Meeting Notes 2017 04 04

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

  • 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

Notetaker: John Facilitator: Trent

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?

Trent: Work as a Python consultant and web developer, so you can hire me! Work on the Python class at Noisebridge and the hot area which is for melting and pouring metal.

Chris: Do 3D printing and science stuff.

Cory: I build robots and teach people how to build robots and today I'm going to be talking about the robotics meeting htat we had on Sunday and specifically about a project I've been involved in for a while.

John: Do journalism and taking notes.

Shingo: From Tokyo, and visiting after a conference in Chile. Biohacker and sometimes works on aircraft and other things.

Nicole: I've been doing laser things and host a programming meetup here.

Yulas (?): Trying to build a physical keyboard from scratch for fun with ASCII output for the moment.

Osman (?): Working on creative coding, 3D images.

Rafael: Electrical engineer and currently messing with SolidWorks.

Jason: Like playing with laser cutters and things and trains neural networks as a dayjob.

Roseanne: First time here and dragged here by Jason. Engineer and does programs, builds math models and virtual things.

Aaron: Software engineer and might be teaching the algorithm course on Thursday sometimes.

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!

Nicole: J has been working on a STEAM program for Noisebridge and wants to get schools and libraries involved in having makerspaces and hackerspaces in the curriculum. Going to have a meeting Thursday at 7 to talk about how we can contribute.

Yulas: Another meeting at 6:30, for people who want to think about doing programming in the future.

Shingo: Donating conductive ink tattoos to the space.

Trent: Python class is every Monday, 7:00pm to 8:30pm. It's an intermediate class, if you know a little bit. If you don't know a little bit, I won't stop you. If you want to come next Monday we'll talk about how functions work.

Cory: Sundays meeting to talk about robots. We talk about mechanical design, robotics, and software, because it's a big discipline.

Trent: The kiln is up and running and you can use it for your stuff. Please help build safety documentation, procedures for using the kiln, and improving the wiki page and signage so people don't hurt themselves.

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?

Trent: Safe space at Noisebridge means just like where we practice safety in the shop and remind people to put on ear protection if you have a loud tool working, if you're going to talk about a topic that might be sensitive to people, you should definitely warn everyone within earshot so that people know if that's something that's going to bother them they can avoid that. That's part of what it means. We also have an anti-harassment policy that covers harassment of all different kinds.

Nicole: If you feel like you are not safe you can speak up and people will come help you.

Trent: You can ask somebody to leave Noisebridge if you feel uncomfortable with them in the space, and you don't have to give any explanation why though you probably will end up talking about it.

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

Nicole: If you can demostrate that you are excellent and treat other people and the space with excellence you can get daytime access to the space with an RFID card and also the same works with Slack. If you want to get on the Slack channel, ask someone in the space.

Trent: Just ask around. Eventually someone who knows will be able to help you.

Nicole: Definitely communicate!

Trent: Anyone can come participate at Noisebridge. You don't have to be a member or a philanthropist. All you have to do is ring the bell and someone will let you in, and you can use tools, read books, use the space, as long as you follow our one rule: be excellent to each other.

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(?)

John:

Trent: We have one person, Patrick Mineault. Mitch signed his form but nobody here knows him.

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.

John:

Trent: There are around 30-40 members of the space and it is very mysterious.

Financial Report

Around $83,000 in the bank. Around $30,000 for Noisetor and around $7,500 for the equipment fund.

Trent: There was discussion about possibly buying the building or moving to around 16th & Capp, to the Redstone Building, which has a large amount of space and a collaborative set-up to potentially buy the building, similar to Omni Commons.

Consensus

  • 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

Longer discussion items belong here. This is the last part of the meeting so that people can break off and continue their discussion afterwards.

Trent: We don't want to go over an hour. We have about 33 minutes but hopefully we won't need this amount of time. If anybody has discussion items let us know.

Chris: I have one about the big chunk of science equipment donated and the potential for a bioworkspace.

Cory: Talking about an open source project the robotics group might contribute to.

Chris: We got a big chunk of lab equipment and we're getting more soon. I'm excited about this because biochem is my trade so this is the sort of thing I do all the time. I would like to see the space be used for some sort of bioresearch thing like Biocurious or Counter-Culture Labs. However I also recognize I'm pretty heavily biased, so I don't want to set aside or take over that much space if I'm the only one who's going to be using it. Also putting in the caveat that having some sort of biological workspace in here isn't that trivial because there's potentially hazardous waste disposal and things like that that have to be considered. The questions are: One, does anyone really object to having a space like that here, or alternatively see any potential benefits to setting that up?

Cory: How long have you been coming to Noisebridge?

Chris: Since November.

Cory: There was a culture lab, mushrooms were grown. Kombucha was brewed. Francisco made the most delicious banana vinegar substance I've ever had. It has been done before, but I don't know who you would talk to.

John: Hazardous waste protocols?

Chris: The definition of hazardous waste can be anything that isn't immmediately edible. It's basically stuff that shouldn't be stuffed down the drain. It goes in a bottle and goes to some waste company that takes that stuff out. I'm not talking about actually dangerous stuff in here.

Yulas: What are some typical chemicals involved that you can't flush down the toilet?

Chris: Some of the stuff we already have here...

Trent: Strong acids, some salts used to generate standardizing solutions which aren't good for you but aren't going to explode...

Chris: Acetone, copper stuff for working on circuit boards.

Trent: Methanol, isoproponol...

Chris: E. coli cultures. There's an established rating system for what is allowed in any biological workspace, and I can't imagine us trying to do anything that would go beyond the first one, which would basically involve messing with bacteria and making pretty pictures with it.

Chris: We would need one, maybe two tables in the back. I'm used to working in a pretty compact space.

Trent: Do you need safety cabinets or ventilation?

Chris: We probably need small cubic foot safety cabinets. Windows in the back would be plenty of ventilation. I think we should improve the ventilation in here anyway but that's a totally different topic.

Trent: We have all the fabrication tools we need for ventilation hoods.

Cory: My friend is big into Biocurious and deals with kilns and hoods. An old Victorian house that is also one of SF's largest clay studios. Maybe I will fight to get her down here on Tuesday next week to talk about a biolab because she'd love to talk about that and ceramics and kilns and hoods for both and all.

Chris: I like Biocurious and Counter-Culture but they're too far away and I'm lazy.

Cory: (Has small fuzzy robot) There are a lot of people at the robotics group who are very interested in learning how to build stuff and Noisebridge doesn't necessarily have a kit to offer. So this is a Ro-Mee-Bo (?). I've recently joined this group. This is a robot designed to be a therapeutic social robot for autistic children who are overwhelmed with stimulation. This little guy allows a therapist or instructor using a limited vocabulary to drive and interact and actually engage the student who has the speech pathology. It's a really important tool. There are about 100 of these out in the wild and their price point is $700. I joined the project to bring the price point down to $150. One of the reasons it's so expensive is because it requires an iPod Touch in the back, which is $350. They don't want to sell them, they don't want to make products, they want to open source it. I'm developing an open source software stack for robotics. For me most robots are just a pair of wheels, a battery, a brain, and a bunch of other stuff we play with all the time. The idea is to make a kit of parts -- one can be purchased, and we have manufacturers who are interested in manufacturing things. And this stuff can be manufactured in a makerspace. Last little spiel: We have a bunch of people who are interested in the robotics group. How can we go about making a package that can be sold at Noisebridge, manufactured here, and all the money goes to Noisebridge for parts and materials? We're trying to give the robotics group something to start playing with and iterating on.

Trent: I've seen people in the past hold workshops and pay for the kit and work with someone knowledgeable to build it. A workshop might be one route. You can put things in there to sell and have the proceeds donated to Noisebridge. It would just be a matter of whether or not the people who need these would benefit from having them over there. How can people get involved?

Cory: We meet every Sunday at 1pm to talk about robots at the slightest opportunity! The stack I'm working on is node.js with a Blockly component.


Discussion Items

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.
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