Revision as of 00:57, 27 May 2020

Scroll DOWN, past all this, past pre-meeting, and to "Main Meeting"

These are the notes from the The 580th Meeting of Noisebridge.

help take notes at - https://pad.riseup.net/p/nbmeeting

video meeting on zoom at - https://us02web.zoom.us/j/972291454 (or try direct link to shortcut the zoom "download app" gauntlet: https://us02web.zoom.us/wc/join/972291454?wpk=wcpk9c203d1131ce8c834861a81++++ae596c7df - not exactly sure how this all works but maybe worth a try just fyi)

Date: May 26 2020
Note-taker: boredzo
Pre-Meeting Moderator: Pyconaut
Moderators: Pyconaut, x

Meeting Summary

FILL OUT AT END OF MEETING AND SEND TO MAILING LIST One or two bullet points of high-level meeting summary. TLDR what happened at the meeting:

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

Pre-Meeting

Excellence

Our One Rule is to Be Excellent to Each Other.

(What does that mean? How does the Anti-Harassment Policy fit into this? Are we SURE we know what being Excellent is? This is an important and fundamental conversation at Noisebridge, so let's give it like 120 seconds.)

Excellence is about caring for yourself, others, the space, and the community, it is about calling out when you see something wrong, and being available to help others. Being excellent can be doing things like taking out the trash, fixing a broken machine, cleaning up one of the areas, etc. As long as you follow the one rule, you will be welcome at noisebridge. We also have a Strict antiharassment policy, so if you are making people feel harassed through your actions, you will be asked to leave.

Participation

Everyone at Noisebridge is a participant at Noisebridge.

(What does that mean? How do you get a door key? Access to Slack, Discuss, etc?)

There are many ways to participate at noisebridge, this includes taking a class, teaching a class, giving a presentation, using our equipment, etc. You can also do just about any project since we run on do-ocracy. But if you think that the action or project might disturb others, please go through small c consensus and ask the community before you take any actions.

Once you come by for a bit and gain some trust from the community, you can ask for a 30 day access token which will get you in the noisebridge door from 10am to 11pm for 30 days (then it then needs to be renewed).

You can also participate digitally through our different online systems-

noisebridge slack
noisebridge discuss https://discuss.noisebridge.info/
noisebridge wiki https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/
noisebridge meetup https://www.meetup.com/noisebridge/

Philanthropist definition

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

(What does that mean? What do we expect from Philanthropists? How do you become one? etc)

Once you come by for a while and have a lot of trust from the community, people might start asking if you want to become a philanthropist (you can also apply right away if you think the benefits are worth it). A philathropist is the next trust level after daytime access (30 day token) usually in escalating participation. You get 24/7 access during non plague times, pay some money (40 to 80 dollars amonth), you must know how to open and close the space, give tours, and introduce new people to the space. We want you to be able to help more people be able to access the space, and be excellent! To apply you get a big M Member to sponsor you, then you fill out a Plilanthropy pledge and read all the associated materials, then you come to a tuesday meeting to submit the application. During that meeting you will be questioned for a bit, and then if no one objectas to you being a philanthropist, you will become one.

Membership Definition

Membership in Noisebridge entails community Trust in Consensus.

(What does that mean? What do we expect from Members? How do you become a Member? etc)

Big M Members are different from just being a member of the community, this is the highest trust level of the noisebridge community, it means that everyone in the community trusts that you would make good decisions about how noisebridge can move forward. This is an annoying bureocratic level of trust, as the only theoretical benefit is that you get to block big C concensus items, and vote on who we place on our board. To become one, you need to go through a four week process, where you fill out a membership form sponsored by two big M members. You bring it to a tuesday meeting where it is submitted, your membership will be discussed at that meeting, then at the next tuesday meeting your membership is discussed again and if it gets to concensus, you will be asked to leave the room while the members present decide if they want to block you or not, if no Member blocks your membership application you become a Member. For the next two weeks any big M member can retroactivly block your membership for any reason. If you get blocked figure out why, fix the issue and then reapply at a later time.

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"?)

concensus is the process by which things that can't be done through basic do-ocracy (things that affect others in the space.) It has two flavors, small c and big C. Small c concensus is the process where things that might cause slight issues in the space (events, big projects, moving rooms, etc), you just talk with the community before doing things. Big C concensus is the process by which action are taken at noisebridge that are too big, too expensive, or too critical to be done by small c concensus. These are things like Moving, spending a lot of money, or doing legal bureucratic garbage. This is a two week+ process where an item is propsed one week (if possible you should already have the item posted in draft concensus items, and the binder). At that meeting it will be discussed for a while, then the next week it will be discussed again, and if people feel confident, it will be brought up for concencus, and if no big M member blocks the consensus item it passes and becomes a Consensed item.

Guilds Definition

Guilds are how groups at noisebridge organize.

(What is a guild? How do you join one? etc)

Guilds are groups at noisebridge that rally around a common interest. Any group can create a guild by writing a Charter AND maintaining the group according to the metaguild guidelines: https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Guilds

Pre Meeting Discussion

Main Meeting

Introductions

A/S/L?!?!?!

TALK ABOUT YOURSELF HERE, ETC...

Ryan Pyconaut (he/him) - exploring VR, Cooking a lot
boredzo (he/him) - sewing guild, 3D printing, compiled the Summary of Everything We Already Said About Moving
Jaguar - yo.
Tyler - tyler. all-around hacker, highly involved in New Space.
Ⅹ - (@the discuss.noisebridge.info) space hacker
Aaron - your future anarchist president
Carl - your future anarchist assassinator
TJ - your future anarchist ... successor?
Eli - 3d printing
NOT DAVE - ( NOT DAVE / NOT DAVE ) MORE NOT DAVE
Nthmost - the perennial anarchist rabble-rouser. Philosophy Guild.
Victor - Network security and crypto (of the currency and graphy varieties)
Mark - Guilds and Videogames
Jade - she/her/they/them - Neurohacker and teacher.
Zach
Mark - hii I'm mark. video game stuff. Guilds / MetaGuild ArchMage.
Alex - I work on VR stuff, Guild stuff, VR versions of Noisebridge
Frillz
Dan - Neuro hacking
Kinnard - came to NB first in 2013, came back last year. i do crypto stuff
Roy

Meta-notes identify note taker(s) and screen sharer of notes particular for remote

Short announcements and events

60-second description per item in bulletpoint.

boredzo: Please read this summary of discussion around moving from 2169 to 272, relevant to the Consensus Item this evening: https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Summary_of_discussion_around_moving_from_2169_into_272

Nthmost: The Philosophy Guild is adding another meeting, so we're going to have The Living Room as per usual -- 8pm Wedneday night on Online Town -- and the new meeting is called The Workshop. In The Workshop we're going to be working on "theory of Noisebridge" stuff, all kinds of stuff applicable to fleshing out the how+why of Guilds, and other applications of metamodern philosophy. DM @nthmost for details (Slack and Discuss both fine).

Zach: excited about having accessible tech over Zoom! So i can teach classes again! I'm an electrical engineer, EagleCAD, board layout, etc. Produce & design circuit boards. Would love to teach intermediate classes, but beginner would be fine. Hopefully for ppl who already have soldering iron. Ping me on Discourse (discuss.noisebridge.info) -- look for a post about this there, these are just my initial ideas.

New Philanthropists

none

New Members

none

Financial Report

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

bitcoin lost value

Funds in bank: 299k in bank (5/25/2020)

204k cash 95k crypto at 68% cash to 31% crypto - working on trending that toward 20% crypto

Revenue was about $9000 last month

Fortunately we haven't had a lot of attrition in donors. But while we're closed we are missing out on $1-2k in cash donations.

Bitcoin has varied between $4800 and $9000/coin while we've held it.

Q from Matt: Does Benevity (employer matching) still work? nthmost: Will look at the CSV file for your donation, but we still get $1k-1.5k/mo from Benevity.

Noisetor (See the bulletpoints at the bottom of http://noisetor.net/finances/#summary):
Any other details by those participating in handling our financials
The latest financial reports from the treasurer are available at https://discuss.noisebridge.info/c/finace/39

Fundraising Update

How's it all going

Kinnard has been talking with folks working on the NoiseDAO for the crypto-crowdraise to buy 2169. They're still on board and looking to work on it; one is moving to Seattle but still interested.

The highwater mark is the accessibility stuff at 2169. Kinnard has been thinking about how to hit that and a timeline. Also talking to real estate people.

Super behind schedule because also handling stuff at CryptoCastle.

GuildMaster's Report

What is the current state of structural organization at Noisebridge? Guilds are a cool idea, lets make them a reality! https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Guilds

Hydroponics Guild

Kickstarter for EverArable has ended - unsuccessfully, unfortunately.

Keiarra is at 2169 right now checking on the hydroponics equipment.

MetaGuild update

Editing wiki pages, doing info-updating.

Side discussion happening about Guild Theory in general. Looking to set up a good regular meeting time for MetaGuild so as many people can have a say in that conversation as possible.

The conversation about the Meta of the MetaGuild is interesting. Mark believes it could be the domain of ORG but that means everyone who wants to be part of MetaGuild should take part in that conversation.

Wednesday night Philosophy meetings, and please comment on when you might like to join a regular MetaGuild meeting.

Q: Which channel? Is this on Slack, Discuss, somewhere else?
Mark: #guilds on Slack, MetaGuild on Discuss.

nthmost: Yeah, I just kinda squatted on ORG with that topic.

Mark: That's fine.

nthmost: Want to mesh the MetaGuild with a different style of meeting for the Philosophy Guild. Wednesday at 8pm is the Living Room. Imagine people with monocles and cocktails congratulating each other on how brilliant they are. It's really fun, but not practical. There's enough people who want to work on practical problems that we're splitting off into The Workshop. This'll be looking at NB as a whole, and different problems NB has, and trying to solve them philosophically.

The whole Guilds thing was spawned from looking at the problems that occurred in 2018 and going there's at least a dozen ways NB could be better, so let's try this new, different arrangement. That's what fed into that Guild Theory interaction.

I guess what I want to convey is the Philosophy Guild is solidly every Wednesday, there's people who want to talk about how to make the world a better place by reimagining our value systems and how we relate to each other. Then there's the Guild stuff, which is thematically related, and now I want to find a way to meet in the middle.

Mark: The key thing is you have a solid group going, which is what you need.

Ryan: Go check out the guilds section of the wiki. If you have ideas, please send them our (me, Mark, Nthmost, etc) way. We want people to want to be a part of guilds.

How do we incentivize sharing information such that people can find it even if they don't interact with that person directly?

Zach: Just learning about this, being a new thing in the past few months.

x: Quick update on that: Yeah, it's a new thing. Just a quick update, not to be a full-on discussion. We're all figuring that out, so we should probably lead this section with 'what is guild update?'.

Zach: I just wanna say, for those of us with disabilities, this is a new thing.

nthmost: It's new to everybody. I do want to get more into this after the consensus item.

pyconaut: Yeah, so let's make this a discussion item after the main one. If we don't have enough time for it directly after the meeting, folks can stick around or we can try to come up with a time in the next couple days where we can continue it, because a lot of this stuff could be really helpful to NB esp. during moving and helping groups figure out what they need to do moving forward.

But let's move on to the Consensus items.

Kinnard: One thing first.

Essential Infrastructure Guild

Kinnard: Trying to recruit a Captain and Sub-Captain. Keiarra, founder of EverArable, is the Sub-Captain for food. Rayan is the Water Captain; he's a chemical engineer with water filtration experience. Another guy's been working with a hospital in Amsterdam to set up a network there using Althea, which was founded by NB community member Jihan.

He's looking to set up a network between NB, CryptoCastle, and Omni Commons.

The other important thing is the Consensus Item about partnering with Something Labs to produce more PPE in NB.

Last thing is turning my attention soon toward more documenting what's been done and retroactively tracking what's happened, including the thousands of PPE components which were printed at NB and sent to UCSF. We should account for what's happened in the space during the past couple months.

Mark: Are you writing a Guild Charter? Figuring out what the organization is?

Kinnard: Yeah. It probably is a best practice to have a Charter; there is a wiki page but a Charter would be a good thing. I don't want to be the lead on too many things, so I pinged the #essentialinfrastructure channel to seek someone to work on it. Certainly there's someone with capacity to draft it other than me, so hopefully that will happen soon.

Mark: This is the ideal of what a Guild Report would be like.

Someone: Can we draft cleaning procedures for being open?

Pyconaut: That was discussed last week; please see the meeting notes.

boredzo: Check out the Keeping Watch page on the wiki, which has a rough procedure written.

Kinnard: We'll definitely talk about this as part of the Consensus Item. We do have a few procedures written by folks including Silver.

I just found out through Slack that there was a key changeover and I didn't know about it. Seems like it went fine? but I don't know how many people know about it.

lxpk: lets move the rest of this convo to discussion so we can take care of consensus items

bfb: There are actually two Consensus Items this week.

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Consensus

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.)

continuation of last week concensus item on Capp St. space location

continuation of last week concensus item

Date First Discussed	Proposed By	Informal Title	Summary	Author of this Record
19 May 2019	bfb	272 Capp Lease Agreement	That Noisebridge enter into the lease agreement with addendum at 272 Capp Street	bfb

Summary of discussion around moving from 2169 to 272: https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Summary_of_discussion_around_moving_from_2169_into_272

bfb: Inspections look good as far as zoning and other aspects, including findings from David of Safer DIY Spaces.

boredzo did compile a very nice summary of pros and cons, counter-proposals, etc. [See link above! ^^^^^]

x: Please use your best judgment when updating the wiki. Some inspection data is being posted only for logged in users because we haven't gotten consent for some things to be released to the whole public.

Tyler, do you want to speak to discussions with the broker?

Tyler: Our latest discussions had to do with getting sprinkler work done. They're in the process of getting their 5-year sprinkler certification; they're going to do some retrofitting. The question is whether they want this work done right now, prior to NB moving in, or after NB moves in. The reason that's important is there's issues around where sprinkler heads are in the room.

x: David, can you fill us in more?

David: Sorry I don't have much time and am late with the report; a lot of stuff going on suddenly.

You want the sprinkler company that the property owner is already in contact with to ensure the system is tagged. They're typically inspected and tagged every five years.

You'll want to be in touch with them. Sprinkler head density, etc. matters. If you need a higher density of heads, you'd need adequate pressure to them. That's what you'd find out in direct engagement with the sprinkler contractor.

The main thing is to get it tagged. You know it's been tested; you can show it to a fire inspector. You'll want to know if it's monitored or not; how the alarms work; what the alarm company is.

The main thing I didn't see is manual pull stations to pull the fire alarm that's hooked up to the sprinkler system. May not trigger the sprinklers, but turns on strobes and audible alarms.

The property owner wouldn't necessarily know about that. You want to engage with the sprinkler contractor.

I can provide a detailed punchlist to get in contact with the contractor.

The other point WRT the Perkins-Tulley report, when I saw the zoning piece about Change of Occupancy, which I think you're fine on without getting into details, I looked at fire, accessibility, etc. WRT zoning, you're not within 50 feet of a residential zone even though you're next to a residential building. The building you're next to is a MCP zone, not an R zone, even though it's a residential building. It happens.

But because the way the ordinance is defined for Light Manufacturing, it specifically applies to a 50-ft proximity to a residential zone. Not a residential building, a residential zone. So don't worry about exhaust, the roll-up door, etc. on that.

My last point is that your actual zoning activity, if you go through the definitions in Section 102 and Article II in the Planning Code, your activities don't line up with Light Manufacturing very well. Your primary use is not distribution and wholesale of products to stores and stuff; that's Light Manufacturing, fundamentally involved in commerce, but you're a non-profit.

In the first line of Light Manufacturing, you don't meet that.

That's actually good. What you are, IMO, is a Mixed-Use Place, for lack of a better term. I put it in my notes to x, but you're what's called an Institutional Community and Social Assembly Use, which is a mouthful. Community Centers, arts activities, an engineering lab, etc.

Referencing more specifically SEC. 890.50(a) Assembly and Social Service

Those three definitions from Planning more defines what you're actually doing. All of those are permitted by-right in your zone. No triggers WRT proximity to other zones, etc.

That's really good for you.

I'm less concerned now about the Change of Occupancy. It's also a really new building, from 1992. The next door (274 Capp) had a bigger change of use and they didn't make the owner do anything.

I think you're in really good shape. All the concerns I had were low-level. Things that can be fixed. Nothing materially blocking.

In terms of pulling the trigger on the lease, I don't have any concerns.

My last footnote is that if you weren't in lease negotiation fatigue with your property owner, expounding on what a makerspace is, that would serve you in good stead in the future.

A makerspace is not a well-understood term by a lot of regulatory entities. Extol your virtues, you engage in educational and arts and scientific pursuits for public benefit - things like that. If you got called into some Zoning complaint situation, that'd serve you well. But that's a nice-to-have.

x: Thanks, David, for your report. We'll share it more likely when you have time to finish it.

You mentioned auxiliary uses. Would Light Manufacturing be an aux use?

David: We can massage this point. SF doesn't have zoning clearances, so we can change it around.

If you take an activitiy, and call it an Arts activity, or Light Mfring, or a Trade School activity, etc. that are all different ways that describe the same activity, there's so many ways to do that.

WRT Light Manufacturing: Yes, you could add it, and it might be worth doing to add it as one of your use, as an Accessory Use, not the primary use. Accessory Uses are defined in the Planning Code as things that take less than 33% of the floor area.

But say you added up the floor area of your laser-cutter and 3D printers and whatever, it'd probably add up less to 33% anyway and we could call it an Accessory activity.

But I don't think it's necessarily a good idea, or that you need to. You could if you want. The criterion is are you mass-producing a bunch of widgets that are sold to stores? If you're not doing that, you're not Light Mfring.

x: Couple comments in the chat. Some are thanks for helping us through this.

Bottom-line question is how does this impact our use of industrial machines? Anything around that type of equipment?

David: Can't answer that until I get a list of what those equipments and activities are.

You say 'heavy equipment', but there's heavy equipment and there's heavy equipment.

x: One criterion we got from Humanmade was not having things over 5HP.

David: I don't know that.

x: So we should make a list of equipment, and you can give us guidance on each of those? But for now you don't see anything preventing us from moving forward?

David: Yeah. If I have any concern, it's that I don't know what all y'all's uses actually are. So you have a machine that does something gnarly, but how often is it actually used? That's where the rubber meets the road.

One place has a torpedo lathe from like WW2. But how often is it actually used? And it occupies a small footprint in their area. So it's these arbitrary measures I'd be skeptical of.

In my experience of doing 100 of these over three years, it's occupancy that's generally more of a risk. The Building Codes. One concern I have is not permanently wiring any machines into the electrical system - no 'fixed machines'. If you can move things and plug/unplug them, that's fine. But once you have fixed equipment that's permanently wired in, you go up a hazard level, up to an H occupancy. That brings a suite of requirements independent of Planning that are an area of concern.

Tyler: The Building Dept. said we were F1.

David: The zoning uses we're talking about don't necessarily line up with how the space is actually used. In reality, every place has a number of different uses. F1 is a moderate hazard factory, but they have offices, right? But the majority of floor area would be factory. That's how the standard was developed. They took a standard for a factory and applied it to a makerspace because it's the closest thing they could think of.

But it's sort of up to you. You could say we're a mixed occupancy, mixed use. Moderate or even low hazard, and maybe a B which is Business (many arts are clasified B). The way it works to get the result you want is you tell them what you are, not the other way around. You get an architect to cite it all out, and then they accept it.

For that space, we don't actually know what the last known occupancy was according to the electronic record because most permits were for the nproperty next door, and those might've been confused. Until we get the analog records, we won't know what the last legal occupancy was, even if the last actual occupancy was an auto garage.

So I'm not concerned. An auto garage is considered S, which is Storage, of all things. To go from S1 to F1 is the same risk; you're moving laterally. It's not an upgrade in hazard. You're not going from a lower risk to a higher risk. Your sprinklered building built in 1982 - you can pull a change of occupancy building permit and I don't think they're gonna do anything. They're just gonna go OK.

The building next door went up from B to F1 and they didn't make them do any structural or seismic work. Accessibility, plumbing, that sort of thing. Bodes very well for you; it's the same structural elements, and you're not going up in hazard.

Summary of main large-ish equipment at Noisebridge - https://pad.riseup.net/p/nblargeequipment

In short, we never know what's going to happen, but you're in very good shape WRT change of occupancy under CA and SF building codes. Also in good shape for fire code. Based on my high-level understanding of the work you're doing. And you're in good shape with zoning. You could include Light Mfring but that's not what you're doing; you make stuff, but it's community, not capitalist; it's a non-profit.

Even if you did have Light Mfring, you're not within 50 ft of a residential zone.

So all-in-all, you've done very well for yourselves. From a compliance POV, I see very little. The architect sees very little to be concerned about. The only x-factor is do you have some super-crazy machine I don't know about? Moxie has a 30-ft Tesla coil.

x: We've got a rough list assembled; it's in the notes and I can send it to you. The laser cutter, 3D printers, etc.

Gabriel: Thank you so much for all this info. One question: If we are not Light Mfring, although NB itself is non-profit, I know we have had people running businesses or portions of businesses or creating products out of NB.

David: A lot of this is really conditional. You can include it. You can still do that without any new conditions. So if you wanna do that, it's OK. Maybe it's an Accessory Use. Certainly the whole space isn't functioning in that way; it's not a business where everyone's assembling toys for Burning Man all day long.

Gabriel: I know there are folks running their Etsy shops out of NB.

David: I think the best way is to not constrain any of those uses. Do it thoughtfully, and y'all are thoughtful, make a list of what those uses and people are, so we understand it, and we can decide whether to construe those as Accessory Uses or maybe a main zoning use, and get it on the record, now actually, because your adjacent zoning can change all the time. The Perkins-Culley map from last year does not match the current zoning from today. The situation is really fluid in the Mission.

So to protect yourself from zoning changes that can impact you later, you declare your uses now, so you can have what's called a Legal Non-Conforming Use.

I would basically assert all the uses that you can that reasonably apply to what you're actually do. If there's four uses on the table, the first three are the main uses. Community Assembly; Artistic element to what you're doing (post-prod, audio, etc.); Engineering Lab, which is great, because it means you can have gnarly machines, but it doesn't mean they're producing cars by the hundreds per day. You're testing stuff, prototyping, custom mfring. For Light Mfring, i.e., making stuff for sale, sure, include that too. But the person who comes in to work with textiles, is not selling them as NB, they're using your resources as a NB member. So it's a little bit of a gray area, but if you were ever audited for that, it wouldn't show that on your 990 all this unrelated business income from handbags. I'm assuming.

So all things considered, I've got y'all on lock. You're in great shape. You've got sprinklers; adding pull stations or a whole alarm if needed, isn't a big deal for a 10-yr lease. You've got two exits; your max occupancy load is like 500 people; you've got two parking spaces and can make one accessible. In my opinion, in the world of industrial spaces, this is a really, really good, safe space for you to be in. You really lucked out.

x: David, remind us the name of your outfit.

David: Safer DIY Spaces (https://saferdiyspaces.org/). We've done about 140 legalizations of artist spaces, mainly commercial buildings with a mix of live/work and some art spaces with no live components. Mainly the Bay Area, but also LA and NY. We're writing the new live/work code for Oakland.

So we live in the weeds on this stuff. I just submitted appeals to the SF Planning Dept. We live in the trenches of basically preserving disappearing low-income uses related to cultural production, makerspaces, all of that stuff. That's what we live to preserve; that is literally our non-profit mission. We have architects, structural engineers, etc. on staff.

Gabriel: Thank you again so much. One minor correction: You said it was really luck, but I want to acknowledge Tyler and the rest for all the work they did searching for it.

David: Yes. Y'all are badasses, and NB is a real light for other spaces. The force factor and the ripple effects of engendering that kind of DIY, co-learning space, mutual aid, my hat is off to NB just as an entity and a community. From starting Omni, which I did with a bunch of people, I know how unbelievably hard that is. I'm thrilled that you're moving into another space.

Spaces like NB are the reason why Safer DIY is around. We want to preserve that and not just chase low rents out of the Bay Area; we want to be here. We'll go to the ends of the earth for y'all.

[Everyone thanks David.]

Eli: Tyler and I have been working on how to maintain an ongoing relationship with David and Safer DIY. They're working with us pro bono, but we do want to compensate them for some future work.

Break for introduction of other Consensus items...

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☆☆☆☆☆ NEW SPACE TOUR ☆☆☆☆☆ https://youtu.be/k7uP77GRvHc

Resume discussion of leasing 272 Capp St.

Here? or further down after other consensus discussion

Date First Discussed	Proposed By	Informal Title	Summary	Author of this Record
19 May 2019	Kinnard, Eli, Silver	Something Labs Partnership	Something Labs is a non-profit that approached us about using our space to manufacture PPE. They need a space in SF to build hospital supplies to fight COVID-19. We’re seeking a Consensus to let them use our space while it is shut down. They only require tables and outlets in our space. They are making and donating parts for PAPR devices and gowns to health centers in the Bay Area and nationwide with a focus on equity and social justice.	bfb

Something Labs PPE project

Eli: Something Labs is a non-profit that has been working tirelessly to make protective equipment such as masks, face-shields, gowns, etc. for hospitals. Equipment that's necessary and in short supply.

A few members of the NB community like Silver have been working with this org since the beginning. Together, we wrote up this proposal to collaborate with them to enable them to keep doing good work.

Silver: I've been working with Something Labs since the pandemic started. I've been doing assembly on PAPR masks for the last two months; we've made over 12,000. We rotate who's in the space, but there's something like 25 people in the loop. Pretty autonomous.

One thing we take very seriously is safety protocols. It would be self-defeating to make PPE while not practicing safety protocols.

I also make masks for unhoused folks out of Omni Commons. Have made over 400. We implemented safety protocols at Omni Commons.

It's constantly changing as we follow the science. Been watching how office spaces are keeping themselves safe as places reopen.

It's important to continue this work and we could do this at NB in a safe manner. I know Zach was worried random volunteers would come in with cabin fever, but we wouldn't let just anyone join just because they feel like it; there's training, including safety protocols, washing every hour, cleanliness, keeping mask and gloves on.

I think this is such an important job and am trying my best to accommodate concerns, but I'm also doing 10 hours/day of PPE work making stuff like that. I'd like to hear from Zach, who's worked on PAPR equipment before, how we can keep safe while working on stuff.

Eli: The proposal is to allow this group to use a small amount of our space as mfring space to make PAPR shields. They have a shortage of space in which to make these supplies.

Zach: Thanks for the background, Eli and Silver. We talked about this at length at the last meeting.

I posted on the Discuss; I'll try to put the link in the chat, what my concerns were: https://discuss.noisebridge.info/t/producing-more-ppe-to-fight-covid-19/1740/4

I'm immunosuppressed, have disabilities. I worked on a PAPR design myself, very passionate about making PPE.

We're all on the same page, want to help in the pandemic.

My concern is that some people who want to help are causing more harm than good. I can give examples; I've seen it many times. I've seen non-profits that are exploiting people during the crisis without transparency on what products are being sold for what to whom. You can be a 'non-profit' and still make a lot of money. I'm not saying that's the case here, but we had some questions:

funding
what's being sold
who's being sold to

These questions are important to know if NB is to be used to produce anything.

It's a week later and these answers have not been provided AFAIK.

Silver: It's not being sold. They're being given to hospitals, and these are open-source designs which we could make ourselves and give directly to hospitals without involving Something Labs.

Zach: The other concern from last week was safety. I said last week that the decisions around safety should come from people at risk, first responders, etc. Let's talk to the people receiving this equipment and get them to visit the space and get their opinion on how safe we are, how many people should be here, etc. I think having six people at a time is super-unsafe to an incredible degree.

We don't have a way to enforce how frequently surfaces are being cleaned. We have to be conscious, because we want to do good things and help people, but there's some real consequences if we risk spreading the virus.

If this is free, that's good to know; if that's in writing somewhere, that'd be helpful, as I haven't seen that.

If anyone wants to talk about that idea to reach out to medical professionals for tips on how to keep the space safe. They have more experience than we do. Do we go to someone who's a good cook and ask if something is a good circuit board?

Silver: Literally everything I do is make PPE. I just assume the best of folks. I work with Something Labs because Sam lives with a nurse who would come home with fucked-up PPE. I can ask her to come, because she's been helping advise on this project. I'd like to offer something rather than just draw on her free time, but she has approved the designs we've been working on and has been delivering them to hospitals herself.

ludae: I'm also involved in the project. I also can attest to it from my subjective opinion. They're, as a group, dedicated to the cause of getting R down.

From what I understand, it's a hybrid model where a lot of masks are donated, but they have tried to make deals with certain hospitals. We've talked to UCSF, Kaiser, etc., to pay at cost, or to pay a bit more so we can donate to other hospitals that can't afford them.

Also, some of the bigger hospitals we haven't been selling them at cost because of red tape, so they've literally been sneaked in because the staff would prefer this to nothing.

A lot of the money is coming from - I forget the grant, but it's a PPE community production grant that's designed to put money into this sort of thing. There's also a Kickstarter.

Most of the engineers work without pay on the project. Some folks who do labor get reimbursed if it's really repetitive work.

There's a blog on somethinglabs dot org that's really transparent. It's something from nothing, so it's trying to scale as quick as possible but also do itself out of a job as quick as possible. Its mission is solved because it's a stopgap mission.

I'm also available to talk to anybody about it directly. A good way to address the concerns over something like this may be to try to report it to the accountant and see if we can get John's take on it. Sorry we haven't done that yet.

I'm advocating for the project.

x: Who of the project folks are available on Slack and/or Discuss?

Silver: I'm on Slack.

Lu dae: I'm on Slack as luda3. I just got on Discuss as luda.

Silver: I'm Himalayaz.

da vid: This effort will probably have a lot more process and safety concern than what's currently happening in the space. Like it or not, there is stuff happening in the space. This may actually add process and safety that might not exist currently. It's great to get oversight from UCSF or anyone else to look over the technique that's being used or is supposed to be used.

This could be an improvement because there is more concern.

tim: Is this use covered by our insurance?

There's three things that I'm hearing, all around liability.

There are Board members who are liable for NB and don't like NB being open during SIP, so I need people to know what the insurance policy covers.

And then it comes down to what's the use and what's Something Labs, and can they send us a letterhead to us and the landlord?

The landlord might actually ask them to move into the second-floor space, which is vacant, and get a tax break that way.

You could probably talk to UCSF about bio safety level and getting guidance on how to do this right. "The world has turned into a BSL level 3 or 4 lab."

If someone could tell me the liability and what the org's financials are, I'd consense to it.

Silver: The guy who founded this doesn't run businesses or non-profits, he just wanted to do something. I'm also just trying to step up.

All the funding has been coming mainly from crowdsourcing; no financials coming from profits or selling. I'm happy, maybe NB should just take over producing their designs. Laser-cut vinyl, continue production as long as needed.

tim: Is it a sole proprietor, or?

bfb: It's a financial sponsorship. I posted that document.

tim: Oh, I know what that is. They may even have their own insurance, which is good.

Gotta make sure there's no giant liability hole; that's it.

Eli: What specifically is the paperwork you need to see?

tim: Are they incorporated as a California non-profit? Do they have an EIN? Can we see letterhead from someone with control over that EIN? Do they have insurance that would cover us? I want to confirm that our insurance covers this; it's almost outside of what we do. Financial statement, even just an Excel sheet. Some idea of what this organization is.

x: Are you representing Something Labs?

lu dae: We're NB community members who've become involved with the Something Labs project. We were looking at finding another space because the space we had wasn't available anymore. It came to mind that NB and Omni Commons could be really great spaces, aligned with the approach, and Sam, the guy who started it, who's an Exploratorium engineer along with most of the engineers.

The logistical side of anarchy times making PPE equipment adds to the complication, but it seems like a potentially interesting crossover.

bfb: I just want to add my voice in support of this project. From what I can tell, NB is currently operating under the auspices of having one person at a time keeping watch. Others have suggested there are other activities happening beyond keeping watch. From my POV, we have keeping watch and so I see the proposal by Eli, Silver, and Kinnard as a next step for how we continue to utilize the meatspace while doing so safely and contributing positively to those in need during the pandemic.

I want to call out that Silver has written an extensive safety protocol.

Silver: [somebody] helped out with that.

bfb: As I read it, it's an extension of what's been thought through for Keeping Watch.

I want to clarify that three hours ago, Eli linked the fiscal sponsorship agreement paperwork. From what I can tell, it's a project, not a non-profit itself, sponsored by the Something Good Fund, which is a registered non-profit. I posted the EIN in the chat. Seems like the team have been responsive to the legitimate concerns that have been expressed. There is a healthy back-and-forth, and this is a good way to set up NB for transition into the uncertain future ahead of us, including how to move safely in these times.

I just don't want to see NB putting in too many hurdles, like bringing in doctors like we wouldn't ordinarily do, including for things like moving. I wouldn't want to hold this project to too high a standard.

x: Suggest continuing this to another meeting and continuing the discussion in the meantime.

Eli: I do have to disagree because this PPE project is time-sensitive. They've been waiting a week now. We could go forward with it as a small-c consensus item.

x: Are there any Members who would block?

Zach: There's a bunch of problems with this.

x: I realize big-C Consensus takes time and this is time-sensitive.

pyconaut: There's two different discussions: one on this project, and one on safety in the space on how we do any project like this. I don't think anyone has a problem with making PPE; I think the safety part of it does require big-C, whereas the project itself could be small-C. It also ties into if we're moving or not; if we're moving, that changes this whole conversation in both good and bad ways. My comment would be: What if we move? Could we have the second floor just be locked off and used for PPE for 2-3 months? Nothing but the mfring of PPE, such that we can make sure it's up to a high standard of safety, security, and accountability, which I don't think is actually all that doable in our current space because of how messy it is, esp. if we're moving?

x: tim in chat has expressed a block around assembly. Can you clarify that?

tim: Accountability to the board is my main concern. There's four people who could lose their assets on anything particularly shitty that goes on in NB. Board members don't have too much power other than resigning when there's too much liability. Get our insurance to sign off on it and I have no problems; it's a great project. It's volunteers risking their livelihoods to make rad shit at NB.

x: Recognizing the block, are you open to continuing that conversation?

tim: We expressly decided not to have more than one person in NB.

Kinnard: When we have express requests from hospitals, I think that if we're meeting those requirements, it's not necessary to bring in a doctor or nurse because they know what they need in the request.

When we're responding to requests in a crisis, I think we're protected under Good Samaritan laws. Don't think there's a large material risk to the Board compared to anything else NB does. It'd be beyond absurd if NB were sued because people were making PPE to the standard of hospitals.

tim: That's not my concern.

Kinnard: The space has only been open for essential infrastructure activity. That's why you see people posting on Slack 'can someone let me in?'.

x: My understanding of our current consensus is we're at minimum operation, including only allowing access to lockers, cleaning, moving.

Kinnard: My understanding was that we had little-c consensus on conducting essential infrastructure projects.

x: My understanding was that was specifically for the UCSF project that has now concluded.

tim: I made it clear. I want to know what the insurance says. That's my only requirement for this block.

Silver: OK, Tim, I will take on that responsibility.

Zach: Can we follow stack?

Zach: I want to thank Tim for speaking up and protecting Board members. It's a very important concern. We all share the urgency and the good deed and hard work that people are volunteering to do, I want to acknowledge that. We appreciate people who are doing good things for the community.

It's also important how we proceed with things. I want to respond to what bfb said: There are lives at stake when you don't take proper precautions. There's a difference between making handbags during normal times and making PPE to fight a virus that's spreading exponentially.

I mentioned this in the chat: We haven't seen any kind of financial agreement from the non-profit. We saw the thing where Something Labs has funding from this other org. Silver says it's all free; lu dae says it's a hybrid. Is it going to hospitals or is it going to homeless people, communities of color, the actual most vulnerable populations?

I also wanted to respond to the idea that it'd be a huge imposition to ask a HCW to check out NB. I think that isn't a big ask to ask if there's someone to check out our space. I think there's a HCW who would help with that.

I'm supportive, but I want to make sure proper precautions are taken. You don't want to do more harm than good and spread this virus around. There is this activity in the space when the space was voted to be closed? I'm concerned to hear that.

I don't know my Membership status since the elevator hasn't worked and I've been unable to access the space, but I would block.

Silver: The reason why the head of Something Labs is not here, I'm trying to expand, this doesn't have to be Something Labs. We can keep doing this. If you want a nurse to check out the space, I don't know if they consult for mfring companies and would be able to speak to that.

I just want to open up the idea of #1 continuing this type of work at NB, #2 working with other makers.

I'm also part of the moving group and want to make it as smooth and safe as possible.

Zach: Do we have any consensus on the number of people who can be in the space at any point?

Kinnard: No consensus on that exactly, but we've been trying to keep the number under the guidances of the City over the past several months. The guidances have changed, relaxed significantly, but in general, people have tried to keep the number under four.

Gabriel: On the specific request to have a HCW check out the space, that's not their jobs. The job of public health guidelines is to lay out the guidelines under which businesses are allowed to operate, and those have been relaxed to the point that restaurants are opening.

I understand the concern of tim wanting to ensure Board members aren't on the hook, but asking a HCW to come in is a much bigger hurdle than we need to put in the way of formalizing work that's already going on in NB.

x: There is a hard block on the table. This item cannot move forward right now. Moving the stack to discussion item so we can take on the other consensus items this week.

Proposals for next week

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

Freeze moving/not moving Consensus items

Date First Discussed	Proposed By	Informal Title	Summary	Author of this Record
26 May 2019	kinnard	Wait to Consense on staying or moving	Noisebridge should wait to consense on moving or not moving until after the community has had a chance to coalesce and have a meeting at Noisebridge in the interest of communal integrity and excellent process one way or the other. The current situation is one of extreme entropy not business as usual. We are living through arguably the greatest crisis in living memory. This might be the most important decision in Noisebridge’s history, not one to be taken hastily. Several community members have voiced concerns about communication failures around Noisebridge’s real estate process thought the quarantine. The meeting format has changed. The meeting time changed. And we are not able to have normal Noisebridge meetings at Noisebridge. The board member primarily responsible for relations with the current landlord recently resigned. Noisebridge has not sufficiently explored options at 2169 Mission St. given the drastically changed circumstances on planet and in the SF Real Estate market. The situation improves to Noisebridge’s advantage if Noisebridge waits. The community really wants to stay in its home but sees this as an unattainable ideal.	kinnard

Kinnard: There are a few other important points that have bearing. Really about making the decision with community integrity. In order to do that, we need to re-coalesce.

The people active in the community are those whose lives have not been derailed. I bet there are people in the community whose lives have been derailed.

There are bread lines now. Really long bread lines. There are other major problems that are creeping up and showing up in our society. Having NB do something that makes the situation even more entropic, adds more change and chaos on top of what we're experiencing, and removes its capacity to serve the community, even if for a month or two, as we're trying to bring our society back online.

There's that internal/external, that point where NB has these capacities, and should not shake things up in a way that undermines that capacity right now. But also as a community, someone posted in the Slack today 'is NB still having meetings? what's happening?' So it really merits not just pushing it through, but letting the community re-coalesce and have continuity.

That's the right thing to do and it's not a loss or risk for NB to do that, and take that time. The situation only improves favorably for NB.

tim: The move is the continuation of two years of work by me, Tyler, and like two dozen people. We've done many, many tours of new spaces, done monumental effort and lots of back-and-forth negotiation with the current landlord.

It'd be outstanding to have $10 million and buy 2169. The largest donation we've gotten was $150k and we need like a hundred times that.

If you come to me next week and have a million dollars, that's more reasonable.

In five months, are you gonna be the one who does the next bunch of tours?

If you can get the money to buy 2169, we could do whatever we want.

Kinnard: The point is now is not the time to disrupt the community. In terms of fundraising, the target is currently $4 million. That's entirely doable. We had someone tweet and we got $150k in Bitcoin; with an actual campaign, with people willing to help make this happen, including Chris Calderone who donated $10k in Bitcoin; etc., etc. It's really not a feasibility question. We were just picking up steam around March 8, and then things dramatically changed. Picking up from there, I think it's around a five-month timeline. I'm prepared to spell all this out - timeline, requirements, and make sure the broader community has more understanding of how the crowd-sell would work and how it would get built afterward.

We would create a crypto-currency token that would allow hackerspaces to doocratically manage their funds and resources, but the raise itself would go to NB to buy a building.

boredzo: I want to thank Tim for acknowledging the work that's been put into this. One thing you (Kinnard) mentioned is that we're not able to have normal NB meetings. I understand that to mean in-person meetings. Having them in-person was a huge access barrier. I hope "normal", whatever that means, includes an online portion. You've said some people in the community want to stay. I'm wondering how you have asked the question "Do you want to stay or do you want to go?" It's easy to accidentally lead respondents to a particular answer. Also, what's so different about 2169 vs 272 Capp as NB's home? It's not like we're moving to Oakland.

Kinnard: I don't think anyone has talked to the landlord and said 'you're about to lose your cash cow during a pandemic'. I think people really do want what is seen as this unattainable reality. I think that given how drastically things have changed, and the resignation of the Board member who primarily handled relations with the landlord, and every other major shape-up, I think the community needs to coalesce and the smart thing to do is to let that happen. It's consistent with what people really want.

We should continue having remote options for accessibility.

lxpk: Kinnard, you made a lot of points, and a case for reasons you think we should not move, or delay moving. I want to address a couple, without being redundant to those already addressed.

I don't know if when you say 'everybody wants to stay in 2169 if we could', I don't think that's unanimous. 2169 has been a cool place where we've done cool things, but it has a lot of issues even if we were able to avoid moving. 272 is a great place, one of the best finds that he's seen for a use like ours in a long time. The biggest problem, besides the unwillingness of the landlord to work with us, is the elevator. It's a constant failure. We repair it, it breaks, we repair it, it breaks. You play games with it if you have to use it for any reason. You get stuck and it's stuck until someone can fix it.

It's not just inconvenient, it limits our occupancy. We want to grow. We need to be able to grow. We need emergency exits. Some spaces were really cool, but had insufficient exits, but capacity was low (49).

The new building has a garage door, which would enable us to do something like a Mini Maker Faire that would allow us to let people walk in. David said we could have 500 people? Someone pinch me.

x: There are caveats, but yes.

lxpk: I would lovingly say goodbye to a space that's done good things for that. I wouldn't see this as we fear change, so much as we are ready to outgrow 2169.

I love the goal of buying a building. I love your enthusiasm for that goal and the work you're doing toward that. But I don't think it should get in the way of NB ensuring its future for the next ten years.

Seems like now that we know Safer DIY properly and have them in our corner, they can accelerate that process of figuring out what our future should be.

Even if the elevator was fixed tomorrow, we can't grow in 2169.

Tyler: Quick point. We kind of lost the battle to stay at 2169 in March when there was the DBI hearing. Pretty much, when the Dept. of Building Inspection is open and running as normal, the landlord's going to have people come into NB and remove the SparkleForge, the wood shop, and maybe the bathrooms, because that was all illegal, unpermitted construction. That was supposed to happen a month ago, but pandemic. That was legally required by the Building Dept for being unprermitted construction for which we could not get permits.

That's the situation we're in. Staying at 2169 for a couple more months, I don't consider feasible. I don't trust your fundraising strategy enough to stake NB's future on being able to raise that pile of cash in the amount of time needed.

When I first met you, you explained NoiseDAO and how you had a 1-2 month timeline. You're still working on it now.

I just don't believe that the money is going to be available in any kind of timely manner. And we're not going to be able to legally occupy 2169 past a certain point.

Kinnard: I'd like to talk to the landlord and see where things were left off by the last landlord liaison.

We had a NoiseDAO meeting on March 8 and we have a solid crew ready to move forward, and then the SIP orders came down the following week. We have someone from Singapore with a lot of experience doing crowd-sells, and he was saying two weeks. One reason I think it takes longer is getting community buy-in, which is hard during our current circumstances.

This is part of the DR to lxpk. It's not unanimous, but a supermajority of community members want to stay, they just don't see it as a possibility. A lot of landmarks have accessibility problems, things where the use disagrees with the rules over them. I talked to someone who said NB was a sacred space. I think what NB is and has done at 2169 is something, not just because it's the will of the community but because it has this higher onus, we should still work to preserve it and I think we can pull it off.

I just think that in combination with everything else that's happening, there's a real issue of community integrity and continuity.

Last thing is, when I'm doing these calculations and this week I'm hoping to have more detailed broken-down numbers, the standard I'm applying is renovating the building, getting it up to the standard where the elevator works, whether that means a new elevator works. That's the watermark, making sure the space is accessible to people who haven't been able to access it.

pyconaut: NB is a community. It hasn't always been at 2169. 2169 does not make NB what it is, at all. It's the community members and our ability to allow the community to use our tools and facilities and share knowledge. Literally that can be done anywhere on earth, or even in the solar system if you know about our old moon-base project proposal.

2169 has some meaning to people, but I think the space, 2169, has very little meaning. It's the people. It's the feeling. That's what matters.

Moving, as someone who's worked on this moving project since 2017, it's something that yeah, people generally don't want to move, because moving is hard, and that's usually the biggest pushback. Something we try very hard to do during the process is find places that meet our requirements to make everyone happy. Right now, Capp St. is that place. Last summer, it was a place on Guererro St.

On the point of having a meeting where people can come in, when we were going to vote on moving to Guererro, we spent a lot of effort ensuring we had a meeting that was ADA-accessible so people like Alex and Liz who hadn't been able to come to NB in months be able to come by and give their opinion.

We need to make sure the community's involved, and we need the perspectives of those who a move would leave out. It's not a question of 'is our current space amazing?'; it is, but it also has many, many, many faults.

Kinnard: Victor Graf is here and he got kicked off of the Zoom, but he wanted to chime in, because he's been helping with the NoiseDAO and it'd be great to hear from someone other than me.

tim: It's late. Can we please just move to talking about the lease?

Gabriel: My understanding is that the current item is the non-lease item?

x: We're closing out the not to consense item, and moving on to the ready-to-consense item to allow the Board to sign the lease on 272.

Gabriel: As someone who did feel a sentimental attachment to 2169, and was in favor of staying, and have since completely reversed my opinion: When people hear the idea of moving, it's big and scary, and we have a sentimental attachment. But basically everyone I know of who has learned anything significant about the situation with the current building and the new potential space, I don't know of anyone other than Kinnard in these discussions who has maintained the position that we should not move.

I think Tyler did a good job of addressing the reasons why the current space is untenable to stay in, and wanted to focus more on the reason why I'm excited about moving to 272. I think 272 is in every way that I can come up with better than our current space. Some are reasons why the current space isn't good, some of which we could fix, but some are bigger issues. Having a ground floor with a roll-up door is just better in every way.

So I'm excited to move on to the next item.

x: This item has been discussed, week 1 complete

Continued Consensus on leasing 272 Capp Street

Consensus initially proposed on 19 May 2019 by bfb, titled "272 Capp Lease Agreement" and is further defined as "That Noisebridge enter into the lease agreement with addendum at 272 Capp Street"

x: Would any Members like to block right now?

[crickets]

x: Can I get Members present to identify themselves for a quorum?

Tyler: present
Tim
pyconaut: present
lxpk: here.
Lady Red: Here
bfb present and sound of mind - i think
nthmost: Yeah I’m here, and I’m a [M]ember, and I’m informed.

x: I believe that is sufficient to constitute a quorum.

Would anyone like to form a stack for discussion on any points regarding this Consensus Item?

pyconaut: Aye.

x: Please keep comments as brief as possible and on-topic.

pyconaut: Question: Can someone post on Slack that we might be consensing right now to see if there's anyone else who might have left who wanted to come back?

x: Let's not do at @-everyone because people might be sleeping.

lxpk: Could I do an @here?

x: I leave it to y'all.

Tyler: NB is within 15 timezones, is the notification that I get, so it will probably wake up someone.

x: [question about pronunciation]

[community learns the true pronunciation of pyconaut]

pyconaut: It's not English but it's pronounced like 'psychonaut'.

ryan also claims to go by home-fry

x: Do you feel Slack has been notified?

pyconaut: Sure. But it is 11pm, so are we in our right mind? do we want to call an emergency meeting tomorrow for final consensus?

lxpk: We @everyone'd earlier, we said we were going to consense on it, it's a year-old item, I feel the community has been duly notified.

Kinnard: The other Consensus Item is about not doing this right now. Are we in our right mind? We should let the community coalesce. Someone posted in Slack about are meetings even happening right now?. I don't see the harm in taking what the community might consense on to the 2169 landlord and saying you got one week to come to the table with something better. I don't know if you saw in the chat, but Victor said the crowdraise is feasible, but that it shouldn't necessarily block moving to a new building.

Tim: We heard from David earlier that he thinks the building is good. That opinion matters to me; it's enough for me to consense.

Does anyone feel like 272 wouldn't be able to be the new NB?

pyconaut: I know lxpk has worked on making a 3D model of the space, which he posted a couple pictures of the space. I've started thinking about layout plans and stuff. We still currently do not have any sort of plan about how we're going to lay stuff out and just want to remind people of that.

There will be fights over things like building rooms and where stuff goes. I don't think this should hold us back from signing the lease because signing the lease will kick us into high gear on doing this.

It'd be a good idea to say we've consensed that the Board will sign the lease, but we can have a couple weeks of leeway while we're trying to design the space before we sign the lease.

Tim: What do you mean by leeway?

pyconaut: We can consense right now on saying the Board can sign the lease. The Board can wait and if we have enough pushback, which usually happens retroactively, it could be a very good point of contention to see how much pushback we get.

So could we put in that we consense that the Board can sign the lease, but the Board should not sign the lease for another week? This is just an idea.

tim: Is there anything wrong with the building directly that says no we can't be there?

lxpk: From what I've seen and David's report it all looks good.

tim: OK, I agree to it. I consense on signing the lease.

Tyler: Going back to tim's question, where we put the woodshop is not a lease-breaking kind of decision. Or what's the sqftage of the woodshop or where does the laser-cutter go. I don't think we should try to hold back Consensus just because we don't know where to put it. We have another 1000 sqft compared to 2169; it'll fit.

tim: I'm satisfied.

Lady Red: I'm totally on board. I wanna sign it.

I think we shouldn't wait on having the full plan before we sign. It'll change in six months anyway.

Kinnard: It seems like the conversation about the sprinklers was a little brief but David seems like a domain expert who's morally aligned with NB as a community. To me, this is reminiscent of the conversation about the door and the lock at the start of quarantine, which happened very quickly. It'd be good to have everyone come together and tackle this once we can do that.

lxpk: I want to address Kinnard's response to a couple of things we've said, and maybe he can explain, because I didn't hear him respond to the core things we said.

We said that our perception of the community response to this is that most people who are informed of all the trade-offs of 2169 vs 272 see this as better in every way, and allowing us to grow in occupancy and use to multiples of what it is now. You said there's a supermajority of informed persons who oppose the move, but we haven't heard from them at these meetings. I don't think the most salient reason for that is that we haven't been holding meetings in person. We've been holding these meetings for years, and have signed a few temporary leases at 2169. We've never had a space with as many pluses lined up as this one.

Your idea of a fundraise to buy the building is something I want to encourage. But I don't want to bank NB's future on something that doesn't seem bankable. The idea that you're going to meet with the landlord doesn't seem to reflect having heard what people are saying. They're going to tear out SparkleForge anyway. We're not on the verge of being declared a landmark and gaining special status; we're on the verge of having our stuff ripped out and being out on the street.

When we moved to 2169, we had a small space that was the best we could do at the time. We didn't have a complete floorplan; we just knew it was going to be better. This space is a bigger space, a better space, can have more people, it's better in every way. We haven't seen people coming to the meetings saying we shouldn't move, other than you.

That's why I feel we should move. We've looked through all the doors and avenues available to us, and that's why I'm in favor of consensing.

Gabriel: The previous person mentioned that the only person who's been promoting the idea that 2169 is better than 272 is Kinnard. I haven't heard from Kinnard any reasons why 2169 is better, just process reasons. So Kinnard, why is 2169 better than 272?

Kinnard: I think what NB should do is buy 2169 and then expand into adjacent properties. 2169 has a lot of synergies. It's not that it [272] has a drive-up garage door or is on the ground floor; it's that [2169] is the space that the community has become as big of a deal as it is in. I think the situation is less dire with the landlord.

I'm not the only person who's voiced it; there's people who's been saying yeah, we'd love to say.

I think the point that we need to consense on moving right now, tonight, during this global crisis, is a little bit disjoint. There's probably people in the community whose lives have been disrupted if not shattered, and we should coalesce first.

Zach: [dropped off]

Gabriel: It is people's responsibility to participate and speak. If they're not here, not participating, that's on them. If they're trying to pass this message through you, it's better if whoever that is just says what they want to say. We can't have a conversation by game of telephone with some anonymous person.

Kinnard: Yeah, I didn't sign up to be a relayer. There's a slant in the community between those who are the most vocal and the loudest, and it's not good for the community to make decisions based on who is loudest, but if people don't say anything...

Ⅹ: Consensus clarification and being anonymous, talk to more folks, particularly Members.

There is a process well-defined historically and maybe we've lapsed in communicating this, but the process around consensus: If people are uncomfortable, even if not a Member, Members' responsibility includes proxies and making themselves available for community members to raise concerns.

bfb: I really appreciate your voice in this, Kinnard. It's not easy to be the lone voice of opposition. It has helped crystallize my thinking that this is the right move. We've explored the edge cases, looked at alternatives; to me, they're not viable. I just see lots and lots of upside at 272. But I do appreciate your willingness to speak up.

On concerns last week about making this meeting as possible: Announcements made, time and place, sharing the links. I made some effort to put it into the various mediums of Noisebridge discuss, the mailing list, Slack. Every time you bring up that example of David Lopez posting that, is there a meeting?, that was right after people had posted that there was a meeting. nthmost noted in the chat that this meeting has been happening every week for a long time.

I feel like we've given everyone the chance to weigh in and urge us to reconsider. At this point, I'm ready to move ahead. We have 28 most excellent participantse; if we were to try to push this another week or to an emergencey meeting, participation would diminish; I'm ready to go tonight.

Carl: I strongly support this move. Near BART, near current location, comes just at the right time as we need to move away from 2169 as has been well-articulated.

I say this as someone who has been going to NB [in 2169] for many years, and I'll miss it very much. I love this community, and I look forward to the next ten years at this new location. Thank you to everyone who has put considerable time and effort in and I hope we can quickly sign the lease.

nthmost: This is exactly why I argued that this shouldn't be a matter of Consensus at all. It should've been done do-ocratically.

I posted a link in Slack on rough consensus and running code, which I encourage y'all to read. It's the IETF principles and philosophy behind them, and you should prioritize running code.

NB is not a good place to run code. We were up until the City noticed our problems.

Kinnard should link up with Alice Townes who still has a connection to the landlord and give it a shot on buying the building. But also, we should sign the lease and move. If we have two Noisebridges, cool.

tim: Yeah, it'll be open.

Someone: Build a bridge!

x: Any particular reason you favor doocracy over Consensus for this? I appreciate Consensus in that it codifies and clarifies that we're doing this as a community.

nthmost: (•_•) / ( •_•)>⌐■-■ / (⌐■_■)

nthmost: No-one can move NB by themself, or with 10 people, or with 20 people. Doocratically, if it's possible to move NB, you need a 'rough consensus' as they say in the IETF.

We didn't seek Consensus in the 2014 Reboot, because we had tried to shut down NB the previous year via Consensus the previous year because a small number of people kept blocking Consensus because they relied on NB being open, whether for the kitchen or because they were sleeping on the couch.

x: There were a lot of specifics, but I hear you supporting this plan.

pyconaut: I definitely understand the concerns with moving. I do want to say, a lot of people overestimate how hard it is to move, mainly because of stress being a factor. I literally single-handedly moved a startup that owned a quarter of what NB does, single-handedly. I helped a number of NBers move. It's the bureaucracy and logistics that are tiring about moving; the physical part is the easiest to do.

For people who don't want to move because they're scared, it's understandable. But think about what we can become. Don't think about where we are, think about where we can be. There's a lot of difference between the two spaces, and I do think it's a good idea to have some people completely focus on trying to buy 2169 while the rest of us move. We might even leave certain things behind, which we were probably going to do anyways. Then we'd have 11,000 sqft of usable space.

But I think we've spent enough years debating whether to move and I think it will be a good drive for a lot of people if we start the moving process. For years, I wanted a space where I could bring friends that currently can never get into the space because of it being on the third floor. I know people who've wanted us to have better tools of certain types, or wanted a biolab. There's so many projects people can't do at our current space. People who think we can only be NB in our current space; I don't see many people that actually believe we need to be in 2169 and if they do exist, I'll happily create an anonymous Google Form that people can fill out Slack, Discuss, wherever if they have any complaints about moving, because yeah, sometimes maybe a Google Form can be useful, but we've been working on this for years but the complaints have always been minimal or not complaints but questions.

Like, there's a difference between wanting to stay vs. move vs. what you like about the old space and what you like about the new space.

Kinnard: What's the risk or damage of waiting one last week?

What I hoped I would do over the past week is recruit people who've been opposed to join the meeting and speak in opposition. I've had a crazy week, but I did post the Consensus Item on freezing moving vs. not moving.

So what's the material damage from waiting another week, and can we over that time broadly survey using our existing organs of communication?

jermops: What's wrong with the process so far? There've been ample places for people to speak up; why one more week, and next week would it be one more week again?

Kinnard: Not from me, but I might reach out to people who've spoken to me. I wouldn't really have much more after that.

Tyler: You started #nbremain on March 8, and did a bunch of posting after that.

Kinnard: I don't think people pinging in on Slack is necessarily indicative. A lot of people aren't on Slack. People come up to me and say, not just as side comments 'we should stay'. I don't necessarily know these people's names...

Someone: So what's another week going to do?

Kinnard: I did make that other Consensus item. If there's no-one else talking about this after another week, it's a stark contrast once I've been able to share my Consensus Item which I haven't been able to do.

bfb: One risk is the lease falls through. Tyler's been keeping that relationship alive, but the landlord won't wait forever.

A lot of people have been working on this and we shouldn't keep delaying the fruits of their labor.

Another greater risk is a group of doacrats move forward with the lease sans consensus as Naomi proposed. This would bring orders of magnitude greater fallout beyond the reboot.

Tyler: I don't think a week will matter. This seems like filibustering; you're just dragging the meeting out as long as possible. I don't want to keep on - we're down to 26 from 36 participants; I don't want to keep dropping people as we go.

We've followed due process, due Consensus process for the lease, plus we've been talking about it for three or four months. I don't think people are out of the loop. You just said you hear from these people who you don't know their names or how to contact them. This just seems like a slowing-down-the-process kind of thing and I don't think it's helpful to the cause.

pyconaut: Talking directly to people, if they are not informed about what is currently happening, then how are they making an informed opinion about wanting NB to stay or leave? And if they are so interested? Then they should have provided to you that the reasons why they want to stay in conjunction with the current information that has been provided to everyone if they searched for it.

If people have a problem with us moving, it has to be a real problem. I have never in the past four month heard a real problem from an unnamed individual about us moving.

If there are, we need to know that stuff and if you can't tell us their names or stuff, are you able to quote what they said?

Kinnard: I talked to Ahmad recently, and Mohammad, and Ahmad isn't in this meeting but he has been running the 3D printers. Not like he doesn't know what's going on. He said he isn't able to block because he's not a Member. I hear from people who say we should stay, and we should fundraise to stay, but they're not process people.

pyconaut: Why do they want to stay?

Kinnard: [silence] have another week to try to vocalize. I hear people saying it wouldn't make a difference; I think it would, but I'm fine with people disagreeing with me.

WRT me saying supermajority: Most of the people in the meeting have said it'd be great if we could stay, but they don't see it as a possibility.

x: Please don't speak for folks who aren't present unless things are otherwise structured.

There haven't been any blocks; we've met the minimum requirements. Tyler, for formality, would you take the floor and see if I'm missing any Members violently raising their hands?

Tyler: Yeah, I want this meeting to (1) end and (2) end on a positive note.

So, four hours end, call for blocks on the Consensus proposal to move to 272 Capp St. Would anyone issue a block?

[crickets] [tumbleweed rolls past]

tim: Calling it. Consensed.

[applause]

pyconaut: Can we have a written list of all the Members who just Consensed?

tyler
tim
ryan
lxpk
lady red (/me never here and condensing.)
nthmost
carl
x? <-- neither confirms || denies

pyconaut: Last time we had that many Members was when were consensing on the previous move (that did not happen, gurrero). Otherwise, that's the most Members in like three years.

Aaron: I was gonna throw some flame, but because it seems that the Consensus has passed, I just wanna say congratulations to everybody, because this is definitely a big move for ourselves and the community.

I only joined NB recently. The first time I went to NB was the day before SIP. But, I just wanna say, congratulations.

I was gonna say earlier that instead of pushing back Consensus on whether we should move or stress on buying the space or whatnot, we should take the opportunity, now that we're moving, to rebuild our community, even though it's literally behind the old building, take this time to redevelop, and improve what we already have.

It's not about the building, it's about our people, our hackers.

Lady Red: To the new Noisebridge! [cheers]

- - Stack:***
Lady Red (for the cheers)
Roy

>> Open Mic? <<

Discussion Items

Discussion Item 0

Keys and Access to the space

pyconaut: People are freaking out over Earl. It isn't broken, it was disabled.

Tyler: I think Earl actually is broken, not disabled. But because it wasn't working, just leaving the solenoid permanently open, there's two case now - one downstairs, one upstairs. Wheezy took it upon himself to redistribute those keys to the existing #space-guardians who had a key.

D: Even though Earl may or may not be broken, there is an effort to basically make a new, refreshed Earl. #the-bike-shed

pyconaut: Now that we're moving, I guess it's time to start sending out volunteer planning, though we will need to figure all that out anew since a lot has changed since the original plans were made.

I do think we should start having meetings on a pretty regular basis for moving-related stuff. We might be able to expand the 4:44 #inspection meetings to also include moving, depending on x and other people who are interested in trying to join and plan out our moving process, because we've initiated and finally got through with step 1 of a who-knows-how-many-steps process.

Someone: What day is that meeting?

Several people: Monday through Friday.

Riley: What about the library?

nthmost: I was actually reviewing how we did the Reboot, and we had this page where we specced out the sections we were gonna do. We used the RACIE model.

Here's the link to how we did the Reboot:

https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Reboot

and we're gonna do something like that this time.

here is our new moving sign up form https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdJO4VBmaw5xCfJuocV9BqgeDpZaBDzvMJ3_gxTmjIo65HA2A/viewform?usp=sf_link

bfb: Just because we sign the lease doesn't mean we're moving. There'll still be some time in between.

Someone: I want to have a minimum amount of time.

nthmost: It's a good example of how to do it in a low-tech way.

Someone: Yeah, you don't want to exhaust people. But we do also need to limit the number of people in the spaces at one time due to the pandemic.

jermops: It is really really late to continue that conversation.

Tyler: Yeah, but this is the direction we do need to start moving in now. How to get boxes from one building to the other. That's what we're going to be planning now.

pyconaut: We currently have 41 volunteer responses for our current moving plan, which is pretty awesome. All have emails and this is looking really, really good.

I'm going to start compiling this into actual, usable information for the community. But also, look around Slack, see if anyone's posting in groups you enjoy helping out. Some like #the-bike-shed, #unicorn, #rack, they've already started moving - not physically but actions being taken already.

lxpk: On the subject of moving things so we don't just have piles of stuff, we have a preliminary SketchUp model so we can start roughly blocking out where stuff can go.

How big is this 3D printer table, and how much space will it take? How big is the Flaschen Taschen? I already have the models for some of those from the SimBridge project. SimBridge currently has the old NB in it, but I'm about to upload an update that includes the whole space so you can walk from the old space to the new space on Capp.

If you have something you want to see in the new space, send it to me and I'll model it in 3D and put it in VR. Like, right now I'm standing in [a virtual version of] the new Noisebridge.

Someone: On Discuss or Slack?

lxpk: Slack.

Lady Red: I hope as we're planning the new space, that we leave some negative spaces and unexplored areas on the map. Places that we don't have anything from the current Noisebridge.

pyconaut: For folks who have ideas of what they want in the new space, I'm pretty sure you can re-edit your volunteer response. The last question was a free-form 'what do you want to see?'; you can edit that. I know groups have wanted us to have a lot of different things over the years.

Gabriel: Now that we have some certainty that this is happening, would you mind posting on Slack and Discuss, please?

pyconaut: Sure. Can someone re-post the 360 thing?

Tyler: I just did in #inspection. And tim, can you post your Fortnite streaming link? This needs to be our new Consensus item.

x: In #inspection, we've been looking at getting access to the new space, having contractors coming in, and finding out what the City thinks is a safe workspace.

We need to develop a separate policy and chain of responsibility both for NB folks at the space but also facilitating access to any work we want to do.

Is anyone taking the lead on how we're managing access to 2169?

nthmost: I think Wheezy's been pretty much doing this doocratically.

Silver: Can someone help take some responsibility?

nthmost: We should just take this conversation back to Slack. Hey Wheezy, thanks for being Excellent, let's work on this.

Tyler: Access to 2169 I'm less concerned about, but access to 272, as we're getting that set up, we'll need a logging process of who's going in and why. In the beginning, only a couple of people to let in the electrician and things like that.

lxpk: In the interest of relieving stress from Wheezy, this has always been a de facto access-control working group. Why not make it a Guild with more than one maintainer?

Access Guild.

[general agreement]

Because yeah, there is a challenge of making sure that the transition is not just orderly but doesn't cause anyone to die.

x: I understand the interest in focusing on the new space, but we should also maintain vigilance and collectively inform what the norms are [in the old space] and shouldn't drop that on any one person if we can help it.

I'd like to see members take actionable responsibility and clarify the current status going forward with managing access to 2169.

lxpk: Basically, want some group of people to find out what the best practices are, and the ongoing legal aspect too.

Silver: We do have procedures originally drafted for the PPE project but could apply that to NB.

bfb: There is prior work on that, including boredzo's Keeping Watch page.

D: I'm a little concerned because of how the space is, we don't have a good feel for how secure the new space is. I'm worried that we won't know the window was unlocked or something.

x: I think we're way jumping the gun here. We still need to sign the lease, get keys to the space and everything, but I don't think we've answered the question of what's going on in the current space. I wasn't present when that was originally decided but it feels like the consensus has drifted.

Silver: Yeah, it's important to hear from folks who've been in the physical space, esp. recently. Wheezy, Eli, Mohammad, myself, the #space-guardians.

boredzo: Are we done?

pyconaut: I'm about to post a new section on Discuss related to moving.

It's been a long night. Let's all go to bed and think about exciting new things for Noisebridge going forward.

By next Tuesday, we should have a lot more information about how folks can be involved. But thanks all for being here. Have a great night; check in on Slack and Discuss as this ball is rolling and let's get it going so fast that it can just power through any insignificant or significant issues we might have.

D: Want to express gratitude to everyone who's toughed it out for four hours.

pyconaut: Five hours in about ten minutes.

D: I'm not glad that we had to, but I'm glad we did do it.

tim: How come every time I come to a meeting for a Consensus Item, it's the last thing and we do it at midnight? How come you do this to me?

pyconaut: We started it at 8:35.

Lady Red: We should start it at 11pm, and then it won't take as long.

pyconaut: Really, 90% of this should be discussed offline beforehand. Consensus Items should just be does anyone block? crickets? done.

tim: That's Consensus. NB is supposed to be a doocracy; the only thing we'd need Consensus on is moving, and I think even that's iffy.

lxpk: The idea is to have as many people weigh in, not fast-track it.

all other items moved offline

Discussion Item 1

Continued discussion on PPE pproduction

Discussion 2 SAFETY, SAFETY, SAFETY

Clean when you arive, clean when you leave

Discussion Item 3

Introduction to GUILDS! Come to philosophy hangout wednesday at 8, join #guilds on slack, see Guilds category on discuss.noisebridge.info, otherwise we'll continue this next week

Covid Response Item:https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NyXS1bnSw1s1BVhIg1gbGd0yy1rUhe_fVXYVfFq_S3s/edit?usp=sharing

End of Meeting

@@ Line 7: / Line 7: @@
 video meeting on zoom at - https://us02web.zoom.us/j/972291454 (or try direct link to shortcut the zoom "download app" gauntlet: https://us02web.zoom.us/wc/join/972291454?wpk=wcpk9c203d1131ce8c834861a81++++ae596c7df - not exactly sure how this all works but maybe worth a try just fyi)
-Date: May 26 2020
+* Date: May 26 2020
-Note-taker: Everyone
+* Note-taker: boredzo
-Pre-Meeting Moderator: Pyconaut
+* Pre-Meeting Moderator: Pyconaut
+* Moderators: Pyconaut, x
-Moderators: Pyconaut, x
 = Meeting Summary =

Meeting Notes 2020 05 26: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 00:57, 27 May 2020

Contents

Meeting Summary

Pre-Meeting

Excellence

Participation

Philanthropist definition

Membership Definition

Consensus

Guilds Definition

Pre Meeting Discussion

Main Meeting

Introductions

Short announcements and events

New Philanthropists

New Members

Financial Report

Fundraising Update

GuildMaster's Report

Hydroponics Guild

MetaGuild update

Essential Infrastructure Guild

Consensus

Proposals from last week

Something Labs PPE project

Proposals for next week

Freeze moving/not moving Consensus items

Continued Consensus on leasing 272 Capp Street

Discussion Items

Discussion Item 0

Discussion Item 1

Discussion 2 SAFETY, SAFETY, SAFETY

Discussion Item 3

End of Meeting

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Meeting Notes 2020 05 26: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 00:57, 27 May 2020

Meeting Summary

Pre-Meeting

Pre Meeting Discussion

Main Meeting

Introductions

Short announcements and events

Financial Report

Fundraising Update

GuildMaster's Report

Hydroponics Guild

MetaGuild update

Essential Infrastructure Guild

Something Labs PPE project

Freeze moving/not moving Consensus items

Continued Consensus on leasing 272 Capp Street

Discussion Items

Discussion Item 0

Discussion Item 1

Discussion 2 SAFETY, SAFETY, SAFETY

Discussion Item 3

End of Meeting

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