Meeting Notes 2016 09 20

These are the notes from the The XXXth Meeting of Noisebridge. Date: 2016-09-20 Note-taker: Roger; Moderators: Steve.

• 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:
• Finances:
• New members:
• New philanthropists:
• Consensus Items:
• Discussion Items:

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?

Kyle: Sewing, loves noisebridge

Charlie: Interested in robotics and machine learning

Steve Wilcox: Did physics, doing machine learning. Teaching a machine learning class on Wednesday night

Nick: Web dev, wood, maybe clay

Blake (maybe Cowlicks): Ex Physics. Toying with calling himself cowlicks. Although maybe that's dumb. People will mistake me for "Alex". Programmer, LFJob. Hire me plzthx.

Darryl: Linguist, Programmer, Tech Theorist. Hanging out and working on an AI project. Interested in that new drone. Also a lazor trainer

Roger: Taking notes. Data Analyst by day, Antagonizing Darryl by night.

Tony: Hardware/Software engineer. Dash/cryptocurrency interest. Interested in setting up a meetup group.

Alex:Been here a few times, just travelling around. Neurohacking. I have something in my brain. Whatever, anyway, I'm trying to go back into school for electrical engineering/airforce/etc.

Alex (not participating): Hey, I'm also Alex.

Paul: Been in SF for a decade. One of my music teachers uses the word "Hacking" a lot. Really appreciate noisebridge for being a safe space, and a space where I can avoid discrimination.

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!

Steve Wilcox: Tomorrow night, 6 PM, talking about Support Vector Machines as part of my Machine Learning series. Trying to categorize pre-seizure data vs baseline EEG data. Great excercise in

Fineline Steve: Dude, SVMs are like the most complicated way to explain the

Fineline Steve: Noah Schwartz and some other dudes got this

Fineline Steve: Is the plumbing fixed? (Darryl: Yes) (Charlie: I saw on Slack that it was resolved by the landlord)

Safe Space

Note: This section is experimental. We discussed it at Meeting_Notes_2016_06_28. We're going to try it for the next meeting, and see how it goes, and then discuss in the discussion section how it went, and how we'd like to tweak it.

Noisebridge is a safe space. Invite a volunteer to describe what that means.

Some specific points you might prompt the group to touch on, if it doesn't happen naturally:

• What to do if you feel uncomfortable.
• Noisebridge strives to be radically inclusive. What does that mean?
• Noisebridge has an antiharassment policy. What does that mean?

Kyle: A safe space is one that is free from harrassment. If you are being harassed, you can reach out to a volunteer.

Paul: Harrassment is anything that's unwanted, right?

<Insert Victoria's blurb here>

Not-Participating Alex: I think that was an excellent blurb. We should put it up as a thing.

Fineline Steve: We also have a Safe Space Working Group. A group of people that you can go to if you are being harrassed. You will be safe, you will be anonymous. There was talk about formalizing this, but I forget the details of how that is actually going to be implement.

Participation

Invite a knowledgable volunteer to describe who can participate at Noisebridge, including:

• Describe how to get an rfid key for the door system
• Describe how to get access to slack

Paul: If you take, give back. Completely. We're cooperative.

Charlie: "One step up from the general public"

Fineline Steve: There are things you can do like getting a card. Talk to a member for a 30-day pass.

Paul: If you're here after business hours, you are essentially here by the courtesy of that person, who is vouching for you.

Jason: We should be open. I like to get people in here. The big issue is that we should have people looking at the 86 page. We let in Lance that one time.

Blake: I think we're in agreement. It's an issue of how much you're willing to vouch for them.

Blake: What we have going in here has been working pretty well.

Jason: We should have facial recognition.

Paul: I like the facial recognition,

Philanthropists

• Invite a knowledgeable volunteer 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(?)

Darryl: Philanthropy - You pay dues- $80 (or a $40 starving hacker rate), feel good about supporting the space, and get 24 hour access.

Fineline Steve: You need a member to back you, and you need to learn how to open and close the space, and keep the space safe.

Jason: I'm real good at getting people out of here.

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.

Week 4: Roger Week 3: Kyle

Only 2 members here (1 at the meeting), so Roger will wait to get confirmed until the next meeting (with Kyle)

Financial Report

See last week

• Funds in bank:
• Noisetor (See the bulletpoints at the bottom of http://noisetor.net/finances/#summary):
• Any other details by those participating in handling our financials

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.

Proposals from last week

(Add any items which are consensed upon or someone has raised a principle objection for to the Consensus Items History page.)

Proposals for next week

(Add any new items for consensus to the Current Consensus Items page.)

Discussion Items

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

Jason: What color should we put down for the caulking/drywall stuff for the stairs? It's just plain white for now.

Darryl: Do what you think is appropriate.

Charlie: How do we do

Blake: Oh Happy Day did the painting last time, talk to them?

Jason: Oh yeah, I talked to Paul. He gave me some advice and I could talk with him?

Roger: Update - Toilet should be good.

Jason: I'm planning to put in a sink. I heard that the hot water was busted from Frank.

Paul: What is Oh Happy Day?

Kyle: They're a "party design ideas" kind of outfit. It's not a communal space, it's an office / online party store thing. A big thing is a photo studio. I went in there and got a tour.

Tony: I want to have a meetup, October 1st, 7 PM (Saturday Evening), about the Dash cryptocurrency. Similar to bitcoin, but with improvements. Notably confirmation time. Trying to build it up, it's not the most popular cryptocurrency.

Fineline Steve: Is the name about being fast?

Tony: No, it's Digital + Cash. Trying to be more untraceable than bitcoin as well. (Is it like Zerocash?) Sort of, but different.

Fineline Steve: Thank you for doing this! It's an excellent idea!

Charlie: Question about mailing list stuff - what's the policy for announcing recurring things? Can I just anounce every week if I have new stuff?

Blake: There is no policy.

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.