Meeting Notes 2023 10 24

These are the notes from the The 745th Meeting of Noisebridge.

Date: 2023_10_24 as below

Previous Meeting

Next Meeting

Note-takers: Loren, Mark, (you?)

Moderators: Mark, Loren

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

Meeting Summary

FILL OUT AT END OF MEETING AND SEND TO MAILING LIST/SLACK/DISCORD Include: TLDR what happened at the meeting:

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

Introductions

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

• Mark - your host tonight!
• Collin - makes drawer organizers w/ lasers
• John - interested noisebridger guy
• Aja -
• Loren - Does infra meetings and wants to make a discourse forum
• Steve - interested in theoretical physics, ML, stats, tech art, music
• Kevin - AI and AI company and sticker dealer
• Jack - Just familiarizing with NB
• Brendan - playing with microcontrollers and LED's
• JD - Laser Classes and Power Tool Safety
• Claudia - was a member 10 years ago or so, want to be a member again, have come across a huge fresnell lens
• Cloud - 5mof
• Ronald - Been 86ed, Kicked out from online meeting

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)

• Event Request: TOOOL / Phil Hom

What: Locksport workshop Date :Dec 17 (Sunday) Sponsors: JD and Sam G

• AI movie, tonight after meeting. Talk to Mark

• Maker Faire went great. $150-ish in donations. Mostly Club Mate. Great meeting makerspace participants from across the country, world.

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.)

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

We are typically a community of neuroatypicals. Nerd fights in public cause unnecessary drama. Be cool and respectful of one another. Assume others are acting in good faith. Try to work towards solutions.

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

Brief Kudos

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

• Kudos to Paolo to do plenty of Laser Training Recently, with Jen, keeping laser training afloat.

• Mark: Kudos to Max and Colin and others for continuing cleanup saturdays when i have been unavailable the last couple weekends. Wyatt in music room too. Music room and downstairs

• Kudos to John Potter and Wheezy, have been excellent to me, despite not knowing me. I've felt so comfortable here, appreciated.

Guilds

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

• Rack needs VM stuff. Access control RFID stuff. Talk to loren

• Sewing - help maintaining the space, and to the extent possible, helping host classes.

• Electronics guild - circuit hacking Mondays, needs some help.

Mark: just gonna say our Friday schedule is a little

Loren: Wiki meetup on Friday or Saturday for an introduction to NB Wiki

New Members/Associate Members

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

• Typically these are handled at the 1st meeting of the month.
• John
• Claudia - checking
• Brendan

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

- Recent Note from the treasurer:

   "also, financial update prior to tomorrow’s meeting - as highlighted at the beginning of the month, donations have gone significantly down (they’re at the lowest point since 2019, before which i don’t have records). Part is seasonality, but there’s a ~2k loss attributable to recent events in sewing, as after investigating it turns out lots of women who had become philantropists to use sewing no longer felt safe coming, did not have space wen they did come as, as they’ve described it, “it’s been privatized” (not by me, i’ve not been there as much since august), and also one of our biggest anonymous donor reached out to say they’re tired of women being pushed out of the space, so not to expect more money. Also loss of classes income. anyway, looks like we should expect a 5k deficit every month again, meaning, given the money that will need to go in bringing the space up to code with the occupancy permit change, noisebridge will be in financial trouble fairly soon, so well, fundraising should be a big topic"

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.

• Large Rolling Door recently fixed for $339. Reimbursement to Sam.

• Want to talk to Ken about what he needs in order to get the small quiet booth finished
• Want to make a small safety enclosure for the laser engraver

• Jonathan wants to make molds, potentially melt silver and/or other metals. Would have to be done on the patio because of fire concerns.

• Loren saw a cool tool at makerfaire called a Shaper. Basically a handheld CNC tool. IS interested in a half/half split cost purchase.

• • Mark. Soldering heat gun workstation. Precise control.

• • Small vacuum for sewing room. Or just a good vacuum generally.

Fundraising Update

How's it all going

• Grant Proposals that Sam and others have been working on. John and Rahil have also been working on a grant proposal and are looking for people to help. Kudos to them.

Big C Consensus Items

Nobody likes 3 hour meetings, only explain if people ask. 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

From/Raised by: Seeking decision/outcome/advice: On topic:

Discussion Item 1: sensitivity training

From/Raised by:jD Seeking decision/outcome/advice: advice On topic: sensitivity training

JD: Despite the best efforts a lot of us put in and the good jobs we do, there is some room for improvement still. I'd like to open disucssion about having a voluntary sensitivity training here. Hiring a professional perhaps to help educate us. A lot of us have had such things through work, but not all of us. Myabe a lot of us aren't marching to the same tune, per se. We'd like to all be brought up to the same speed on this.

Loren: Hopefully a trainer that is aware of the maker community norms and complexities. Not so much corporate advice, but mor "open and fluid community" type advice. Connect with Crucible and other spaces. Humanmade.

Question asked about what sensitivity training is.

Helps people be an ally to others.

Jonathan suggests something along the lines of making women-specific spaces and events in order to help encourage a more woman friendly noisebridge.

At the moment, a group of women are saying they don't feel safe in NB.

Explanation of sudo-room. We are slowly becoming aware of the issues as a community.

Loren and JD and Ken will follow-up on this.

Will continue the discussion in the #weekly-meetings tab of Discord.

Concern about existing wiki content, sensitive to makerspace cooperative dynamics., online versus in-person, number who can attend.

Discussion Item 2: conflict resolution methods

From/Raised by:jd Seeking decision/outcome/advice: advice / concrete options On topic: conflict resolution solutions

On the same note, I think there is room for improvement when it comes to conflict resolution.

On one hand, we can be absolute anarchists and just "let nature take its course", or we can put our hands on the scales, and help out in improving outcomes.

There is currently a small, but determined ad-hoc conflict resolution group.

Loren: I feel like back channels such as ones this group uses can be ineffective in certain ways. Perhaps we need specific public-facing coordination point-takers, ombudspersons, if you will. Perhaps rotating responsibility. It should be listed publicly so there is accountability of some sort.

Decisions, resolutions, and advice should be clearly reported back to the meeting.

JD: Rough draft of a conflict resolution proposal.

All conflicts shall be referred to a group of no smaller that 3 consisting of interested parties. Positions on the group shall be rotating, and include at least one woman. It is preferred that participants have sensitivity training.

All incidents should first be discussed among the group to decide a course of action.

If a conflict involves a woman or women participants, at least one woman Mediator present at all discussions.

After the conflict is resolved, the group will generate as detailed a report as is practicable under the circumstances, for the membership to promote transparency.

Ken: By the time we finish discussing who we'll bring in for training, we can just take care of those discussions in the meetings themselves.

Kelsey - suggests sensitivity training may be a more effective tool than any kind of requirement for women, it may place undue pressure on a possibly small amount of responsible women in the community! Other women may hold other opinoins about what most contributes to their safety and comfort!

Loren: In the anarchist society, we want to get things done, but a middle ground is producing written products for people present and not present so everyone can understand what was talked about.

Loren suggests making JD the point person for making sure this gets pushed forward, but not be the sole person doing it.

JD: Suggests setting up a private channel on discord. Loren thinks it is similar to bravespace. But JD feels a new channel may be a better fit.

Mark: Bravespace functions differntly -> we might want a different channel for this type of conversations

Mark: There are 2 new threads to discuss 1) sensistivty training and 2) moderation process in the #weekly-meeting channel.

Discussion Item 3: Makerfaire postmortem

From/Raised by: mark/pyconaut/loren Seeking decision/outcome/advice: discussion On topic: Makerfaire postmortem

Cool stuff

Loren: Told people about a bunch of hackerspaces from around the world.

Mark: Has some ideas for how we can improve.

Improvements next time

Haphazardly organized. Maybe use a Google Sheet (not just Google Form) in the future, should be fully open. Ferry will have better service next year.

Our booth was lacking interactive things for the kids and want to do that better next year. Ben did a good job trying to set up a marble roll thing. We need to assign a project and make sure it happens. Follow-through and redundancies.

Emeline was at machine knitters guild booth. It was organized great. They said we had different levels of engagement, depending on the ages of the kids.

The kids were into the game of life display we had. Wants to make an interactive game.

We were inspired by spaces in Germany.

(Another person had trouble with volunteering coordination.)

Pyconaut had to jump between a lot of messaging platforms to coordinate with all the different groups.

Loren suggests an event specific planning platform. Mark suggests Discord, but is open to other things.

Cloud forgot to mention, loads of people asked for Noisebridge Business cards. We only had QR Codes.

John felt that it was mentioned beforehand, but most things didn't really happen until right before it happened.

Kudos to Ryan for making it happen this year!

Discord feels overwhelming.

More posters in the space.

(disabling channels in discord)

Let's do a physical poster board in the space -- update it at / during weekly meeting.

More cool stuff

Sick robot. Full scale human. Internal motors and all kinds of electromechanical shit.

Mark did a twitch stream. Check it out. twitch.tv/singlearity

Discussion Items

From/Raised by: mcint / cloud / mark / steve Seeking decision/outcome/advice: decision, or clear options for consnesus elsewhere On topic: Ronald. Restraining order? On-going, consistent harassment.

Post meeting activities

• Members and guests - get RFID access card added.
• Pick up the space. Do the thing you've been meaning to do.

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)