Meeting Notes 2019 07 09

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These are the notes from the The XXXth Meeting of Noisebridge.

Date: July 9, 2019

Note-taker: [User:Nthmost]

Moderators: Tyler

  • BOOGERSNOTS

Meeting Summary

  • Fundraising Update: Discussion of needing a Government Liaison board officer.
  • Announcements: The space is all different now! SQL class! HumanMade opening Saturday. Roast Burning Man this Saturday!
  • Finances:
  • New members:
  • New philanthropists: Riley
  • Consensus Items: None
  • Discussion Items:

Introductions

A/S/L?!?!?!

  • Tyler - he/him - hack on everything, most recently metalworking for the barbot
  • Andries - he/him - mind-mapping software
  • Ryan - he/him - help people and NOisebridge, VR setup in the back
  • Freddy - he/him - DBs, starting a SQL class
  • Victor - he/him - web developer, learning frameworks right now
  • Carl - whatever - large VR art installations, outrageously fast scooters and cybersecurity
  • Julie - they/them - web platform stuff, industry, bioplastics
  • Riley - he/him - Linux, give tours
  • Jay - he/him - thumbs up
  • Naomi - she/her - cultural analysis, create culture by design
  • Lemons - he/they/yeah - laser trainer, keep the space open and/or move. been here for 5+ years!
  • Gwendolyn - she/her - back after 1.5 years!

Short announcements and events

60-second description per item in bulletpoint.

  • Tyler: everything in the space moved! We had a cleaning weekend and some people hate it, some people love it. We got rid of 15 bags of trash.
  • Freddy: starting next Wednesday recurring SQL class, 7-8:30pm in Church
  • Ryan: this Saturday is HumanMade's public opening, a new makerspace in the FiDi, see event page here (150 Hopper unit 400)

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/humanmade-public-opening-tickets-65008822137

  • Naomi: The Scene that Became Cities book release party to ROAST Burning Man down to an ember, Caveat Magister and a list of guests will make a mockery of BM which is SO OVER. This Satuday at 8pm, Hackitorium. Come help setup around 7pm.
  • Tyler: "And Friends" event in 2 weeks, about 100 people, will probably take over hackitorium.


Excellence

Our One Rule is to Be Excellent to Each Other.

What is being Excellent?

Riley: Don't do things that would clearly upset people to a certain degree.

Lemons: the positive affirmation of doing good things fo rthe community. e.g. it is awesome to help setup events. to help run and fix equipment. help get involved with stuff and do the dishes (literally and metaphorically)

What does the AHP do?

Ryan: Be Kind to people. Don't be demeaning for any reason. If you see someone antagonizing someone in the space, please ask them to leave, if you don't feel comfortable asking them to leave, see if someone can help you. We're a community, being Excellent is a multiperson exchange. Help others and make sure others aren't being harmed.

Tyler: how about if someone retaliates by asking the other person to leave?

Lemons: find someone to help mediate the situation. Also remmeber that being asked to leave is not the same as being kicked out.

Tyler: If you think it's really unreasonable that someone asked you to leave, just go to a coffee shop and chill for a couple hours and come back.

Participation

Everyone at Noisebridge is a participant at Noisebridge.

Tyler: we have a NB Slack and a NB Discuss. Both still in use. Some people think we should abandon Slack, but. Discuss is a forum, just go to:

   https://discuss.noisebridge.info
   
   Make an account, log in, post stuff.  easy.  Good way to find out what's going on.
   

Tyler: Slack is also used for this, it's invite only. You can post on Discuss to ask for a Slack invite.

Tyler: Anybody can get a 30-day access pass for the door, if you get a Member or SUPER Philanthropist PLUS to authorize you.

Lemons: giving access is generally accorded w/ people showing up to do Good, not just because you have a title. We're not an entitlement culture.

Ryan: If you're active in the community (and kind), you'll quickly gain the trust to get a 30-day access token, or be asked to be a Philanthropist.

Lemons: And if you're really pushy about getting privileges, we're less into giving you any.

Ryan: to participate at NB you can come in the door and do whatever you want to do in the space as long as you follow our One Rule (Be Excellent to Each Other), and if you want to change something at the space please go through small-c consensus if it seems like it'll affect other people. Otherwise, do-ocracy.


Philanthropists

A Philanthropist at Noisebridge has earned enough trust from the community to open and close the space.

Ryan: also stewardship. You gotta take out the garbage if you're the only one here! This also goes with a recurring donation amount of either $40/month (starving hacker rate) or $80/month or more. If you need to go lower, please talk with the Treasurer. You can donate into the cash box, but it's better if you donate in a way that's easier to track.

Tyler: there are many ways to donate: cash, Stripe, PayPal, Patreon, Benevity (corporate matching), bitcoin, ethereum. (props to Kinnard for bringing in a big crypto community and someone donated some coin).

TODAY in the binder:

   * Ken Adler - not here
   * Cass Grant - not here
   * Erhan Justice - not here
   * Aaron Deen - not here
   * Paul D Clark - not here
   * Michael Riley Techler - is here - 6/25/19 is when it should have started.  Doing Patreon donations.
   

Riley is reaffirmed as a Philanthropist, huzzah.

Membership Binder

Membership in Noisebridge entails community Trust in Consensus.

No membership applications in the binder.

Lemons: Phil and Membership are about an inch apart. Members vote on the board.

Naomi: Members have the responsiblity of deciding how Noisebridge works. We need more Members!

Tyler: Let's talk about Membership as a Discussion item!


Financial Report

Anarchist societies under a capitalist state need money to survive and thrive, yo.

Tyler: Cash donations were a little lower b/c of being closed down for cleaning. We usually get $400/week in cash. Crypto events have bumped up our crypto donations, e.g. a whole bitcoin! and some Ethereum.

  • Funds in bank: $162,000 -- we dipped by about $11k b/c we had to pay off Asheesh at the Roguelike Conference (fiscal sponsorship).


Fundraising Update

How's it all going

  • We canceled our relationship with Scandiuzzi Krebs.
  • Tyler: How do we communicate with the government? we haven't been organized in the past. Alice our attorney suggested that we have a single person who does that. So people can work on grants as a group, but we should just have one person.
  • Tim: Traditionally that's the President.
  • Tyler: regardless of title it needs to be a single person doing it.
  • Tim: the only reason i'd make it President is that it's something we could put on the website, it's what gov't agencies might expect.
  • Ryan: if NB could have some sort of email server setup so ppl could email on behalf of NB, e.g. official@noisebridge.net -- handoff-able to the next person who takes on the position.
  • Tim: great idea, i second that. Who has control of the domains?
  • Naomi raises hand
  • (general assent that we should make __@noisebridge.net emails)
  • Tyler: We should be paying more attention to small donations and also STUFF donations. like if we can badger Makita to send us stuff.
  • Tim: We can get in-kind donations that we can then sell. "excess inventory".
  • Ryan: if you have any company ideas, i.e. whom we should reach out to for in-kind donations.
  • Tim: there's a bunch of local businesses, we should reach out to them with "I support NB" stickers.
  • Tyler: James did a survey where he worked up and down the block, and literally no one except Michelle at Yamo knew about Noisebridge.
  • Naomi: the Fabric store knows about Noisebridge!
  • Tim: We could talk to the locksmith, the paint store, etc. Get stuff donated.
  • Naomi: executive functioning! People here, like Tyler, should act executively and encourage individuals to take on ONE small job so people don't get overwhelmed.
  • Tyler: we should definitely break up big tasks into smaller ones.
  • Tim: I want to make a webpage for local sponsorships, how do i get access to noisebridge.org to do that? Is that Matt? (we chat about whether Matt has push or
  • Freddy: who's involved with the Donate page? (it's been down for the past week)
  • Tyler: maybe R? ask him separately, maybe? Check out the #rack channel on Slack. They've been working pretty hard on it. I'm also working on a financials subdomain for noisebridge. Classes too!!
  • Naomi: how about Classes as its own Discussion item.

Consensus

Consensus is how the Noisebridge Membership may change how Noisebridge works.

(How does Consensus work? What types of things are good for formal Consensus? What is small-c consensus? What is a "block"?)

Naomi: blah blah blah

Lemons: the times when the community has htese convos regularly, the community is in good health. When we stop, the community forgets how these things work and things fall apart.


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

Classes

Tyler: Classes bring new energy into the space! It also tends to burn out teachers after a while. For some things it'd be nice to have multiple people on the class to keep it going. Raising option for doing paid classes. The way I'd see this working, based on talking to other hackerspaces, e.g. anything where there are materials involved... everyone gets to go home w/ their breadboard and LEDs and whatnot. It's $50 for that event. Everyone is welcome to attend and follow along, but there's a padded materials cost. So maybe they make $20 and split it with the person who's teaching the class.

Tim: Most hackerspaces do this, they have paid-for classes. It's a very different feel than what NB has traditionally done. NB is the only one that's said "you don't need money". I used to charge $200 for an 8-hour class ($25/hour/person) and that was what made it worth it for me (barely). Artisan's Asylum in Boston split it 50/50 between the teacher and the space (liability insurance, marketing...).

Lemons: I don't want to use AA as any kind of litmus test, their survivability is questionable. Secondly, the people who come in to use the laser, they're broke as fuck. I ask people to give reasonably and usually it's $20. I think where NB is strong and we can drive narrative to raise more funds, we're literally the only place where you can walk off the street and learn a skill for free. If we give that up I think we are sacrificing a huge part of our community. We used to have more classes and then we stopped having these meetings, and that's the real reason we have fewer classes.

Tyler: I wasn't suggesting you have to charge for your class, just charging a materials fee.

Naomi: You can already do that.

Tyler: Yeah I wasn't talking about forcing fees.

Naomi: we could also be talking about how to amplify the benefits of teaching, e.g. benefits to people's careers and such.

Lemons: Yeah we lost a lot of classes due to cultural problems.

Tyler: Robert has taken on Circuit Hacking Monday sometimes.

Lemons: is he a Member? he should be a Member.

Tyler: he just got into the CHM box.

Ryan: there's a ton of documentation from J on how he ran CHM. He's always done the class for free and sold the kits at the beginning of the class for people to build, providing a few for people who can't afford it. Then encouraged donating to NB.

Tyler: ok so J sold kits and asked for donations. A lot of people don't realize they can ask people for $$ for their classes. Something about classes onboarding? I hate telling people to go to the wiki.

Naomi: seriously wanna jettison the whole wiki

Tyler: wiki-slash-old

Tim: oh totally wiki-slash-old

Tyler: I think we need a classes onboarding strategy document or something.

Naomi: Doing reimbursements for little shit is a really new thing.

Tyler: I think it's good b/c we get donations to run the space, so why not

Naomi: We haven't traditionally done little reimbursements just to avoid burning out the Treasurer. So i hope you recruit some treasurer gnomes to help you out.

Lemons: we always need more laser trainers, so they all say "the laser uses power! please donate!" Always running that ad for people. I think it's already as efficient as it can get. Every time I run it I'd say we get $100 in donations in teh box. If we start trying to split that with the trainer, it breaks our narrative hard. We don't want to be another Elk's Lodge of privileged people. We want to be seen as providing resources without demanding a level of privilege to get them.

Naomi: I don't think it's non-Noisebridgey to charge for a workshop. You just have to accept that you can't close the doors and shut people out if they show up, are interested, and aren't paying.

Tyler: if you wanted to get people together and teach them, say, to make a chair, you'd incur costs that if you didn't make back you just wouldn't teach the class.

Tim: I don't think i would ever run my 8-hour workshop here, it just doesn't fit NB's values.

Ryan: I could run a class that's in person and also a web class, and ask people to donate for that. A lot of Patreon accounts will do one custom piece for a high-paying donor per month or something, some people do so little and get a lot of return on Patreon subscriptions. If we make content people can consume -- DIGITAL CONTENT.

Tyler: let's segue into the next thing...


Selling Creations at Noisebridge (or through Patreon)

  • Tyler: we used to have a lot of cool stuff in the vending machine, it got us a good chunk of money from arduinos and whatnot. We also can host people's art here and sell it. Mohammad e.g. made some schematics for a big 3d vase thing and laser-cut it out, and it's something Noisebridge could sell at the front. We could be doing a better job of selling some stuff at Noisebridge.
  • Naomi: did we shoot down better vending machines for a good reason...?
  • Tim: let's get the better vending machines!
  • Lemons: there's an ethos that's sort of a soft science than a hard set of rules... if you're a software person making 6 figures selling Javascript, that might be in poor taste... whereas if you're an artist in the space using the sewing area to make a backpack, e.g., then maybe we should encourage that. We need to pay attention to privilege and how we let it shape what Noisebridge becomes.
  • Tyler: that might be the kind of problem that self-corrects a bit... the person making 6-figures is less interested in selling things
  • Julie: based on what I've been reading is that there are ideas where there are community members whether they're artistic or otherwise that have something they want to sell, and have NB participate in that is part of a way to fundraise for NB. Then you could even say if you don't have money, maybe we can barter. I was hearing this might be a space where beautiful things could be shared w/ the community for money.
  • Lemons: That was part of the idea of the Gala, the auction.
  • Tim: Biotech bar nights!!


Cleaning Service

(it's 10pm and we're adjourning... delayed for next week)

End of Meeting