Meeting Notes 2018 11 27
Noisebridge meeting 2018-11-27
Summary:
Meeting Notes are at https://pad.riseup.net/p/nbmeeting ; help us take notes!
Moderator: Victoria
Note taker(s): Matt (Rando), Bernice
Introductions (Name, Pronouns, Deets)[edit | edit source]
Beka (She/Her): Hack on all sorts of shit, NB, functional programming, etc
Lily (She/Her): Hack on raising money!
David (He/him): Minister and software hacking
Greg: He/Him, software
Nicole, (she,her): laser, FUN-raising, which does raise funds
Jarrod (He him they them): Likes working in the woodshop
Ahmad: Hardware sometimes (him/he)
Terrance: Software he/him
Phoebe she her sculptures with all sorts of medius
Bernice (they/them/ she her) video games, NGALAC, and laser cutting, event support, AI, fundraising
Matt (He/Him): hack on hardware or software, laser cutting, 3D printing & fundraising.
Victoria: Fund raising, she/her/they/them coming for a while so helping to raise 4million dollars
Josef: (he/him) hack on artists and art spaces and other non-profits
Stan he/him: hack on embedded linux drivers
Ryan: He him help run VR and love working on projects here, mainly other peoples, no time to work on own more fun to and help other people
Alex: (he/him/his) gamebridge vr setup, fundraising
Umar: He/Him Work on software and hardware
Zach: He and him javascript
Joseph: poking around in blockchain nodes
Anthony (he/him, they/them): working on an app for Bernal Heights Cinema, but needs help with it
Matt he him software stuff.
Andrew (He/Him): found out about it throuhg friend, came, loves everything and cool stuff. Coming ever since.
Alan: Came in today becuase of Andrew.
David: Teacher, at city college,
Frank: A number of things, like data comm, taking queries for financing real estate deals.
X: Hacking on things, working on embedeed control systems, blinkenlights, Heners RGB matrix for pis.
Introducing Noisebridge:
Anthony: Noisebridge is a place w/ a lot of resources that people can use, as long as they obey the one rule of being excellent. People can come here to share skills and other things like that.
Fundraising[edit | edit source]
Josef Krebs from Seattle: Hi, my name is Josef Krebs. I own a strategy company in Seattle called Scanduzzi Krebs. I'vbe been working w/ artists and arts organizations for 20 years. I have the goal of helping Noisebridge get enough momentum to raise enough money to buy a forever home. I got connected to Noisebridge becasue of David Molnar, who cnnec ted me to Mitch to talk about fundraising. In May 2018, I came here for "discovery"
[insert notes from S|K]
Create fundraising momentum to buy a Forever Home.
David Molnar got wasted with Josef at the Summit. David called Josef and introduced Josef to Mitch.
Breakdown of how to raise 4 million:
The highest tiers of donations won't be from individuals but from large organizations (ex: city & county of SF, large corporations) aka institutional giving.
Questions:
David: We are a decade out from the last major recession, when there's another economic crisis, you're assuming revenue would remain the same? For 30 years?
Josef:
Matthew: our outlook is based on assumptions
David: If you're pursuing grants, why not have the land donated by the city? Land is the part of assessed real property that inflates its cost.
What about a community land trust - have you already decided on a traditional mortgage?
Ryan: a lot of the projected income of NB is also assuming that whatever space we get will be a higher quality community value than NB's current location.
Another space that we know we can fill up w/ tools & talented individuals would be better, because we have turned away a lot of tool donations, since there's a
lack of space currently.
Victoria: Background: noisebridge has never had a full scale fundraising campaign before. We just get donations that are enough for us to stay here. But because full scale fundraising is new, we are all also learning this at the same time.
Josef: I know $4M sounds like a giant number. But it's an amount that I have raised for other organizations, so it's do-able and the money is out there. Noisebridge just needs to take the steps to get there.
Anthoney: If NB runs across a non-profit developer, we might be able to convince them to let us use the ground floor for public benefit. Example: Saint
Anthony's.
David: I didn't hear, but are you charging a percentage "fee" (for running this campaign) or is this work pro bono?
Josef: No percentage, on a contract basis.
Josef: One of the organizations I've worked with is a theater company in Seattle that does something similar. We approach this by building relationships between NB & ppl who understand the whole ecosystem of nonprofit need in SF. We just need to connect with these organizations, to establish good partnerships that are beneficial.
Ahmad: do we have a set of locations that we want?
Matthew: we have a list of priorities. We would like the Mission. We prefer somewhere that's close to BART.
Ryan: Before when we were working on getting our lease extended, we always found places that fit these requirements.
Victoria: before we talk about individual donor bases, if you donate to Noisebridge listen up:
Josef: We will start small. PIC (people in charge) are Victoria Fierce, Matt Arcidy, & Danny O'Brien. It's more important to grow the number of donors rather than focus on the individual amounts.
Josef resumes presentation:
Start mobilising individual donor base
- Build individual giving process. Start small. Old saying. How do you download an elephant? One byte at a time.
- start campaign, run through end of year
- Victoria, Matt, reach out to DoB.
- 15K from at least 100 donots.
- focuson in # of donations, show momentum, interest, growing number of donots.
- take money through paypal
- engage through slack, email list, twitter.
- individual giving committee full of a bunch of clowns.
- reach out to 10 of top donors to see help.
- seek 10 donor leaders to make a gife of any size,and find 10 ppl to help.
- Ryan! Beka! Pheobe! Bernice! Terrance! Ahmad!
Bernice: Do donations to the cash boxes count?
Victoria: want email address
Beka: I made a project on donate! donate.noisebridge.net/Forever_Home! And wiki
- Word of mouth, social media bites, ppl should share the F&#$ out of this.
- Campaign in waves, scheduled social media, emails and stuff! to beg for donations
- Theme is to raise money by end of year by a number of donors
- corporations might match! check with your evil greedy HR department.
- Thanks strategy: email out within 48 hours, email at end of campaign, start at thank you team to engage ppl on regular basis to thank donors (eg get ppl to help write emails.)
Ryan: so, when we reach out, should we just be asking for money at that money? For email?
Victoria: Both
Josef: we will be providing a written letter
Victoria: who is excited to raise 4m dollars!
Peanut Gallery: Wooo!
Lily Rabbe to talk about grants and institutional giving.
- Grants!
- What is a grant:
- Govt: City, State, Federal
- private foundations: family, trusts, etc
- Private foundations like family or someone who can incorporate that have a lot of money (example: the Gates Foundation).
- to raise $4M, our target are larger plots like gov't. funding or larger private foundations.
- We want to also make sure that the donors have the same values as the people at NB, so we can be comfortable about where the money is coming from.
- Opportuits though businesses....(2 others?)
- one thing I want to ask everyone in this room is to keep your ear to the ground. Please put this info in Slack's #fundraising, and tag @lily
- throw opportunities in #fundraising-wg
- See something, say something.
- If everyone is looking, we will find stuff, etc. Faster, farther.
- First grant: Expo 2020: Dubai
- global Expo
- Tech, education, stuff, who cares, it's 100K
- need 60s video...CAN WE GET SOME FOOTAGE OF YOU AMAZING MOTHERFUCKERS RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW?
- opt out if you want, that's totally awesome
- <Bernice pulls out amazing camera for footage! It's super effective!>
- do some one-liners, short, sweet, spicy
- remember, no pressure, but 100K is on the line.
- tech assistance grant
- help with negotiations, and stuf
- spend like 10m looking on line for this stuff. SF has tons of local non-profit HQs and they get grants from SF!.
- not all grantors give to all organizations. Make sure NB qualifies, every grant has specific qualifications. Education, innovation, technology. Anarchy. Blinking Lights.
- More people with ears too the ground and noses opn the grind stone will find opportunities.
- many foundations will invite ppl to apply. Who do we know? Who do we have access to? Can we get a coffee with ppl like that? who will pay for teh coffee?
- If you meet ppl, mention noisebridge!
- Everyone thing of ways to connect people to opportunities and SK can help with communication.
- 100K dropped like a bad habit in NB's lap. Apparently if you ASK for money, some people might even GIVE it to you.
- Alyx: Back to personal share side, should we wait for the fundraising copy?
No! Doocracy. Now, let's do it.
If you can get money, go get it, don't wait for a bunch of slackers like Matt.
If we start a pyramid scheme...err ICO...wait...I mean......
A CULT.
Let's start a cult.
Text everyone in your phone book!
It can be intimidating to ask for money. Which is why we should rebrand as a cult!
Lily: It's an opportunity to get involved in somehting they love. It's great to have other people find out about a place you love. And we can have 20,000 sqr feet to fill with these people we love. For a cult.
20,000 sqr feet is a lot of space to built illegal forts and try to sleep in.
(The gala was moved to march to celebrate the equinox and fertility)
X: what about permits?
Nicole: more than 49 ppl and live music, need permit. Permit office is super awesome, I mean for a bunch of square non-cult member gov't squares man.
Victoria: meetings will contain fundraising from now on as we are talking about Noisebridge's future.
<Josef panders to audience by telling us how awesome we are and how cool this project is. Money earned.>
<Applause>
Victoria: volunteers to speak on camera about first time at NB?
<Bernice literally pulls out a tri-pod, amazing.>
<recordings delayed to later>
Announcements and events[edit | edit source]
Ryan - nb is going to be able to have a booth at cherry b losson next april - hosting a GDC event in march - MakerFaire as well - opps for fundraising in future - if you want to help out, keep coming to NB, as things get closer, will annouce much more often.
Beka - This friday! Hack nights! open all night ! - Thursday! Movie night! Herbert's Dune! The real one!
Zach - My brother & I are working on smart shoe soles. We are also working w/ X. I talked to a company in New Zealand, and told them about Noisebridge, and the New Zealand company is interested in sending demo kits to Noisebridge. Please contact me at zack@ukaton.com or at Slack (@Zakaton).
X - Holiday part at Hax on Dec 5, Brutally Honest Hardware Meetup, lightning talks, libations, foood, interesting ppl, look at meetup - BBQ, do you like steak/ beer? robots? It's at Circuit Launch on meetup or talk to X, @x on slack.
David - saturday, 992 valencia, show called archive theater, films from David and his Wife, history of situationist theatre. Left wing theater. Other Cinema, 830, dec 1. othercinema.com for details.
Ryan - three or four ppl should be introduced.
Andrew: (he/him) recently found out about NB through a friend, and arrived here a couple of weeks ago. I think it's really cool! Alan: I'm here because of Andrew. (Any pronours) David: () teacher at CCSF. Frank: getting into data communications to taking queries for financing real estate (he/him) X: hacking on a lot of things like embedded systems. Right now, I'm working w/ blinky lights, so talk to me if you're interested. If you want to work on OpenNV, it's open source computer vision.
Safespace[edit | edit source]
Let's not be mean to eachother. Don't be aggressive about sexual overtures, don't harrass people because of things , anything really, but specifically race, gender, religion, sexuality, etc. De-escalate things. If you do have an issue where you are uncomfortable, ask for assistance if you need to, or ask someone to leave you alone. If they make you feel threatened, you can ask them to leave. This is not a status issue, anyone can ask anyone to leave, including asking a member ot leave.
If asked to leave, don't lose the game and lose your shit and demand immediate satisfcation because it will escalate. Best to leave and de-escalate the situation. Ask someone who you are comfortable with to help.
Victoria: ties back to fundraising. Things that grant-giving organizations look for are indicators and demographics. Noisebridge has historically not been very great at the people who come here, and they are predominantly cis-white men. We are trying to be better about that. It's not good to be an anarchist organization if we don't. It's important that all of us have to hold ourselves accountable.
Another thing we are working on is we don't have classes that aren't in English. It would be better if we work on having classes in other languages aside from English. We want more than CIS white males running the show, we want to dismantle the system.
Participation[edit | edit source]
Beka: Come and hack! That's how you participate at noisebridge Jarrod: Noisebridge are all respomnsible for al lthe space. Welcome to move things around and fix things, you dont have to ask for permission to work on thespace. Improve noisebridge through participation and working on the space to make it better. Anthony: Sharing things, teaching people, etc
Philanthropist[edit | edit source]
Who doesn't know what a philanthropist is? Philantrophy is a higher level of responsibility and implies some level of trust. People who are philantropists need to be trusted because they have the responsibility to close down the space and turn off anything that can cause a fire. They have the responsibility of helping with the safe space policy. They hopefully have the responsibility to donate some money.
To the binder! Applications? Jarrod! Sponsored by Jarroed. Why do you sponsor Jarrod? Jarrod takers care of the space and works on cool shit! I've known Jarrod for a long time, he's a cool guy. Jarrod has achieved Sponsorship! Jarrod confirmed as new philanthropist!
Zach, sponsored by Beka. Objections? Blocks? No? Philanthropized!
Andrew: Sponsored by Nicole. Objections? No? Are they shitting in the woodshop? no? Philanthropized!
Pheobe: Sponsored by Beka. Philanthropized!
Anthony: Sponsored by Beka.
Bernice: This applicant was somewhat mean on aaron swartz day, i hope this was a one-off thing.
Anthony: I don't remember it, so im not sure what I was thinking. I dont know what to do in the future.
Bernice: Please don't do that in the future, don't be mean to people.
Victoria: Remember that Philanthropy can be revoked at any time for any reason by a Member. Bring it up in the safe space comm channels and we will discuss and figure it out.
Philanthropized!
R: Are cutting keys and lock picking bad activities?
X: Check out Toool's guidelines
Membership Binder [edit | edit source]
Ryan: Membership is the immune system of NB. It's not the same thing as a member of the community, everyone who comes through the door is a member of the community. Becoming a <capital>M</capital>emeber means taking care of NB and helping to bring it into the future. you don't gain much over Phnilanthropist. It's really a negation,the ability to stop something, called a Block. It can keep noisebridge from making dangerous mistakes when necessary. To block a consensus proposal is a very big deal. It means if it passes, you won't feel safe at NB and won't want toparticipate at NB. Blocks are held to a high standard. \bigggMemebers don't get much else. Sponsoring Philanthropist and other members. It's not really something to strive for, ppl are here 4eva without applying for membership.
Ryan: VR cart, other excellent stuff Kelly: make world more excellent. 3D printing, infosec, other excellent stuff Katherine: Victoria forced her to. fundraising, social media stuf, cleaning, 5mof, etc
Not ready for consensus tonight. Moooooving on!
Jarrod: Stepping down. Cannot fulfill committment made as a member. X/Victoria: Hiatus? Jarrod: nope, thanks, Victoria: noted.
Financial Report [edit | edit source]
189K-ish in bank. ROLLING IN IT. DEEP. Some belongs to noisetor and some belongs to rogue-like game dev
Consensus[edit | edit source]
Normally, just do a thing. talk to ppl about a thing that effects them, little-c. If it impacts all of noisebridge, make a consensus proposal. 2 weeks of discussion, if no member blocks, it becomes Noisebridge Cannon. Anyone can write one, anyone can discuss, only Member's can block.
No items.
Discussion[edit | edit source]
Alan - Organize hackathon, can i use space? What pathways and procedures are there? Bernice: You came to a meeting! right step. We allow most things that are Excellent, hack-a-thons are totally excellent. We can help you set it up, you dont need any status here to do that or use a space, etc. We'll give you the right assistance. Annouce a meetup, put it on our weekly stuff and wiki and twitter. Work with us and tell us what you need. Alan: Who can help- Bernice: Me Nicole: Me
Alan: alan.gamage@gmail.com Ryan: type of hackathon? Alan: Create technology for humanity. Open source. Ideas like education, software or web apps probably. Pose problem, propose ideas, but let people go at it.
Ryan:
- March 2k19 GDC (Game dev conf) NB goes to it and presents, or shows off. Game night hosted by RIT. Bring your own game play testing night. Host it here instead of hotel, be WAY cooler, hotels are not fun though the carpets can be interesting. Tuesday night of GDC probably but tentative. - Volunteer in Japan town, friend has a booth at the Cherry Blossom Festial in April, wants NB part of Booth. Bring VR and possible NGALAC. Not really about showing off NB as much as showing off culture and creativity that NB can give to community. Cherry Blossom festival is one of the biggest cultural festivals that SF holds and one of the most traditional and active blossom festival in the US. It could reach out quite well to a number of communities.
- At some point, either this month or after NYE, Ryan will give multi-hour in-depth day-long talk on VR industry, both software, hardware, and engineeing and design. Will let people know more about it when it's in the pipeline. - Let the record show that we learned a lot from moving NGALAC, which is expensive and very painful. Let the record show that I hit a muni bus. :(
Lily:
Can we grab snippets of beautiful faces on the camera?
Victoria: first time you came to noisebridge story?
Victoria:
My favorite thing about noisebridge that keeps me coming back andwhat I love, I love sitting and listening to ppl give their own tour of noisebridge. How they talk and describe it, it's all unique, and I learn things about noisebridge this way. I learn things about this community every single day. I'm really curious to hear ppls stories about why they came in and this will illuminate us on why ppl care about and support NB.
Eclair: The point of a booth is to draw attention to hackerspaces? I know this is kind of like kind of genius but i was watching this documentary on black jack card counters from MIT, it's leagal ok, holy rollers christians raising money for church, but not illegal, and where are there more geniuses than nb,and who would get more publicity than nb. Aside from Noisebridge Black Jack, there should be something for publicity where we work on a VR thing that engages all the senses. Like surfing! With WATER!! :D