Meeting Notes 2016 01 12

These are the notes from the The XXXth Meeting of Noisebridge. Date: FIXME THE DATE HERE Note-taker: Alex; Moderators: Torrie.

• One or two bullet points of high-level meeting summary.

Meeting Summary

FIXME FILL OUT AT END OF MEETING AND SEND TO MAILING LIST TLDR what happened at the meeting:

• Announcements: HackTheLeft hackathon upcoming, 5moF rebooting, fundraising grant meeting Saturday 2PM, crypto meeting Thursday, help teach kids Jan 30th
• Finances: Better but we need 20 or so more monthly donors and volunteers to help with Treasury
• New members:
• New philanthropists:
• Consensus Items:
• Discussion Items:

Introductions

• Invite a knowledgeable volunteer to explain what Noisebridge is about:

   Noisebridge is a 501c3 educational nonprofit where you can come and create your dream if its cool and not going to be wildly inconvenient for everyone else. It is an anarchist hackerspace that's been here for years, it belongs to you, come here bring stuff.
   J: Important to remember no one rules this place, everyone in the community runs Noisebridge, you don't need to be a member or philanthropist to help out.

Noisebridge is a 501c3 nonprofit that provides a space for creation, collaboration, and learning about technology and creative projects. Noisebridge provides space, power tools, and infrastructure to help the public learn new skills and create cool things. Noisebridge continues to exist through and depends entirely on membership fees and donations. Our code of conduct is 'Be excellent to each other'."

• Introduce any experimental or unusual moderation techniques that may be using during the meeting like: direct responses, limited speaking time, orderless stack, &c.
• Round of introductions (remember, announcements come later):
  • What's your name
  • What do you do
  • What do you maintain at Noisebridge?
  • if you are new: how did you hear about Noisebridge?

• J: I found Noisebridge a couple years ago and I've been coming ever since. I currently teach circuit hacking mondays. We provide education.
• Patrick: I'm a software engineer trying to do moral good over money good. I do things for Nosiebridge.
• Stacy: I found out about the place from Frank who gave me a tour. It's been cool coming by and checking it out.
• Alex: I like to take notes. I teach games art music tuesdays and robots mondays.
• Rohini: Grad student from New York. Studying hackerspaces for my research. Learning to sew LEDs to holiday cards.
• Steve: Brain computer interface hacking. If I can find two suckers I might apply for membership tonight. I did MC Hawking here and doing new stuff here too.
• Chris - Student currently. Interest in web dev and game design.
• Eli Rodriquez: I started coming here about a month and a half ago. I primarily sew. I met Kyle who also sews and is into bike stuff. We overlap.
• David: I go by Bunny, I am into group skills development, project organizing, creative tasks. I've been with Burning Man as a theme camp manager, I feel my place here is to organize a group starting this last monday on Raspberry Pis, 8 people showed up. I became a philanthropist last Tuesday.
• Erik: First time here, I do web security. Linux security.
• John: I do coding, journalism, and I help make the book scanner there.
• Sara: I heard about this through Alex, I do web dev stuff.
• Torrie: I do LED arts in the fox lounge, I am a recovering Secretary and I've been comign to Noisebridge for at least two hours.
• Jacob: I am computer science graduate, interested in artificial intelligence and game and animation.

Short announcements and events

• Cool new projects? Something you'd like people to know? Say now, but keep it short! One or two sentences please!
• Any happenings at the space of which members should be made aware.
• Don't hog everyone's time since we all just want to hack!
• LXPK: [1] is an upcoming hackathon to pair activists and hackers.
• J: January 30th 10:30 AM we'll be teaching kids all about our various hacking things. Come talk to me if you want to volunteer to help teach them.
• David: I'm into Internet of Things, putting sensors and data on everything. Two weeks ago Raspberry Pi Zero a $5 computer and their main mission is to get computer into people's hands. If you know people that want to get into cheap computers who want to learn, you can get one of these and open up their whole world. They're selling out pretty fast.
• Patrick: We had one or two sessions of cryptography working group every second Thursday. A series of crypto exercises we are working through. I have an idea to broaden this into everybody hacking on crypto and privacy tools every second Thursday. If that's something you're interested in, we'll do a crypto one next Thursday.
• Alex Five Minutes Of Fame is something that has been missing, last week people showed interest to start it up again.

?: What is 5MoF again? Alex: It is 5 minute talks, one after another, and people can submit them. Torrie: In NYC there's been an annual thing called HOPE, hackers on planet earth. It is held at a big fancy hotel. They opened up tickets this weekend. If you're interested in going July 22(?). If you're wanting to go, go to xi.hope.net if you're curious about it. There may or not be another Hackers on a Train to go there together. It's fine.

Membership Binder

• Invite a knowledgeable volunteer to describe membership, and the application process.

Being a member of Noisebridge is not like being a member of a gym or your local chess club. Anyone can come to Noisebridge to hack and learn: you don't need to be a member for that. At Noisebridge, membership is something different: it means taking responsibility and committing to help to maintain, improve, and govern Noisebridge. As a member of Noisebridge, you don't just come here to hack and learn, you actively work to improve what you see around you, help to deal with problems, and make this community and space better than it is today.

• Read off any names from the binder for the past month. Mark down a check or other indicator on every open application to keep track of how many weeks they've been read out.
• Anyone eligible to join this week should
  • introduce themselves,
  • answer any questions members may have for them, then
  • leave the area in search of gifts (traditionally beer and a lime, or cookies) for the rest of the group.
• The rest of the meeting should reach consensus on whether they may join.
• Remember to applaud new members when they return.

Philanthropists

• Invite a knowledgeable member to describe Philantropy, and the application process.
• Read off any names from the binder for the past month. Any applicants must have their sponsor present to vouch for them.
• If there are no objections, they're a philanthropist! Their pledge should be handed over to the Secretary posthaste, after which their token will be updated to give them the 24/7 access they've earned(?)
• Philanthropy applications
• Dor: No problems, donated gear to music stuff.
• Erica: No problems.
• Ely: No problems.

Financial Report

• Funds in bank: $41,046.96
• Noisetor (See the bulletpoints at the bottom of http://noisetor.net/finances/#summary):
• Any other details by those participating in handling our financials
• Patrick: Minus $5000 for Tor money, that's still pretty good. Noisebridge is okay. December was a big month for one-time donations. We still need more recurring donations. Go to donate.noisebridge.net, you can sign up with a credit card.
• Noisebridge costs $5.5K per month in rent, electricity, garbage, insurance and all sorts of crazy things.
• We don't make that in recurring donations yet. For November, we made $4300, our expenses for $5306. $800 short most months. 20 new philanthropists could change that.
• Every money you give Noisebridge you can write off to the US government for taxes. If you work at a company that makes a profit, you can ask them to match your donations. You don't have to be the one who talks to finance or HR and Patrick will be the person who tells them why they should do it.
• Noisebridge goes slowly broke and you can stem the flow of Money by donating and turning off lights.
• David: I have friends at SanFran State who wants to come participate and become philanthropists. 10 of them are in a group. I will introduce them. Semester is about to start.
• Torrie: Bring all of them!
• Alex: Do we need new volunteers for financial stuff?
• Patrick: Yes there are loads of things that can be done to help with fundraising. Emptying cash bins, following up to help out with Treasurer jobs to shrink the workload the better. If 5 people come and replace the 1 person having the job, that would be awesome.
• David: I'll volunteer. I was ICC finance committee chair. I have done 3 finance classes.

Consensus and Discussion

• invite a knowledgeable volunteer to give a brief primer on consensus process
• It is important that everyone in attendance understands at least:
  • Blocking with verbalized principled objections.
  • Why we use consensus over other approaches to decision making.
  • How consensus isn't a legislative process
  • Why consensus isn't applicable to some things like conflict resolution, resolution of time sinks, and the like.
  • You can block a new member without a big discussion.

Proposals from last week

No items for consensus right now.

Proposals for next week

None.

Discussion Items

• Question: I did the helicopter event here a year ago. I get calls from Discovery asking about it. I try to bring them here to video it. I usually ask for a release form and ask Mitch.
• Torrie: Contact secretary@noisebrige.net.
• John: There's a chance that Noisebridge could get a $15-20K grant and we should discuss a grant spending decision process. From discussions from people so far, there's interest in amping up infrastructure with people around here. Improving the electronics, sewing, workshop, etc.,
• Torrie: I have been at a hackerspace before where grant money appeared out of nowhere. We discussed fixing up infrastructure. We delegated that to a fractal working group of infrastucture wonks to figure out the list of things that needed fixing and what would be nice to have beyond that. Another idea we had was hacker grants. We had a $15K grant and we wanted to do $500-$1000 grants each month like Awesome Foundation to help projects that benefit the hackerspace in a way. As long as it benefits the space the grant could be given to them to run with it. The grants might have rules or strings.
• John: The granter was one of the founders of the Awesome foundation who wanted us to do something like the subgrants.
• Torrie: It might be responsible for NB to have everyone together with vegan pizza to come up with the list of broken things, thi
• Alex: We could do a second grant plan for buying a building.
• Torrie: sometimes small grants like this are an opportunity to demonstrate that we do something really effective with a small one to prove that we could handle bigger grants in the future.
• J: We could design an interactive badge that could be worked on at multiple events and . Ultimately, we want to go beyond basic circuit hacking monday to have people to teach multiple types of classes to expand.
• Ely: In regards to discussion over pizza and beer, we could talk about formulating an exit strategy for the grant money usage to demonstrate what we did with the money to go show grantwriter what we did with it. That way we present a grant use summary of how we used the money and clearly show what we did so they can tabulate that into future grant decisions. What David was saying about education component carries a lot of weight. There was at least one parent at Marshall who worked at Google who gives us a bus to do a family camping trip. Reaching out to a school in close vicinity, we would have parents who know what we provide for their kids. A great thing to add
• Alex: Two things: Ther have been some schools that have worked with us before. We can contact them as our points of contact in the community. We could get filmmakers to document it.
• Torrie: Everyone write down email addresses and give it to John.
• John: Saturday.
• Torrie: Come Saturday with infrastructure improvements ideas. Show up Saturday. 2PM.
• David: If you're trying to get money, organizations pay attention to the buzz and news about us like social media. Getting good publicity can help them make a decision. I'm good with social media buzz generation.
• J: That reminds me: Doocracy. If it is excellent, mention it to a couple people and just do it.

If any important discussion happens, it should be happening after forward progress is made during consensus.

End of Meeting

1. Return the membership binder to its rightful location.
2. Discuss any items for which there was not time during the meeting.
3. Enjoy the company of your fellow hacker, robot, or robothacker.

Note taker posts the notes

1. Clean and tidy the meeting notes including removing all these really verbose instructions.
2. Fill out the short summary at the top listing just announcements, consensus items, discussion topics, and names of new members and philanthropists.
3. Copy paste the notes to the next meeting page. (They will become Last meeting at midnight.)
4. Email the meeting summary to Noisebridge Discuss and Noisebridge Announce lists.
5. CC on the email treasurer@noisebridge.net and secretary@noisebridge.net if there are new members and philanthropists.
6. Edit the Current Consensus Items if anything is proposed for consensus next week.
7. Edit the Consensus Items History if anything was reached consensus or failed to reach consensus this week.

Fun things to do after

• Reprise of the Hackernationale. [This is anarchy - we do what the wiki says!]
• PGP Key Signing could happen now (if it doesn't happen before any given Meeting). Ask others around the space or check the list to see who wants in on the action.