Meeting Notes 2016 01 19

These are the notes from the The XXXth Meeting of Noisebridge. Date: January 19, 2016 Note-taker: John Shutt, Crystal Huang, and Alex; Moderators: J.

• Hack The Left hackathon February 5-7
• Torrie is starting a new Oakland hackerspace
• bike tools were stolen so lock up valuable tools till new lockers are bought
• $80 donated towards buying new lockers and more donations welcome
• David: DevBootCamp is hosting a civic hackathon 1 day hack Saturday January 23rd 9:00-22:00
• Toorcamp tickets going fast so sign up!
• Noisebridge has a Meetup group to help promote classes, join it

Introductions

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

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?
• Andy: I live in the neighborhood. I'm a production designer and my friend and I do experience design and want to interact with the community.
• Micky: Like the mouse. I don't live round here. I work with Andy. I have a background of al ittle bit in working with different materials. I'm looking to connect with new people.
• Marcel: I've been coming to Noisebridge for around 2 years now and I do some 3D printing. I like to do 3D printing and some electronics.
• Alex : I teach Robotics mondays and game music, art and Unity C# development mondays.
• Rohini: I'm a grad student visiting from NY. I am studying Nonprofits and hackerspaces.
• John: Software engineer, game desiger, been here a couple times, first meeting.
• John: Invited to noise pancakes and thought I'd stop by for meeting and Unity class.
• Danielle: I'm from Seattle, flew in for the week and stuff. I hang out here whenever I'm in town.
• Jarvis: I like Android app programming and 3D for a while. I'm here for Unity class.
• Holga: Visiting for Germany for a bit of time, involved in CCC stuff, was at CCC conferencei n hamburg, 12K people. I want to tap into and see what's happening here. Danielle brought me.
• David: My friends call me Bunny. I'm passionate about life, I've been a hacker since I was a kid. Not using their intended purposes.. I enjoy collaborating. I'm passionate about education and I'm a senior MBA at SF State.
• Matt:
• Zeller: I write software and a motion controller for C&C machines. Right now I'm trying to resurrect the gate payphone.
• Crystal: I work with people to create similar communities like this where more people can explore new things. I hope to bring it back and more makers to China to understand this culture and with kids in China to become makers to create an excuse to hang out here more.
• Ely: I live in the neighborhood. I work on sewing station, I enjoy classes. I took my first class last night and I look forward to doing more. We look forward to doing community nights for sewing soon. We have industrial machines peopel don't have access to.
• Teddy: First time here, interested in learning about Arduino.
• John: I work a bit on the book scanner, coding, journalism, activism.
• Dima: I'm an engineer and I like teaching my kids.
• Stan: Involved in launching a crypto currency game, looking for help on how to finish it up.
• Frank R: I created a wiki page in april 2014 and told about what my interests were, since then I've been trying to figure out how to engage with the community. Still trying to figure out where the door is.
• J: Daytime I'm a sysadmin, give access, take away access. I like to teach circuit hacking Mondays, I promote education and learning. The reason I give my efforts to this place because it promotes, that eduation should be free and accessible to all of us. The only thing it requires is the materials, the time and the effort desired to learn.
• Rubin: I'm the asshole.
• Naomi: I'm everybody's mom.
• Patrick: I believe myself to be a semi-responsible adult.
• Mark: I hack on game stuff. I'm back.

Short announcements and events

• Alex: Hack the Left is an upcoming hackathon for left activist projects to be developed by teams of activists and technologists. February 5-7th

RSVP at Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/hack-the-left-an-anticapitalist-hackathon-tickets-20721748307

• David: DevBootCamp is hosting a civic hackathon 1 day hack Saturday January 23rd 9:00-22:00.
• Rubin: We're doing this thing building a big display out of soda beer bottles. We require 1800 clear normal sized bottles. If 30 of us drank 1 bottle of something and cleaned out the bottle for 3 months. We're going to put them in milk crates on their sides with an LED in each one. Each will be a round pixel. It will be a maker faire exhibit. Small one. (Coronas are the perfect size)

Wash them before bringing them in from home.

• June 8-12: An event in NW Washington State called Toorcamp. A hacker conference every year, this year on an island off the NW-most part of Washington State. You can see Canada. A bunch of us are considering going and forming a Noisecamp. There's limited landing capacity. If you're interested, email noisebridge discuss mailing list to discuss forming a camp.
• J: We opened a Meetup page to announce events. Go to meetup.com/noisebridge to promote a class or event. Speak to Alex or Mitch or myself to become an organizer who can post events.
• Louis: glass blower, mechanical engineer.
• Torrie: I burn down hackerspaces. Nice to see you this evening.
• Brandon: I used to come here a lot. I'm hosting the Hack The Left event.

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.

David: I'm a philanthropist. I came here and fell in love with the place. I interacted and came to one of these meetings and made prior arrangements with a previous member ot apply to become a philanthropist and made a subscription to donate every 30 days to the place. I get 24 hour access. It comes with responsibilities to go and introduce the space to new people which is one of my favorite things to do. John: It is easy to become a philanthropist and easy to revoke it.

• 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(?)

Financial Report

• Funds in bank: $42,540.45 as well as $7.5K checks for Noisetor and 12-1300 in checks for NB and $200 to be cashed for NB.
• Noisetor (See the bulletpoints at the bottom of http://noisetor.net/finances/#summary): Noisebridge is a 501c3 and we can sponsor projects and we accept donations to fund Tor exit node in the USA. It is an anonymity traffic network that is used by NGOs, civil rights workers, people in oppressed nations who want to read free news without being bashed in, we accept donations on their behalf.
• Of the $42K, about $20 or more is for Noisetor.
• We have about $22K, we spend $5.5K and make 3.5-4K in recurring donations. Noisebridge wants to do better things and our cheap rent won't be cheap forever. We pay $0.85 per square foot for space vs $60 per square foot in the city average. We need to save up for Noisebridge's prosperous future. Go to donate.noisebridge.net. If you work for a company that returns a profit, ask the company to match your donations because they can match yours to write it off their taxes. If you want to do that but want somebody like us to talk to your HR, ask us.
• Any other details by those participating in handling our financials.

Consensus and Discussion

John: Consensus is for decisions that affect the whole community such as knocking down walls. We generally work on small c consensus by talking to enough of the community to make a decision when people generally agree. When we have a smaller project that doesn't disrupt the space, you communicate enough to get it done. You can communicate through the mailing list and slack. IRC, some people use it.

• 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.

Discussion Items

• John: Our nice kit of bike tools were stolen. Nice ones we were given a year ago. You are responsible for seeing who comes in and making a call about anybody that appears to be behaving like a thief. You can question anybody reasonable about why they're taking things. There's a chance that
• Alex: Encourage everyone to use the lockers to prevent theft in the space. However, we have limited amount of locker space. It would be great to get more lockers.

John: Nice tools like the bike tools would be smart to be locked up even though it would be nice to have easy access to them.

• Ely: If we get smaller lockers we could scale down voluntarily.
• J: Usually something like lockers aren't something that need to be consensed.

Alex: Here's $20 and put in your $20 towards some more lockers for shared tools for the space.

• J has the $80 locker money

HACK THE LEFT

I'm Brandon. I used to come to this space a whole lot. I'm back to throw an event. Y'all may have heard about Hack The Left, an anticapitalist. A bunch of left aligned hackers designers artists together in a room doing left aligned organizations doing work in the real world to fight back against the state. I would love it if you all came. If you are interested in heading up a project. For more information, go on the wiki page.

CRYSTAL

I'm working with some young makers in China 17-18 years old making stuff in China. They are interested in visiting to meet hackers in the bay area. We're working with the crucible in Oakland to learn glass and metal and classes there. One idea we have is for them to spend half a day or day in Noisebridge seeing what people make here.

• J: Sounds awesome.
• Crystal: They arrive July 16th. July 23rd, Saturday. More details will be on the wiki.

TORRIE

Torrie: Hi I'm supposed to be the secretary and I scan things and send them to the NSA! To make things go faster I'm printing updated philanthropist and membership applications.

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

Torrie: I'm building a queer hacker community, get in touch with me!

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.