Meeting Notes 2025 04 01

These are the notes from the The 806th Meeting of Noisebridge.

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UPDATE meeting number above where it says the 806th meeting of Noisebridge (by checking previous meetings)

Date	2025 04 01
Note-takers	Mark
Moderators	Elle

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Next Meeting Edit redirect [Next meeting]

• Discussed progress on permitting issues, financial updates, starting an email list, possibly starting a kinetic sculpture race

Meeting Summary

Include: TLDR what happened at the meeting:

• Fundraising Update: Sweet 16 party in August, mailing list
• Announcements: Sewing class, laser down
• Finances: Monthly update -- Revenue: $4,619.36 / Expenses: $12,600 // Balances: $16,283 in checking / $84,832 in savings
• New members: none
• New associates: none
• Consensus Items: none
• Discussion Items: start a kinetic sculpture race?

Introductions

• Ask people to share their name, access needs, and preferred gender pronouns what they do at noisebridge

• Loren -- talk to me about treasury things, software infra meetup on monday, and soon, an NB community newsletter
• Mark -- new, coming here to use the laser, 6 mo, first meeting.
• Elle -- sewing, fundraising, writing
• JD
• Jason -- recent Phd grad looking for collaborators for a project starting a makerspace project in south greenland
• Josh
• Michael -- spacebridge, electronics, self hosting
• Elan -- spacebridge, infra, self hosting

Short announcements and events

• 60-second description per item in bulletpoint.
• Copy-paste any pre-announcements for the upcoming meeting from Announcements.
• After announcements, copy them to the past Announcements list. Retire any from the Next Meeting list that aren't marked ONGOING.
• (See https://www.noisebridge.net/ and https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Category:Events for events, and welcoming people)

Sewing class coming up on sharpening blades, scissors Fundraising will have a meeting soon Folks from Sweden coming by to visit (from Discord), 4 pm, suggested later at 7 pm, Monday coming soon. Spacebridge had a launch on Saturday. Launch from Bernal Hill, a lot of peole came out, didn't launch everything we wanted, but now we have a payload ready to go for launch in three weeks. Meetings on Sundays!

Laser is down again temporarily while we get the filter sorted out. We need to have hte correct two filters combined together brand new at the start. One in a day or so, the other we are haggling with the vendor for a discount. Will be down at least a week probably.

Excellence

Our One Rule is to Be Excellent to Each Other. (On first Tuesdays, seek a few definitions. Other Tuesday, give a 1-3 sentence summary.)

Excellent -- more than good, compared to the status quote, improving upon the status quo.

What does that mean? Please see our page on excellence https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Excellence!

Anti-Harassment Policy & Community Standards of Excellence

Noisebridge has an Anti-Harassment Policy https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Anti-Harassment_Policy Everyone is expected to follow the Anti-Harassment Policy, please familiarize yourself with it.) TWO MINUTES MAX More approachable & specific guidelines, https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Community_Standards https://safespace.noisebridge.net/ is one way to quickly raise issues which will be seen by people in Slack.

"Culture isn't what you preach - culture is what you tolerate! "

Brief Kudos

Recent examples of excellent behavior, say 3, unless the passion moves you.

Kudos for everyone who helped with the spacebridge launch Last minute, no less than 5 new people contributed to soldering our payload the night before Josh, Michael, Daniel, Other daniel, Lucy and Jess Only one electrical component blew up

Kudos to Jameson for doing that awesome hackathon last Friday. Temperature gauge. Joey, expert from Helium Network. Supplied stuff for spacebridge and made it clear he is accessible to Noisebridge. Thanks to Kyle for being helpful during that event. Julius, Elan, JD, Eric who made a difficult launch a great learning experience.

Zoning & Permitting Standing Item

Status this week? Helpful broad asks to the community? NB city bureaucracy WG -- JD & Alice, among others.

in good shape, last bit of news was we got the total of fees from the city, which means we have been through all the dpeartmets that need to review our paperwork. All we need to do to close out our violation for not notifying them that we moved into the space is to withdraw the previous permit that we started in 2022 and never followed up on, becasue it would pay way more to pay the late fees but instead we can withdraw it and pay $150 or something like that, but we need the landlord to sign something about that, then we can pay them $1300 to get our change of use permit to legally occupy the space. Once we have done that we can actually pull construction permits for the woodshop walls and electrical permits for exit signs. They had been threatening us with multiplying fees by 9 times, something from the 90s, in the end none of that materialized. Michael Steiner our architect said the fees we have now look like normal fees. Twice in the process we were threatened with scary overpriced fees. Onward and upward! Soon we will have outlets on the ceilings.

Need 25ft power strip cord for many of our rooms, including sewing and upstairs hackitorium.

Do we need additional fundraising for this? Need to hire our contractor for supervising the work (JD's neighbor), the electrician is a licensed electrician.

March 18th -- we had a fire inspector walk through our space, including lack of functioning for the exit signs. Someone let him in. That could have gone south really quick if we hadn't gotten Chris Brown our electrician on board, knew the inspector, called him up, said I am doing some work for these guys.

As an organization we definitely do not want to do our own electrical work. That is a big no no, don't want to be like ghost ship, let's not cause fires.

Should we consider having a sign at the front gate asking people why they are there, so inspectors will have to identify themselves?

Huge kudos to JD for handling this whole situation.

Guilds

• What are guilds - briefly describe (much like the previous section on "Excellence")

New Members/Associate Members

What are they? Is anyone trying to become a Member or Associate Member? If not move on. No long discussions.

associate member (philanthropist) -- monthly basis donations (100-200, sliding scale) find a big M member to sponsor you. Agree to be responsible for the space. Can host events at the space. Member -- goes through the process, has the right to join in the consensus making process when we vote on things. Some things require big C consensus, can vote on those. Noisebridge opens when the first associate or Member arrives and closes when they leave. Can officially vote in board elections.

How to find a sponsor -- talk to someone at the space to recommend someone.

How does Noisebridge decide on things in general? When we made decision it is consensus, happens by making a proposal and if someone has objections we alter the proposal to meet their objections. Even before something is a formal proposal, much coordination happens on discord or in person. Big C consensus -- big spending, permanent changes to space, etc. Intermediate items are brought up at the meeting.

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

silent auction for next month or later? MF has 3D printing in box for this.

More, helpful descriptions of NB Process

Do-ocracy, Consensus, & the Manual

Financial Report (first Tuesday of month only)

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

• Monthly revenue, expenses. Big projects. Big fundraising events. Reserves in bank.
• Any other details by those participating in handling our financials
• The latest financial reports from the treasurer are available at https://noisebridge.net/wiki/Finances

March We might have more from venmo -- 1000 at most

• Venue of $4,619.36
• Expenses of $12,600

(may still need to be updated) $10,000 in rent, plus other expenses

Other spending 390 - broneo 330 - green glue for ken for drywall

Current balances

• $16,283 in checking
• $84,832 in savings

coinbase reserves, very close to getting access to Loren and Elan coordinating for access

coinbase situation -- previous treasurer create account for donations before they had org accounts, has his SSN tied to it, past three treasurers have not wanted to deal with getting an org account, will complete that possibly later tonight.

Will noisebridge owe capital gains tax on that?? On the order of two bitcoin... value of account over 200,000, now lower

intent for the money -- for a building fund, purchase of a building? Could sell it and put in something with a consistent return

Does that include reimbursement for front door? No, that's still showing as a negative. Reimbursement is a two step process, and they have sent the second thing today. W9 first thing, then the second thing (bank account number), will fill out today. ~10,000!

Thanks to the committee who put this through, thanks Elle

Woodshop

• $391 from beronio
• $330 green glue for woodshop (arrived & used) (and some rfid tags -- wrong ones, need to return / exchange)

Spending Needs

Gotta spend money on XYZ (i.e. Gate, wiring etc.). WHO CAN SIGN THE CHECK OR LEND THE CREDIT CARD!?!?! It doesn't matter if we agree to do something and it can’t be paid for.

Going to talk about exterior improvement grant for awning. Requires that the permit be in the works before applying for the grant, so we may want to get that started. JD going to talk to our architect about the cost for that process.

May be possibility that we will have the city coming down on us about the fence. Then we'd have to get a permit and rebuild the fence.

The sewing spending that has been authorized now for a year, haven't asked for it yet from Loren, amazon account wishlist for the stuff (and some other sites). Elle is going to send to Loren.

Fundraising Update

How's it all going

Before we go through all of our runway Do we want to fundraise for the purchase of a building? It's an exciting process and it can be done, something to consider for the future

10,000, would need 100 to 125 members member binder list of emails from Mark Arity, includes emails from ones people 13,000 people on meetup people on Slack Use it for Events

Loren working on a newsletter

Emails

some people have the control account for meetup no persistent owner, person who started it isn't here Does it give you emails, or only access to the emails Might need to ask Emiline for the list Elan has a python script for this

GiveButter account

Grants

Rapid fire grant response team

Party

Sweet 16 party, August

• 125 people -- more people
  • 4 heaters found in, plugged in, in the electronics room
• negotiate the rent down? Why: permitting burden is LL fault

Discord thread -- What is reasonable rent and can we pay less?

• • our investments into the space -- woodshop wall, (door -- net zero cost with grant received*)
  • credible exit? effort to move elsewhere

Big C Consensus Items

Nobody likes 3 hour meetings, only explain if new people are present. https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Current_Consensus_Items

Consensus Items

Only for talking about Big C consensus items, small c consensus items should be discussed with people at the space at the time of the change/new item.

Discussion Items

(discussion item) 1: Inaugural Great Highway Landboat Race

From/Raised by: Elan Seeking: Advice On topic:

• https://www.kineticbaltimore.com/
• https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4s58rKKPFjU

Land version of a sail board Kinetic Sculpture Race -- groups make vehicles, mostly artsy rather than efficient, excuse to do a race down the great highway with non-carbon vehicles. Start a rivalry with another local hackerspace or commmunity group. Late May/early June has best wind speeds, looking into parade permit to close it off for a few hours. If anyone can thing of other hacker spaces that can be goaded into making a silly vehicle. Bringing the artsy side the west coast.

Creating a steering committee Maybe a logo/mascot? Branding, name TBD Maybe reaching out to the burner community?

LoRa event was at burning man organization, they are actively hosting events

https://kineticgrandchampionship.com/ Eureka event is big every year, if we can something here we could compete there

Bike Kitchen Match with a bike party week in SF?

Template... [num]: [topic-short]

From/Raised by: Seeking: decision/outcome/advice/[?] On topic:

Do-ocratic Task Board

Participation also means doing stuff to contribute to the space. Propose new tasks or pick some tasks from Github, from what needs to be done around you, or whatever, and see if someone will sign up to work on that task. Anyone can sign up and it's a great way to show you are contributing!

End of Meeting

Note taker posts the notes

• Clean and tidy the meeting notes including removing all these really verbose instructions.
• Fill out the short summary at the top listing just announcements, consensus items, discussion topics, and names of new members and philanthropists.
• Copy paste the notes to the next meeting page. (They will become Last meeting at midnight.) https://www.noisebridge.net/index.php?title=Last_meeting&redirect=no
• Email the meeting summary to Noisebridge Discuss and Noisebridge Announce lists.
• CC on the email treasurer@noisebridge.net and secretary@noisebridge.net if there are new members and philanthropists.
• Edit the Current Consensus Items if anything is proposed for consensus next week.
• Edit the Consensus Items History if anything was reached consensus or failed to reach consensus this week.

Fun things to do after

• Do a 10 minute cleanup, bring dishes up stairs and wash them, clean the bathroom
• Have some beers on the patio
• Prepare the next weeks' meeting notes
• Lick the walls. Or just draw on them
• sing the Hackernationale (this almost never happens)