostly means they don't happen.

That's about how decisions get made, not a claim that everyone can do anything. What you decide on your own we'll go through together when you start, and it's a shorter list on day one than it'll be in a month.

Two things I ask in return, both cheap. Where a decision mattered, write the reasoning down somewhere, a paragraph is plenty. And decisions can be reopened, so saying "that was wrong, we're changing it" doesn't cost you anything here.

If you want to raise something

Go to whoever's running the area. If that isn't right, or it doesn't work, come to me directly. If something happened at an event and you'd rather not raise it in the room, tell me and we'll deal with it afterwards. At some point there'll be a shared address for this so it isn't only me reading it, and I'll tell you what it is once it exists.

I'm also setting up one more route, because I know some things are easier said to somebody who isn't me, including things about me. One person you can go to instead, who'll bring it to me with your say-so and make sure it actually gets dealt with. I'll tell you who it is as soon as they've said yes to doing it.

There's also going to be a short anonymous form after events, and I'd rather tell you exactly how it works than call it anonymous and leave it there. The link is the same link for everyone who was at that event, so there's nothing in it that says which person you are, and no name or email gets stored with what you write. It asks how it went, whether you paid anything and how, and it has a few boxes for things going wrong: money being asked for outside the website, somebody being treated badly, the event not being what the listing said. Most people tick nothing and that's the normal answer. I'll ask everybody the same questions after every event so nobody has to be the one who brings something up.

Two honest things about it. If it was a small group and you describe something very specific, I might work out who wrote it, and there's no clever fix for that. And if you don't leave me a way to reach you, I can't come back to you.

You'll hear back. Anything about somebody's safety, same evening. That's about the routes where I know who you are. What you write anonymously still gets read, I just have no way to answer it.

If you tell me something in confidence, it stays with me. If I need to pass any of it on to actually sort it out, I'll tell you before I do. Raising something that turns out to be a misunderstanding is completely fine and happens often.

Eventually I'd like somebody outside the company checking once a year that we do what we say here. That isn't set up yet and I'm not going to describe it as if it is.

This is my best current thinking, not settled truth, and I expect to revise it. If something in here is wrong, or doesn't match what you've actually experienced, tell me. It's exactly the kind of thing point 5 exists to protect.