Meeting Notes 2014 11 11

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Meeting notes for the 335th Meeting of Noisebrige

Moderator: User:Nthmost

Note taker: User:Patrickod


Attendance[edit]

  • josh - tinkerer
  • Patrick -
  • Walter - 3d movies without glasses
  • POD - Doing citizenKino on Friday. Project currently about hacking the housing problem.
  • Torrie - I'm currently filling you all with radiation in the form of a dictionary
  • Kevin - co-host neuro-hacking here on Wednesday 8pm
  • rayc - in an endless battle with silicone
  • Steve - theoretical phycisist and developer
  • Sarah - sudoroom. Wanted to see how the other half live
  • Gustavo -
  • Ryan - Curious mind.
  • John - I work on secure communication systems between sources and journalists
  • Naomi - Lately shaking fist a lot at academic publishing.
  • Jen - Trying to hack the best Job!
  • Claudia -

Announcements and Events[edit]

John - Thursday next week we're having a meeting for thoes interested in 5mof. Looking to pass it off hopefully to a group. Thursday 8pm next week.

Rayc - Our inspection date is coming up. We have this weekend to finish the list of requirements. This whole weekend is going to be a huge work weekend. If people are interested in helping out it'd be greatly appreciated. Lots of woodworking

Walter - I do 3d movies w/o classes. I'm looking to do an installation on the 13th December. Looking to use the Turing room to do the installation.

Sarah - We're having, in OMNI a fundraiser November 29th. Please come! Short on details but it'll be fun.

Torrie - There's a bonfire this weekend probs Saturday but there are dissenting opinions. Saturday at 5pm. Fires have to be out by 9pm. Find us on Ocean Beach. IF you'd like to help with getting wood there please contact me.

Naomi - find what stairwell you'll be in and let people know

Rayc - it'll be between lincoln and fulton.

POD - CitizenKino is a project on tour. The housing theme was thrown together quickly. What's really on tour is a project on analysing technotopia. We're doing more of those shows while in the Bay Area. Internet Archive will be hosting us December 9th. It's a large show and we'd love some help. Tentative show date.

Torrie - Skylighting project. In the glass display case up front there's some demo LED strips. If you'd like to help out let me know. Mitch is picking up LED strips in China, 45M worth.

Membership[edit]

John - You don't have to be a member to do pretty much anytihng here. You can do all the hackery things. All membershp means is that you can partake in consensus and you have monthly dues. Consensus is used to decide things that affect the whole community, the rest is do-ocracy. Members have the ability to block consensus items but it's a last resort.

Naomi - Patrick in the binder. <- insert statement here ->. Sponsrs are Mitch and Naomi. Steve <- insert statement here ->

Naomi - Membership requires 2 existing members to sponsor you. We encourage you to stick around for a while to get to know the community and for us to know you.

Consensus[edit]

Current Items[edit]

Naomi - There are none. We need more data for the new AV expense consensus item.

Patrick's Membership[edit]

Josh - Are you a terrorist?

Patrick - No.

Kevin - How long have you been coming to Noisebridge?

Patrick - I first started coming around a few times in 2013, before the reboot I dropped in a dozen times or so, sometime in the beginning of June I started to be around a bunch more

Nthmost - What happens when Noisebridge goes into maintenence mode?

Patrick - Yea, I'll stick around. Before the reboot, folks were stopping by to just use the space like a desk, it wasn't a great atmosphere. Its a different place now with a community.

Kevin - Why do you want to become a member?

Patrick - I said a couple of meetings ago I saw membership more as a stewardship. I see it as a way to more formally in my own mind solidify that stewardship and to keep the space excellent.

Nthmost - Does that mean we can call you patrick stewart?

Patrick - Yes of course!

RAYC - What are your thoughts on the consensus process at Noisebridge?

Patrick - Does anyone fully understand consensus? I think its a great way for communities - not for corporations, - but for communitites. It requires the goodwill of participants. It isn't something you should enter into while being at arms with each other. Its a break from the default world of majority vote since everyone's voice is heard; it leads to more thought about what is being proposed. If it was majority vote and 51% of the folks said it was pretty cool, you'll never be shown the other side of things.

Nthmost - What do you suppose is the best approach to keeping the good community vibes going while those with bad mojo arrive?

Patrick - I think its an issue of reducing the noise at the earliest point. Noisebridge is sensitive to entropy. We need people leading by example. Prior to the reboot there wasn't much of a feeling of people feeling empowered to stop bad things happening at the space. It only takes a few people stepping up to show that you can effect change in the space. The best way to keep the good feel is to do that. The community should be protected at the edges; take drama offline, out of the meetings, mitigated between the parties involved.

RAYC - If there were people with characteristics who were causing trouble at the space, would you group them together or take it case-by-case basis?

Patrick - Noisebridge is a very varied place. Guilt by association doesn't work here, it needs to be case-by-case.

RAYC - If someone looks like someone shifty...

Patrick - Everyone has a shot at being a part of Noisebridge. Not everyone is welcome at noisebridge, but everyone is welcome to walk through the door and see if it works

Torrie - What makes you happy?

Patrick - Getting to work on awesome stuff with awesome people. Being an individual is not fun, being part of a community is a lot more fun when you can share. Already I've learned a bunch of things I was ignorant to 6 months ago. That really puts a smile on my face and is why I keep coming back.

~~DISCUSSION~~

Nthmost - This is the most members we've had at a meeting in forever. I like his answers, he's got the right concepts about community

Torrie - He helped out a bunch with the reboot, flooring, etc. He's nifty.

RAYC - Two things he was part of or contributed to that will have a tremendous net positive impact on the space are the SSWG and the documentation working group. I'm totally for documentation.

Nthmost - I have a good picture of him completing the punch-down process in the wiring closet. He was pivotal in getting the ethernet run. I think it speaks to his persistence.

RAYC - I also met patrick when the networking was getting punched down. I encountered a problem with one of the ports and told him about it. The next day, he was fixing it up.

John - I have a nice thing to say about him. At the hackathon he said he was thinking of getting euler's identity as a tattoo.

Consensed: Yes

Discussion Items[edit]

3D installation[edit]

Walter - Want to use Turing Fri-Sat the weekend of Dec 13th. It'd take over the whole room. Setup Friday night.

Rayc - The classroom is empty on those days. The excellent thing to do in that case is to send emails to nousebridge-{announce,discuss}@lists.noisebridge.net just to give everyone a heads up. I'd recommend signage, clear concrete signs saying the room is being used / what for.

Walter - Where to move the desks out of the room? Have my own 3d kit, putting up a fake wall which is just foam board. No dust or heavy tools.

Rayc - Doable and excellent.

Naomi - Is this something that NB could promote to the community? e.g. plan things around this.

Walter - Yep planning on doing things w/ POD in January.

Naomi - Thinking more along the lines of using that setup over the 3 days that it's setup. Could we have a party and have that be a piece at the party?

Walter - Yep we could do that with experimental music too.

Sarah - I could help out w/ that.

Naomi - Get on the mailing list and/or slack and try to drum up more community interaction. The more networked in you are with the community the easier this'll be.

Walter - Yep that sounds great. It's just a test run but I'd like to get it going repeatedly.

Sarah - When is the event?

Walter - December 13th. It's around god waffle pancakes.

Naomi - L

Naomi - Let's take it offline

reboot stuff[edit]

Naomi - Rayc and I met w/ Neil yesterday. Went through a list of things that need to be done, hard requirements. We looked at the calendar and marked that it should be done before Thanksgiving. We have to get it scheduled within 6 months from us receiving it. This means this weekend is the last weekend that we have to get stuff done. We have the stairwell to fill in as well.

Rayc - I have a list but with the reboot there are hard requirement things for inspection and I'm taking neil's word on this, but there are things that we need folks w/ electrical work experience to help out. I spoke with Neil about us taking on some of the lower hanging stuff like putting on extensions for the old lighting cables. I have a master list of stuff split out into electricians work and electrical overlap that we can do. There's also noisebridge infrastructure work that needs done, like filling in holes in the sheetrocked walls to fulfill the "1 hour fire rule". Another big aspect is decomissioning the old loose hanging cables in the back. We're also planning on running 2 ethernet cables for low voltage in place of the extension cord at the gate. This weekend will be a big work week. In addition to that stuff there's also stuff like painting, cleaning and filling in some holes to get it to point of maintenance.

Naomi - There's some clear priorities that *must* be done by inspection and then there's nice to haves.

Rayc - Let's prioritize. 1 hour fire rule must be done w/ sheetrocking. Neil recommended painting the wall at the door to make it look done. The back stairwell is a beast. We need to fill it in / floor it over. It needs to be structurally sound to support people sitting on it. I got some advice from Neil on this. If anyone wants to check it out after the meeting follow me. Another important thing is that when the inspection comes we have 3 things. omit the extension cables running to the tables running to the tables or cover them in mats that we can walk over.

Torrie - Casey mentioned in IRC that he'd be interested in getting some of those. I'll let him know to do so

Rayc - Let's sync up to make sure we buy the right stuff. Bunch of people will be here Saturday and/or Sunday.

Naomi - I'd also put out to the riseup pad with people categorised skills Ryan - What ?

Naomi - Over the summer we collected volunteer information w/ skillsets in a riseup pad. There's 40-50 people sorted by skills.

Rayc - There's some small stuff like PDUs that are mounted horizontally, some need to be taken down. For the APC PDUs we can mount them the same way. We should also look for other potential liabilities in the space that we don't know abuot.

Naomi - File all that under last minute 4 hours before inspection as a sense of urgency usually does much better at fixing those things. The day before the inspection will see a lot of this done.

Rayc - In addition to the extensions there's a bunch of loose ends around the space that the electricians didn't get to that we'll most likely take on. None of it has to be hot so we can flip breakers to make it safe. There's also open junction boxes that we have to put covers on. Naomi - Let's not itemize everything at this meeting. Put it in an email. If you want to get things itemized then break it out into multiple emails and mail peolpe on the list.

Open as Possible? What does it mean[edit]

Kevin - Wanted to continue the conversation about the noisebridge immune system. More what does it mean to be as open as possible and how does that relate to NB and access control. In the ethical social engineering group there was some discussion of boundaries. The ESE / ethical communication / project r00t. Lately I've been thinking a lot about boundaries. One metaphor we've used is cells. A closed cell dies due to starvation, and open ones die of infection. We want to be "as open as possible" but we can't be completely open. I want to reconsider this idea and se e how it relates to access control. Patrick mentioned a tiered approach to security and I wanted to get thoughts on it .

Rayc - I tend to keep an open mind to everyone, but if there are red flags I bring them up with other people and explain that I feel that there's potential for problems. Usually when I talk to people about these things it's not about looks and character it's about behavior or other unexcellence. e.g. someone being potentially harmful to others or could put off a negative vibe in the space. We're here for positive things. If there are some problematic behaviors or actions that people might perform I ask myself first is there room for excellence here, can we work it out? Maybe they're not used to the situation and it might be more comfortable to see if we can sync somehow and address the problematic actions before asking someone to leave. Just a viewpoint from a contributor and person in the community.

Mohammad - You can't take in everything around you, you must have boundaries. But drawing the line is tough. Judging by looks or anything else can sometimes not be the right thing. It should be done case by case because we can't make a general rule in this situation.

Naomi - I've heard people saying over and over again that NB's lack of rules is a "good thing". A rhetoric professor of mine had struggles in conceptualizing morality for his son, so what he settled on was the mantra of "Do the right thing". In some situations things like breaking curfew might be the Right Thing. In NB's case we have the "be excellent to each other" as the ultimate rule which guides. In the human system the skin, which is very porous is the first layer of defense. It lets in some amount of the outside world. It's us sensing the world. We don't want to cut ourselves off but experience the world.

Torrie - When I suspect red flags about something in the space I always assume that I'm wrong and I go around and talk to people and try to gather opinions / feedback on my analysis of the situation, providing it in the most unbiased way possible.

Walter - It's good to have a good balance between trusting your instincts but also keeping your imagination in balance.

POD - This topic interests me greatly because we had this same issue w/ a drug addict community at cellspace. We tried to help those in need of resources and it caused us a lot of difficulties. But it helped us not become a gated community. They were our neighbours. I'm sensing already that people here are in a defensive mode, due to having had bad experiences. You will need to defend yourselves against destructive forces. Be careful however to not become too much of a gated community. It's important to realise that we're in the midst of a very tense situation in the Mission.

Naomi - We have been through a lot, we're basically rebuilding after a cycle of tearing it all down and starting afresh. We're trying to start in a way that gives us strength, it feels much less delicate here than it was last month. One of the things that has us differ from cellspace is the classes we have here on a regular basis. They provide us a lot of anti-entropy work that we'd not get as individuals. Students come in with good intentions in how they use the space. Some individuals come with not great intentions; the idea is to put the weight on the side of "good intentions".

Steve - If we're different as a space and we're trying to be open one of the ways that we can present this is that we have no hard and fast rules apart from "be excellent". This allows anyone, *anyone* to come in. As far as immune system that allows everyone in. As a group we want to have it be open but keep the bad things out. We have to do with effort and community instead of rules. It's better than any algorithm. It's the only way to do it. We can be open and not die due to entropy and noise, but only by engaging with each other and helping out. You can't always write down the "right thing" to do in a situation but there's usually a right/wrong way to get the desired outcome. Saying that we're open is unrealistic unless folks are actively interested in maintaining the space. If this community dies, another occupy comes in and the hackers run away due to lack of engagement the space dies, but if we stick together we can keep it alive.

Kevin - Something that I find interesting about all of this is how single cell organism rules apply to multi-cell organism and communities, but the only difference is how the principles are applied. For humans its lines of communications and self-reflecting. In a group we have to talk to each other. We must be open and talk about issues when we notice them.

Rayc - I've been on the worst end of the immune-system thinking where I told trusted folks in the community but it wasn't acted upon because the individual was "contributing". There's "auto-immune" disorder here. I gave 2 people a tour of the space and then a trusted community member came and asked me "what are these crack-heads doing here" when they encountered them. The only reason I didn't ask them to leave because they are a trusted member.

Steve - It's OK to say that but it's not ok to leave it be. Communication is the key here. It's good that they expressed an opinion without acting first.

Torrie - It is about communication. IF I were to encounter someone, trusted or not, and say "what are those crackheads doing" without them being crackhead or having any bad interactions previously, I'd say "I kinda know those people and it's not ok to make rash assumptions about those people". I know the instance you're talking about, and it as a failure of multiple people in the community, and I still haven't figured out an explanation for it. If you feel strongly about red flags then talk about it

POD - The OMNI room has an excellent policy about members brining guests in and I'm wondering if it's online because I think it'd be very helpful for people to read. How to bring guests in to the space and how to be responsible for people who aren't members. It has this protective nature.

Rayc - What I'd like to know is in the positive direction we're going in how can we draw the line for inside people and not just outside people. This negativity is a problem for NB. Think about those on the receiving end. Even if someone is a trusted person / member deos that excuse them for this? I consider it demeaning.

Torrie - I remember, its' been brought up before, the idea of a slipjar. A jar that sits around the space where you take a slip of paper and write an anonymous complaint around the space. It could be "I feel uncomfortable about this person" or "I think this needs to change". The Wordpress devs have an anonymous submission from that coulde be useful at NB.

Kevin - To go back. Cellular communication is precise, bad messages are dropped, good messages are passed on. People are more difficult. I encourage Rayc to not take it personally but to give some feedback as to how the message was not helpful. Don't just drop the message and get upset. Offer feedback

Naomi - Few grander concepts. We'd like to be accepting of new people. Secondly we'd not like to die in a cultural fire. Some people are on the closed on things. Mitch is on the further along the "no not again" end of the spectrum than I'd ever have predicted. It's just a sad fact of our history that we have to contend with a lot of defensiveness at the moment. I'm not sure how to deal with it. In your situation Rayc, one needs to accept that some have more closed-off feelings. At NB some cells got more damaged than others.

Rayc - I was thinking of this from a dynamic perspective. If this is going to happen in the future how can we deal with it? I think as we're going towards this more progressive culture there are more dynamics that we have to work toward as a community to have more net positive ways to deal with it rather than just let them happen. One of the reasons I'm bringing it up is so that we don't *have* to deal with it in the future. It's not conducive to where we're going.

Naomi - The more we talk about it the better we get at it. We don't want to sweep things under the rug. In the case you're describing, a trusted member of the community who put an inordinate amount of work into the reboot, the circumstances are unfortunate. The weight of his contributions were sometimes greater than what he'd do in the moment. It's a problem we haven't solved yet. Someone who has a long history of excellence suddenly being not excellent.

Rayc - What I feel has happened is that a certain set of dynamics in the community that have happened in the past, red flags, concerns of safety, if I were to be brought up as a threat of safety to the space I'd want to be asked to leave immediately. What transpired was an ongoing thing that was swept under the rug. It felt like a blanket response from those not seeing the other side. This could be a repeat pattern.

Naomi - You're totally right that we need to be better at dealing with these red flags. The signals were there but they need to be amplified. People were listening.

Torrie - I'm still trying to wrack my brain about this. I saw these flags while not many people were here. I just want to say that it's really about communication. In this instance I didn't get a strong signal, they need to be amplified. I didn't get as strong an indication that it was a problem than others. I feel if I'd known more about it I'd have been better able to deal with it. I just remember having a single discussion and then getting it.

Rayc - Mob mentality. Blanket of blindness amongst the folks that I brought it up would have trumped signal amplification.

Torrie - I don't agree with that.

Kevin - I was made uncomfortable by the same individual for quite a while, while the same person gave a large amount of talk about community. It was difficult to amplify the signal in an environment that dampened the signal.

Torrie - I'd like to continue it outside the meeting.

Naomi - I think it's a great discussion but I'd like to spend more time talking about the symptoms rather than the individuals.

Rayc - I brought this up to look at these dynamics.

Torrie - Until a month ago we had greeter committee meetings that talked about these same things. We'd sit in the corner and talk about these issues. I'm usually here on Mondays and I'd like to get others together to talk about it.

IT'S OVER!!!