Meeting Notes 2022 07 05

These are the notes from the The XXXth Meeting of Noisebridge.

• Live notes
  • https://pad.riseup.net/p/nbmeeting
• Virtual Meeting (jitsi mic/cam off by default)
  • https://jitsi.noisebridge.io/hackitorium#config.startWithAudioMuted=true&config.startWithVideoMuted=true&userInfo.displayName=%22n00b%22
  • Backup link: https://meet.jit.si/noisebridge

Date: 2022_07_05

Edit the meeting number above where it says the XXXth meeting of Noisebridge (by checking previous meetings)

ALSO EDIT PREVIOUS AND NEXT DATES IN THE WIKI LINKS BELOW

Previous Meeting

Next Meeting

Note-takers: LX,

Moderators: TJ

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

Meeting Summary

FILL OUT AT END OF MEETING AND SEND TO MAILING LIST

TLDR what happened at the meeting:

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

Introductions

• Ask people to share their name, access needs, and preferred gender pronouns during their intro, i.e.:
• Person1 - she/her - people please say names when speaking (i am low vision) - something i do
• Person2 - they/them - no access needs - first time here, hello
• and so on

• TJ: He him I do AI/robotics.
• April: They/she: I practice music here a couple times for my band. This is my first community meeting.
• Kim: Last here last Oct or so. Interested in cybersecurity.
• JD: Hehim: I teach woodshop and I teach woodshop and laser safety classes alternating sunday afternoons with Paolo so we have presence every week!
• Honest Charlie: First time here. Into software. Quit my startup of 5 years. Doing next thing! I did get a tour.
• Abizar: Software engineer in city since a year ago. Interested in music electronics etc looking for a space with likeminded people interested in similar things. First time here! Excited to be here!
• T: They/them: Mainly do music here though looking to do gamebridge side of commmunity too.
• Aza: Been here many times, was in portland and now back living in SF! I like electronics and embedded systems specifically interested in theoretical compsci and FPGAs.
• Michael: Dropped in from an errand. First tuesday night meeting in a long time. Older member here though resigned years ago due to lack of support for some projects. Really here to help other peoples projects. Working on a project called Deep ?.(hack?) Ask me about it later. I made 2 lights made of computer
• Farley: Host book club and free code camp on Fridays!
• Les - any/all - out of the loop a bit, ML/AI meetups
• Bob: Developed geometric language I'll pass around. Did large scale sculpture with them in the 80s. In 90s developed wind powered art dot com. I put wind powered spinners around the Castro without permission. Pieces in Randal museum. Did a space like this before with wood metal and art residences and I managed gallery and art studios.
• Mikayla: she/her: anarchist software geek from portland. Autonomy and agency in Internet. Working on successor to Adam that Microsoft killed with the cofounders.
• Loren: I do hack here. Recently talk of laser cutter training I hope to be a trainer soon.
• Alex: he/him: I help with game dev class on Wednesdays and I do event support but I can't gaurantee your success unless you do your part!
• Jay: How' it going! I make music sometimes I do events here!
• Carl: (remote) I write apps, hack the flaschen-taschen, and starting a makerspace.

SUMMARY FROM LAST MEETING

TJ: We're going to be at Sunday Streets this Sunday! We also have some in space projects here. There's no wall yet for noise from woodshop to rest of space. Rather than asking people not to do things we want to build wall to dampen sound. New associate member Matt. Shed system is backed up at least now. We like help with Shed/Gate. Electronics room is planned to be cleaned up and moved downstairs to keep upstairs a general classroom. Not much space/buildout this week.

Excellence

Our One Rule is to Be Excellent to Each Other. https://noisebridge.net/wiki/excellence

(What does that mean? Everyone is expected to follow the Anti-Harassment Policy, please familiarize yourself with it.) TWO MINUTES MAX

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.

Upcoming Events

Five Minutes of Fame: 10 5 minute talks every third Thursday! Spread this poster around.

Introduce yourself and meet the community at meetings

• HackComedy July 9: Comedy night resumed on a monthly schedule after re-debuting at NB14.
• Sunday Streets Valencia July 10: Block party celebrating all the cool things near Noisebridge! We'll have live events on Valencia and at NB all day.
• Resident Electronic Music July 28 8pm-10:30pm Resident Electronic Music Monthly. An electronic music open mic.
• 5 Minutes of Fame: July 14, 8pm-10pm Talks at 8pm. 10 5 minute talks in an hour! Sign up to talk on the wiki.

Mondays

• W 6:30 pm Circuit Hacking Monday -- learn electronics, and how to solder

Super Tuesdays!

• W S 7:00 pm Noisebridge Weekly Meeting - (In person & online) - Introducing new people and events to the space, adding new members / philanthropists, announcements, general discussion, and decision-making.
  This is your space, folks. Come on out here in person to express what you think about what's going on with it! You can join the meeting remotely by clicking the online video link chat via Jitsi (similar to Zoom).

Wednesdays

• W S 8:00 - 10:00 pm Machine Learning AI and RL Meetup at Noisebridge until 10!
• W S 6:00 - 8:00 pm Gamebridge game development mentoring & coworking meetup for gamedev beginners and indies alike.

Thursdays

• W S 4:00 pm - 9:00 pm To-do-ocracy Thursdays, where work together on our task list.
• W S 6:00 pm NeurotechX SF hacknights for mind-machine interfacing with EEGs.
• 3rd S 8:00 pm - 9:00 pm Five Minutes of Fame a.k.a. 5MoF - Ten 5min talks in an hour, on any topic on the 3rd Thursday of the month.
• W 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm BookBridge! - Informal book club, no assigned reading. Talk about books. Meetup.
• 4th S 8:00 pm - 10:30 pm Resident Electronic Music Resident Electronic Music Monthly. An electronic music open mic on the 4th Thursday of the month..
• W TRASH NIGHT - Please take out all three large trash bins!! They are behind the front stairs.

Fridays

• W 12:00 pm - 6:00 pm FreeCodeCamp with Paul_H as host
• W 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm Chess Meetup!
• W 6:00 - 7:00 pm Sewing Project Night - Sewing project meetup with free starter fabrics where you can learn how to use our sewing station.
  

Saturdays

• W 12:30 pm - 2:30 pm Let'sMakeStuff: Engineers+Designers+Artist+Make (Meetup Page)
• W 2:00 pm - 5:00 pm Hack on Noisebridge!

Sundays

• 2nd 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm Fabrication 101 2nd Shop Sundays class on safety and basic techniques
• 3rd 1:00 pm - 5:00 pm TOOOL-SF locksport meetup of The SF Chapter of the Open Organisation Of Lockpickers.
• 2nd S June 12, 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm BAHA: Bay Area Hackers' Association Security Hacking Meeting 2nd Sundays at 272 and via Jitsi

Other Bay Area Consortium of Hackerspaces Events

• Circuit Launch: 3rd Friday 5:30pm-8:30pm Robot Build Night & Fixit Clinic
• SudoRoom: Hardware Hacking Tuesdays 6:30pm

New members/philanthropists

What are they? Is anyone trying to become an Associate membership or Member? Donate to the space monthly and you can open and close the space any hours and use your 24 hour access card. You can extend 30 day cards to others. You need approval of existing Full Member to become Associate member. After 4 weeks if you get another person to sponsor you you can apply to be a Member in which case you become a member after 4 months unless a Member blocks it. Members can block consensus.

• https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Participation
• https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Joining
• Associate members take care of the space.
• Members take care of the community.

New Associate Member Applicants

• Bob: Developed geometric language I'll pass around. Did large scale sculpture with them in the 80s. In 90s developed wind powered art dot com. I put wind powered spinners around the Castro without permission. Pieces in Randal museum. Did a space like this before with wood metal and art residences and I managed gallery and art studios. - sponsored by LX. I'm going to learn about some of the things that go on here and collaborate with people on projects. I started a newspaper with volunteer writers for a few years and my partner and I starte community gardens in Castro after opposition. I came from New York city to live communally and now I've lived 30 years with partner in Castro developing handyman business. It's wonderful to see inside of houses and how their decor matches their personalities and how extravagant and messy some people are.
• Aza: Been here many times, was in portland and now back living in SF! I like electronics and embedded systems specifically interested in theoretical compsci and FPGAs. - sponsored by Farley. Noisebridge has 95% of the things I want in life and is the reason I'm living in San Francisco. As I see it the state of Noisebridge is a reflection of the state of humanity and there's not much better that I can do than hang out here and make friends and projects.
• April: They/she: I practice music here a couple times for my band. This is my first community meeting. - sponsored by LX: I feel like its a really cool space I've been coming for a while and I came to practice in the music space upstiars a couple times and its really helpful to have a space to be able to utilize for music stuff since not everyone has music space. Some of my friends have had shows here and I haven't been to one but I play music and DJ at BFF.fm 3rd floor of secret alley studios and all that stuff. Originally seeking community space to use and it wouldn't be totally to do with hackers but I like video games and I would like to host meetings after the overturning of Roe v Wade. I want to create space for people to discuss to act back to these problems rather than just protesting and voting like fundraising or mutual aid for other problems like homelessness in the bay area. How can we as a community help these social and critical issues because at the end of the day all we have is community and the government doesn't give a ____. I'm planning it to be structured and have a plan like a political group meeting weekly or biweekly.

Financial Report

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

• Funds in bank: $300K cash $60K bitcoin cash
• Cashflow: We will work on reporting this soon!
• 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://noisebridge.net/wiki/Finances
• We still need volunteers with money wizardry for Treasuerer responsibilities.
• We have a bookkeeper for taxes but treasurer has responsibilities to facilitate spending on projects that are somewhat political. If interested talk to us.
• Charlie: Just asking about the books because it can take a lot of time to organize the in addition to executive decisions.

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.

• LX: We may need to spend $1200 for the wall plus more $ for sprinkler safety according to Liz.
• ?: If we put wall that completely closes off woodshop we would have to add a sprinkler head to the left of the main pipe to cover the space. That's the $5k max.

Fundraising Update

Sunday Streets needs volunteeers!!!!!!

• https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Sunday_Streets
• We need volunteers to join the Discord and #sunday-streets channel to take on booth staffing, tour guiding to and from the space, hackstation explaining, project/art showcasing, etc.

Big C Consensus Items

Nobody likes 3 hour meetings, only explain if people ask

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

Discussion Item 1

What to do about hosting events.

• TJ: We had 2-3 concerts recently. Some people had misgivings about them. People want to discuss what is required to host events. JD wanted to talk about this.
• JD: People are getting the impression that this is a free music venue and all they have to do is print posters and collect money at the door. Graphic says time, address, 10-20$ sliding scale, ad that's it. No mention of Noisebridge or donations being optional andNB being free. Poster showed up 2 days before event without time for people to comment on it. If you look at written things on the wiki one of the things it says is to present event plans at the meeting and describe it and explain any money required for materials, donation sharing with Noisebridge, etc. These past couple events... The previous event cranked out 120 decibels which is hearing loss. They were asked to turn it down and didnt' and the person reporting on it had to leave the space to escape the noise.
• Jay: I put on the last one Sunday.
• JD: We had punk shows that said 272 Capp St. with no mention of Noisebridge and no security on the street level and people here tagged the neighbors which is uncool. When we start looking at undergound music venues we have to remember Ghost Ship. We have a decent fire exit. We aren't going to have a Ghost Ship happen here. The point is that the fire department is very aware of ghost ship and they are going to be scrutinizing underground music stuff. The last thing we need is the fire department and doing unannounced inspection complaining about our electrical stuff. It isn't cool for people working hard to have that happen. We don't want some people to endanger the commons. No one to bring in the sheep and eat the grass bare for everyone else. We've had other instances where people notice they get away with something and milk it for what its worth. There's a loophole in saying its nice to come to a meeting rather than saying you must.
• Kim: Is there a plan when we notice activities are happening? Stopping or turning the power off?
• TJ: If you want to be on stack put up your hand.
• Jay: I hear what you're saying. I think that the way you're looking at it may not be what's really going on. Not seeing Noisebridge on the poster might seem like its not representing NB. I think we've always had events here and we've always had different kinds of shows including music. There's been interpretive dance and Noisepancakes was a thing that I started coming here. This was one of the first place I performed. I think its important to have shows here but the form of everything being so regimented isn't necessarily going to enhance things here but people coming in bringing new culture enhances things. Media artists. In the last 4 shows people have reached out and said they love the space and said they want to do stuff here like music-based play (theatre). I think we should have some standards. I disagree that it needs to be on the wiki. I think if people want to do events they should go through experienced event people here. I don't think it should have to be the wiki. Realistically not everyone looks at the wiki.
• JD: Atendees may not but members do to see what's happening about the space.
• Jay: In regards to the show Sunday it was folks I met when I started coming here collabing on music. I came to the meeting before and told people show was happening July 3. We do money at the door sometimes to go to the bands. We've never turned anyone away at the door because NB is free. We give tours and tell people about Noisebridge. The end result is positive people finding about the
• LX: I think wiki matters a lot to respect peoples plans for the space.
• Stefan: Fire department doesn't depend on music events happening or not happening and infuencing them. Music playing is not what fire department cares about. If fire department tries to make sense of NB, having or not having events is [not important] unless you take it underground. Noisebridge is public space with projector and things. It would be obnoxious.
• Kim: Briefly. I think its a beautiful thing to bring people in for events. I'm uncomfortable for money at the door and that NB isn't the feature of the event. A small group of people are using the space to make it unavailable for people coming to use it. Some come from south bay. Want to be mindful of that.
• T: When we talked about this on Discord. I'll read that because it summed up alot.
• Mark's message: Everyone should consider events at NB BY NB and take responsibility for NB by doing events here.
• T: The event last Wednesday seemed different. I had been to the last 2 meetings and not heard about it. IT wasn't represented on the wiki and it seemed like an event AT NB rather than BY NB.
• TJ: I want to second what T said. I disagree the wiki is the most important. If it doesn't ping your phone it doesn't exist. Person needs to come to meeting. If NBer isnt involved in the concert... Wednesday event I heard about Friday before my class and was told it was lower volume. It was going to get loud at 8PM. I just held it online but then Wednesday nobody showed up anyway maybe because July 4 weekend. I heard about Jay's event Sunday because people at the space talked about it. I heard Emeline did all the cleanup by herself the day after. There was a mess and Emeline cleaned everything up. Not only was it not really new people but we also got a mess to clean up. I think the solution is big events need members involved. We're NB it should be a NB event.
• LX: What should I have done differently as liason?
• TJ: I haven't seen one of the organizers physically in the space. I have seend panda.
• Mark: How often are you at the space?
• TJ: Not on mondays but almost every day.
• Mark: Its difficult to tell who is involved how much in the space. What I said in Discord was that we have a cultural problem. As anarchist space anyone _can_ try to come in and do anything and people will try to do as they please. Our job should be to incentivize events set up the correct way.

To answer LXs question what you could do better... Vetting it further out. A lot of stuff gets slapped up and announced last minute. Doesn't give time for people to get aware. Asking for clean up or being there or having people signed up for cleanup. It starts at the introduction to NB. If you want to host an event here when we give the tour we need to explain how to come to meetings and get associate member event liason we'll see improvement.

• LX: I think now we should require event organizers to be at least associate member and a liason should mean the person is fully present as an organizer who is an associate member involved. We should require 2 weeks announcements at meetings to ensure all the things get taken care of.
• Jay: NBer told me you can do things and make sure people are down for it. NB has always been anarchist. It's kind of important to take responsibility even if you're not a member. I wasn't involved in that but they posted posters every week forever. Part of being associate member is responsibility of training for doing, closing, cleaning, etc. But I do disagree with the wiki. I think its important to have it on the wiki. We should have a physical wall people can see. It drives people here and there was barely people here and we have had a lot of people come and get stoked on the space.
• Mark: As Alex says there's a wall and we could discuss where to put the TV to be more visible.
• JD: How big was the audience for Sunday, Wednesday, punk show, etc?
• Jay: Stefan may not have explained it well but its not just about what music, its about how many people crowd a space. Ghost Ship was overcrowded. The punk event was too many people. Like 100. A lot good came out. Many new people came to space like people using the music room. People used to sleep in the music room and now people practice there and some girls recorded an album there. 100 was too many people and I told them. You need someone at the door to count people and enforce occupancy. Neighbors who come up need someone at door to talk to someone. I talked to the 2 young women doing it were cool and I talked to them about how to do it. All the other events have been far less like 30 people max. Sunday was 20 people.
• JD: City requires permit for gatherings over 49 people. We should be aware and self-police.
• Jay: I have talked with the people part of the board that look at city code at other venues like Adobe. They look more at issues with your neighbors relationships.
• Loren: Brief. NB is not a public space. Its generally open but its not public do whatever you want whenever you want. We do consensus. Last Wednesday's event... The host of the event is friend of mine. I was not aware of our event process enough to help them be responsible in the way we hope for. The last 2 requests I want to see: Meetup/Calendar form we can subscribe to. We should learn directly from this and how event planning should go in future. Calendar and vision statement.
• TJ: I'd like to have some sort of takeaways before we end this meeting based on what we agree could be different.
• LX: It isi totally consistent with anarchy to do things in an excellent way. Some process should be followed. Leaning towards more structured thhaan less.

the people leading events should be event support experts. we have this checklist, and it is the detailed version of the 5 points of how to do an event, it is similar to the associate membership form. we have failed ourselves by not having a checklist. what I would like to see is a form with everything we need to know about being a noisebridge event support liason. we need a decible meter. I know we love the idea of everything working its self out, but because we are trying to balance riskier things like music events. There is already a well written list (on the wiki), and we should use it and turn it into a checklist. https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/ProceduralEventChecklist

Les (not on stack, just guiding considerations / variables identified) :

   1. attendance (different rules for different expected sizes?)
   2. decibels (different rules for noise expectations?)
   3. accountability (investment in space - associate membership required?)
   4. disputes around charging / split with space

• Jay: 3 things I disagree but I agree overall with LX. The first: I don't think it should be that you have to be the Wiki. There should be something. The second: I don't think you should have to be an associate but I think you should have to be an associate member vouch for you. Third: I don't think event liasons should be a group of people.
• Loren: I don't see difference between member hosting or member vouching. As far as were considered member hosts event.
• Charlie: What is the meaning of exclusionary uses of the space. Has there been a google calendar?
• TJ: There's a Meetup calendar. I advocate for it. NB tends not to unify on a single thing.
• Charlie: There can be a kisok for submitting things. Cognizant and transparent. Is there a counter clicker for person at the door?
• LX: We need one!
• Charlie: IT should be Part of event kit.
• T: What I want to say is it seems like when you say I can't make your event succesful. It seems like it is your member resposibility to make it successful. For a person casually involved a successful event to them is just treating NB as just a venue. NB doesn't need to be involved for them to treat it as though its successful. What we're trying to define is excellence when applied to events. We want to make sure members not only post successful events but excellent events.
• Loren: DR. Can we move to advice or recommendations for future event hosting?
• TD: Victor with Hack Comedy collects gate and gives most to NB and gives small amount to performers and he clarified that. I like the notion of we are doing this event to raise money for NB or a printer or specific goals. If we're asking money for anybody its going into the community or project in general. If you have performers you have to pay to be here then why are they here.

Isn't the space worth as much as the performer you want to pay. About membership: If you have a member bring it forward at the meeting, that's their baby. You have to be there to help clean up and take responsibility for it.

• Jay: Its never been about money for us to do the events. We donate to the space. I don't take money I tell them to put it in the box unless its at the door. For the artist its an opportunity to perform.
• Loren: The homepage is how we agree on what the space means. The top bar says our mission. If we want to change that we can discuss it. Its hacking centric.
• TJ: Mistakes made was not Jay's event on Sunday which was just triggering people ticked off from other events. The mistake was letting people who don't have involvement in NB where the main organizers aren't involved in NB a lot. They saw it as a space to do their thing. I know this is more radical from what we have usually done but I think an associate member should be one of the ORGANIZERS. For example, there's clases I'm liason for but I have no idea about what went on during the class. I saw it not get happening and I canceled it and they got mad and asked why. Alex was doing the same thing I was, helping people who seemed capable of doing the vent themselves as comms with NB and advice.
• LX: I personally will not support any events in future that lack at last 1 ORGANIZER that is at least associate member and fully commited signed off on the whole event organizer prep checklist.
• Jay: The person organizing the event should be responsible for their stuff but not HAVe to do it. People doing events should want to become associate members but I disagree a person should have to.
• TJ: Its hard to establish communication as a liason and communicate to NB that it is happening.
• April: Since I just came to this meeting for the first time today and becmae associate member, I think its not much to ask. I think there should be accountability for event organizers to join.
• LX Favor fronot page. Should music events be allowed at all? Hear from JD if limiting people an changing responsibility level of organizers helped
• JD We don't have people following them. I don't have music but I do have issues against quiet enjoyment of the space. I have issues with large events that are uncontrolled with no idea what's going on. I got the impression that anyone could walk up and say event is happening and do it with no notification.
• Jay: As someone who has been to almost all the music events. People only went up to see bathroom and music room.
• TJ: Maybe we can start with at least saying that the person responsible should at least attend the meeting. And maybe we need to clarify that if people accept money at the door NB needs to get a percentage.

Mark says: just wanted to say I am with J in that I don't think membership is necessary Mark says:just an excellent following of the guidelines - which would include coming to multiple meetings beforehand and finding a member co-organizer Mark says:can you add that to the notes ^

• LX: We got lots of mailing list signups in the past at events when few people used the space and we need to work on getting those peope contacted to come back and generate new memberships and participation. Recommend people try to come to 2 meetings.
• TJ: Meeting takeaways: We will ensure organizers themselves have to attend meetings and the event. We'll have a centralized google calendar. If a member sponsors the event they need to be present for it and responsible for cleanup and excellence. Event support is just teaching people the steps for them to follow and be responsible for, not actually sponsoring the event.

• Bob: As a new person calendars and notifications are important. Meetup Noisebridge group has our events.

• Kim: Unrelated question. Is there time for a question? I Was here a couple weeks ago and I mentioned there's 2 free enterprise level server racks on Craigslist and I can't remember their email. As of Thursday they're available. Datacenter server racks are the size of the vending machine and they disassemble. I took it apart and put it back together. We decided we're not going to take them.

Stack ====

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.)
• 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)