Meeting Notes 2021 07 13

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And our next weekly general meeting is at 7:00pm o'clock!

These are the notes from the The 636th Meeting of Noisebridge.

Date: 2021 Jul 13


Previous Meeting

Next Meeting


Note-taker: Lizzard and Sophia!

Moderators: daniel who is online and danny who is in the space ????? ALL THE DANIELS


  • One or two bullet points of high-level meeting summary.

Meeting Summary

FIXME FILL OUT AT END OF MEETING AND SEND TO MAILING LIST TLDR what happened at the meeting:

  • We fuck around endlessly with our microphones
  • We get blasted by the speakers
  • We are sort of already open but it's a soft open.
  • Come during announced "open hours" to get a tour and hang out to work on your project or our buildout
  • then apply to be a "Philanthropist" or a member to help us keep the space open


  • Fundraising Update
  • Announcements:
  • Finances:
  • New members:
  • New philanthropists:
  • Consensus Items:
  • Discussion Items:

Introductions

  • Danny - Welcome!!! Danny O'Brien and I hack cryptocurrency
  • Steve - been around since 2013 or so - physicist/ dev/ scientist/musician
  • Sophia - she/her, been working on the sewing here and other stuff as well
  • X - been resident hacker for last year prepping for invasion of humanoid hackers
  • Dave - he/him Electronics and programming and stuff today soldering buttons
  • Dave - software dev programming elecronics hardware here to check out the space!
  • TJ - he/they - working on Mary's Lamb! a project you will hear about at 5MoF!
  • Mentar - 2nd meeting - moved from UK recently - london hackspace based on bnoisebridge - dev/ hardware / electronics keep it tidy!
  • Lizzard - Been involved with NB since 09, on and off, likes software, game dev, zines, and anarchy!
  • Dan online - (can't unmute)
  • Most middle class person here with a nice living room behind him - Dante! Garbled - something about technology companies - laser cutting! Yes you can learn all about laser cutting here. Come on by.
  • Tyler - our esteemed treasurer
  • Pyconaut- He/him- preparing for camping, and for other stuff.
  • Several other people online who maybe can't unmute!
  • mcint is here too!

Short announcements and events

60-second description per item in bulletpoint.

Examples

  • 5 Minutes of Fame! 5MOF! 6pm social hours! 8 PM start, This thursday, HUMOR [apologies, "who wants to live forever"..]Come and talk about your project for FIVE MINUTES
  • Fun fact we got a trademark takedown on 5 minutes of fame once. (danny: we had fun with that. Our lawyers are the Electronic Frontier Foundation!)


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.) :-)

Sophia explains sometimes we are asocial or atypical or neuro atyppical and this can make it difficult for everyone to relate to each other in a productive way and so mostly what excellent means is be chill and don't be an asshole to people around you , make a serious effort to make the space work


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?)

  • Danny explains that he doesn't know anything
  • X makes danny shut up
  • Someone online says being excellent and doing stuff (interpersonal experiences)
  • No one works at NB you have to step up and do it
  • You can't get a door key by being a philanthropist, but can get the RFID badge in theory by getting a clipper card. We are going to work that out quite soon. If you need acccess to Slack, post in the Discuss forum and ask someone to post in the #invite channel on Slack for you. We also have discord.
  • between $40 and $80 / month for membership / philanthropy dues, but can make exceptions.


Philanthropists

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)

  • come to this meeting and apply
  • donate please (between 40 and 80 bucks/ month but sliding scale)
  • you get 24 hour access (once noisebridge fully opens), but need to know how to open and close the space, give tours, and


Membership Binder

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)

  • members can block consensus
  • members have been around a while and go through a slightly longer application process

Membership application 1

  • Sophia - applied last week. this is week 2. applicaiton is now in the binder. Thinks more members need to step up to take responsibility Just like new companies never IPO...(?) Sophia became a philanthropist last year (2020) Semi meaningful recognition you have a stake in the space and have a deeper commitment to the governance of the space
  • someone online says there are strategies for community building and philantrhopy


Financial Report

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

Tyler reports!!!!

Also a report on #finance-wg slack channel

Tyler: Current cash balance is $312,000 and $104,000 in crypto, grand total of $416,000. Monthly recurring revenue is $4,300. last 30 days $4,100. Between $4-4.5k in monthly revenue. Pre-pandemic we were at $8-9k/month. Shutdown has cut us ~in half.

Steve: how can i give money to noisebridge online? tyler: ? or paypal. donate.noisebridge.net. that is up and running. we also have a patreon. last one is benevity. < if you work at a big company, they'll often give matching. Danny: We're a 501(c) 3 so we're tax deductible also.

X: Hello, supplementing the financial report. $172,000 is our check cashing balance. we've also received $7 additional cash anonymously deposited. Danny: Thanks X. $7.

Pyconaut: Hello! One thing I wanted to mention is that we have looked into grants and are currently looking at a couple, one i'm looking at that a number of people know about is filecoin, which does some grants... i don't know if you've looked at previous meeting notes. there's a filecoin grant that could be useful for building better infrastructure at noisebridge and also help the filecoin network, which i can talk about after a meeting at some point, but it's pretty interesting. https://grants.filecoin.io/

Danny: Those filecoin people sure sound nice.

Dave B - if it isn't too much trouble i would like a report on where our money came from before covid and where it's coming from now (broad strokes, in person, events, steady donations, etc)

Tyler: I can come up with that and provide it later but it would be hard right to do immediately right now. To answer the question, we got ~$2k/m in cash donations, majority of our money came from philanthropists, members, and also big crowd of $5/m donors, not phil/Members just regular people. High income months of recurring income were months when we had lots of events. In the 6mo prior to covid we got into a good routine with barbot and the comedy nights, those turned up $500/m, probably another $1000/m would come from events.

NC "Comet": That's fucking amazing. In terms of outdoor space vs indoor space I'm working with a fiscally sponsored art gardens space we just interfaced with a musician (Union?). one way to look at how this kind of revenue operates. ??? The event space is real but it's not the only one, to get to the sponsors and people who want to do that and bring them into the fold. Not like a product that comes on the christmas card it's about bringing someone in who wants to be with you? ( i think i must have missed a lot of what they said )

Note from lizzard: When you think of that cash reserve we have now, please think of it spread out over our 10 year lease, at over 10K a month.



Fundraising Update

How's it all going

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"?)


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

Discussion Item 1

  • readiness to open the space.

https://discuss.noisebridge.info/t/last-few-blockers-to-opening-the-new-space/2520

  • Mark - what exactly we mean by open? Let's define that before we explain open
  • Direct response from Steve - Sophia opened up the space last Friday or Friday before. That was open. We did all the safety stuff we needed to get done. When we opened last week was that legal? Liz: yes
  • Liz: list of things to do before we become more open. What I mean by list of things before we feel like we can hand the key/RFID to philanthropists and say "you can open or close the space". THat way we can be open more than the core of limited hours than we have now. When you asked was it legal: we're pretty sure yes. we have fire exits and extinguishers, so its ok to have more than 20 people.

Things in the way: double checking fire exit signs. we have to turn off the power to the whole space.

  • rfid on the front external door. it now locks latches and is openable with a key. we almost have a disabled access button. we either need keys we can give to people or we can put in the RFID system that dave etc. have worked on. the front door fix is good enough, we even had some lockpicking attempts that failed (!!). and we agreed on a protocol for opening and closing. Also we should have a 5 which is that people know how to open and close.
  • Dave - we have some people who think we have the door open and people coming and going. Dave things we should have People ring the doorbell and give them a tour
  • access control system and "shed" - Dave is working on a second version now more hardened to outdoor weather and he could use help! 3D printing a box, etc. !
  • Or we could put the one we have now , outside (everyone laughts)
  • no one likes the pin number, first thing to go.
  • rocky path of when we change hashes and everyone has to re-authenticate their clipper cards
  • key point: nothing anyone has asked for is a blocker
  • X: in response to "were we open Friday":

We've done over 7 weekends of buildout saturdays (cheers) It's done really well, we've had 20 folks come in one day. Different folks coming through every day. The Friday thing, like today, is (we're still in this quasi zone) it was sort of an experiment a trial it was limited hours with restrictions, everyone facilitating said less than 20 people and there were limited hours

Weeks and months of prep and building to make this happen We're not totally totally open but we're getting more open every day and every week we're looking for more people to come and help reopen every day and every week

reminder of our old system: front gate on the street with a remote buzzer and a general key. there were 3 flights of uphill stairs which was a barrier to entry. inner door upstairs was RFID. any given philanthropist has a reasonable list of things to do. we need RFID gate, RFID door.

  • Mentar - helped build entry system [1] for london hackspace! and he will help dave b! london space has like, 1400 members!
  • Pyconaut - Thanks to the front door work we are pretty much following ADA requirements that we can currently expect ourselves to follow without financial burden We are good on that front. But we have more to do later. Get professional opinoion/ recommendations. We've done reasonable accomodations (such as the bathroom being accessible for wheelchair users, doorbell, ways to contact us to get in, roll up door as backup entry)


  • Danny - opening up gives us opportunity to do fundraising events.

doesn't have to be the same as when we're officially open, we can soft open over time

we could write down a set of stages that we can keep to and that are easily reasonable we can do a big fundraising run when we hit the end of all the stages that would be good

TJ: our first event will officially be the first weekend in August. Victor: was never told this was confirmed, he's down but he was never told this was concerned. He's ready to go though with art etc. If the first week of august is too soon, let me know.Hack Comedy!!!

Mcint: we can clear that up later We could use a QR code entry system. would be helpful for onetime access and keeping personal responsibility .

Dave: QR: every feature you ask for makes it take longer.

Dhruv: landed on your page and thought your meeting was at 8 but it's at 7! hoping to get involved and find out more!


Dave: excuse me for bypassing protocol. QR to your intro, we have thursday/saturday buildouts if you want to work on stuff

We summarize what we've done!

The meeting comes to a merciful end!


Discussion Item 2

Stack

End of Meeting