Meeting notes 2018 03 27
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Introduction (name, pronouns, deets?, etc.?)
Naomi () - too many things Kevin (he/him / they/them) Lizzie (she/her) Jade (she/her / they/them) Jeremy (he/him) Victoria (she/her / they/them) - too much, will do more Steve - too much, physicist, engineer, musician Roy (they/them) Lady Red (she/her) Jarrod (he/they) Augur (she/they) - laser, fp Kevin (he/they) - neurohacking, ML
Consensus Items
Lady Red proposes funding the SK discovery process. Community members discuss. Kevin will bullet point goals of discovery.
Short announcements
Augur: Saturday - 8pm, we're watching the video Kevin suggested. Learn how to put together a fundraising proposal - grant writing. There will be pizza. Steve: next saturday, 2-6 pm, John parry barlow symposium april 7pm, RSVP?, https://supporters.eff.org/civicrm/event/register?id=191&reset=1 Jarod: Maker Faire May 18-20th - https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Maker_Faire_2018; NGALAC live arcade cabinet - meeting every Friday at 8, modular synths, would like   content so we can talk about it / propaganda / media working group.
Discussion items
Victoria: membership exclusivity, Trent's note. Nthmost: this is three different issues in one. I have concerns around the cleanness of process. I'm more oriented towards process. I think that if you put a lot of work into good process, I think we get better results in the long term. There's also part of this discussion that revolves around the appropriateness of having private channels and what was the before times like. Victoria: some background would be useful Steve: it feels hard to express my opinion and I haven't been involved in the miniex thing Victoria: without names mostly; last week someone became a member; at the time, there were some concerns. Some people said they had blocks, but it was not communicated in the 4 weeks that the membership was happening. Historically, there are 4 weeks, at the end of which the applicant is talked about and either membered or not. Members can block on behalf of a non-member. There's two kinds of blocking. There's a principaled objection which we should recolve. If this goes through, I'm walking away from Noisebridge. Anybody with blocking power can block a membership with any member. During those 4 weeks, they can post it somewhere, write on the application, proxy it, ... It was discussed on the ministry of excellence, a private slack channel. Nthmost: there has never been a backchannel or five at Noisebridge. Before slack they were all email chains and if we somehow disabled private channels, there would be email chains. There's nothing wrong with that. Victoria: Noisebridge was in a shitty place in 2013/14 ish, around reboot. There was a conspiracy theory that people were going to shutdown Noisebridge for a month. Nthmost: I started the conspiracy channel on slack because I was going to invite everyone at Noisebridge into the conspiracy channel. Miniex is not a continuation of conspiracy. I'm vague on this since there was a bunch of private channel. Victoria: there is a private channel that caused a channel. Kevin: I was hurt by reboot and was not brought in. I did not attend NB meetings for 2-3 years since consensus was worked around. There was this new kabal that was running noisebridge pretty well. Nthmost: you weren't brought in to that fold because you were too loyal to the consensus process. Bringing everything to consensus sucked. Victoria: NB has a history of private channels going awry Nthmost: NO! Steve: one of the things that happened was that pemulis, robbintt, tdfischer left MiniX; there is a feeling that MiniX caused this problem. Nthmost: pemulis: general purpose private channels have screwed up stuff at the space. ad-hoc private channels work better Steve: the truthiness of the statement that private channels have caused the problem Victoria: I don't think slack channels per-se, but long running private channels that assumes it jumps out to the general public. Jarod: where's the issue? Lizzie: I don't think backchannels are all a problem. I have feelings about how this is handled. I was part of MiniX and was uncomfortable with it and eventually left. Victoria: I have left MiniX a few times. Knowing this, it is my opinion that it was assumed that bringing up a block in the MiniX channel was enough to convey it to the NB meeting. I never marked this down, but people thought I would. This never got out. They're not necessarily designed to be solved. Nthmost: raising a block without reason is not good consensus Steve: I've always heard mitch say there is arguing consensus where you leave, and then there's membership and no-one has to explain their block. Lizzie: I have a question. What is the process around writing something down on the application. I was under the impression that blocking worked by someone being present at e meeting. Victoria: I think I may have invented that. I made a note on something once or twice with name and date which is incosistent with the current / documented on the wiki process and proxying didn't happen. I was asked to proxy the block, but kind of didn't. Steve: is an anonymous block a cool thing? Jeremy: I've heard you don't have to explain. Steve: if you can block for anyone, is anon blocks ok? Lizzie: I also have this question. A problem here is that we haven't documented a lot of the process and ritual around membership and we haven't documented our current process. Naomi: It's not that difficult to come up with reasons why anonymous blocks are good. Reasons for a block could be fairly serious -- protecting the blocker may be necessary. Kevin: some processing; as long as there's a process to verify the membership of the blocking person (e.g. the proxy); there should be a proxy present at the meeting; out of band discussion is ok; member should approach the applicant; at some point this must be raised with the member applicant or at a meeting publicly Roy: spooky action at a distance Victoria: re kevin anonymous blocks proxy; I don't think it's enough for most cases for someone to write blocked on the application. It's good to ask a member to proxy anonymously at the process. We had an anti-pattern setup, but that little process was never discussed. Anonymous blocks can go through a process and should be the process Steve: the proxy block should be done by a member Victoria: There is a process and I keep track of members. Paying dues is separate. Jeremy: re Naomi, shouldn't harrasment be addressed elsewhere within Noisebridge's excellence. Naomi: To that issue: it's my belief that one of the issues here leading to our current problem is that some people find Lizzie intimidating and don't want to talk to her. Augur: I have concerns about what it means for NB culture for there to be people who are part of the community but are extremely distant; it feels to me like to some degree someone who's here everyday is a more core part of the community than someone who's here less often. It's weird to me for them to have such a strong attachment at a such a distance when they're not actually in the same place and don't know the current community. There are people who have come and gone who have never met some members of the community who are divorced from our reality in the space. Naomi: Have we named the blocker(s)? Victoria: let's not. Naomi: OK. Well, people lead various different kinds of lives, and being a member of the community that way is fine. Augur: when someone comes back, half the people are new Naomi: doesn't really matter which faces are new. Can't fault people who may not be present right now for wanting to participate in keeping a healthy culture. Kevin: thank you Augur; I feel pretty strongly that Noisebridge is now an international organization that values remote participation, but it depends on the context of that. Reboot is an example of international people being ignored since Noisebridge was crumbling and remote people can't keep it up. Mister name: How does membership become attenuated, how does membership end. Steve: people in the current space shouldn't have to worry about people internationally Victoria, naomi, steve: We should have communicated this. Steve: how many times have we ever tried to make a Miniex Lizzie: remote participation is cool, but I have a concern that people who participate remotely have a skewed view since they see people's flaws and not their everyday contributions. MiniX people see their flaws and not their day to day participation. Remote participation is cool, but you have to understand you'll only see the worst of people. Victoria: I agree with a lot of what we've talked about. Proxy blocking from afar is fine, but they should seek out someone who comes to the meeting to proxy it. There's still two problems: how do we keep this from happening, how do we fix the situation right now. The people who have blocked this application have said they will leave if this isn't blocked. If you're out and abroad traveling, we should value them. Lizzie: there is at least the beginnings of a mediation process for at least one of those people. Augur: I'm a member but I shouldn't have any say over the sunset since I'm not there. "On the matter of boots, I defer to the bootmaker." It's weird for me to be invested but not involved. I wouldn't have such severe opinions that I would override their process. Kevin: when stuff comes up online it's often a negative echo chamber. I don't want my earlier statement to be seen as trying to invalidate a process. There should be a process for a block to be communicated to a meeting. How to avoid this in the future: there's a tendency to avoid conflict and I'd like to rebuild mediation so we can approach people about issues that come up. There's me and other people who will do mediation. A remote person may be very involved in Noisebridge. Signal: direct response, Mitch while he's remote has tried to keep the curent space in mind. Naomi: so many things. Can we just continue this next week. One specific thing: this hasn't happened before which is a tribute to Noisebridge as an organization. This situation important to get right. We need Members to understand the importance and meaning of a block, and we need Members to understand and fully take responsibility for proactively building Consensus. Not that many things. If we let these definitions erode, we are losing something important about Noisebridge. Steve: It seems like one thread is we should all be paying more attention. Alternately, people who are remote members by their choice should take more reponsibility if they would like things like membership blocks communicated. If they really want to block someone, they must make sure it gets communicated. Roy: this is ridiculous, Lizzie is a member, the consensus process worked great, it's communication that failed. Jeremy (direct response): blocks are a big thing. If you feel strongly enough to block, you should make sure it gets blocked. Nthmost: Person in question believed he was doing everything he could to block. Augur: @channel block didn't happen [right, because person in question feels like they can't confront Lizzie themselves. -nthmost] Victoria: there are a bunch of people involved who aren't here. I'm going camping; in slack I'd like to shepherd us through this. I'd like to propose something on the membership or consensus page we write that if you're block doesn't make it to the meeting, you didn't care enough. Writing blocked on the member application is not a valid way to block. Me writing down set a bad pattern. Nthmost: right, that's why i am saying, the person thought they were doing what they were supposed to. Victoria: re augur on Noisebridge, ardent heavy industries is an artists collective; anarchist organizations can fork; ardent west became a thing. Noisebridge west is the sycamore. I'd like to put forth the given amendment and it's ok for Noisebridge to split off. e.g. Noisebridge deep sunset. We're gonne have to keep at this. I'm done facilitating.