Meeting Notes 2023 11 28

These are the notes from the The 750th Meeting of Noisebridge.

Date: 2023_11_28

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Note-takers: Mark

Moderators: Wheezy

Meeting Summary

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

• Announcements:

   Meetup tomorrow afternoon for working on the space access system, SHED.
   Holly is doing a startup that handles returns to online stores for people. Look out for signage/announcements in discord.
   December 17th - TOOOL. Lockpicking !
   December 10th (AM/Daytime) - Videogame playtesting and game dev talks at the MADE in Oakland
   December 10th (Evening) - Resident Electronic Music @ NB

• Consensus Items: None
• Discussion Items: Proposal to monetarily incentivize people to do more grantwriting for NB. Pros - More grantwriting happens! Cons - We don't want people using noisebridge as their main income stream (there is more nuance than just this, please see notes & continue discussion)

Woodshop Wall project: Currently a lot of discussion is happening offline between Sam, Brandon, Ken, JD, Mark. JD's wife is going to be working on a CAD plan showing where the walls would go and where new sprinkler(s) should be. Currently plan is to build part of the wall that we can, while we wait for the sprikler issue to get sorted out. Please submit questions/offers to assist to #woodshop Some discussion about how to engage the broader community more, vis a vis broadcasting important stuff and making our discussion channels more user friendly also happened

Introductions

Wheezy - Musican and Engineer! Farley - Webdev and hanger-arounder Wren Johnny Ralph J Bird - Chemical Engineer, and I do art! Quinn - kinda new here! I play chess. Am interviewing for Software Engineering stuff Steve - physics, finance, ML, music, techart, etc etc Holly - Startup founder JD - teach laser cutter and stuff like that Brandon - I hang out here a bit! Brennan - Microcontrollers and Pizza Mark - Games, and Notetaking

Short announcements and events

Holly - launching my Startup @ Noisebridge. If you have any online return from any store on the internet we handle that for free! Its for people who use co-working spaces, specifically! Talk to me to learn more! Putting info into discord and painted stuff around.

TOOOL - December 17th. Lockpicking !

Brandon - Acces control meetup tomorrow (Wednesday) afternoon . Talking about the securish hacker entry device project!

Mark - Sunday December 10th - Videogame playtesting and game dev talks at the MADE (videogame museum) in Oakland! 11am-3pm. Will post RSVP info in discord!

Excellence

Our One Rule is to Be Excellent to Each Other. (Give a quick, 1-3 sentence summary.)

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

It means "being good". An example was when during our thanksgiving feast, someone just up and cleaned all the dishes without anyone even asking!

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.) 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.

Brief Kudos

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

Brandon - Kudos to Ken, being super helpful w/ getting the coffee table TV setup downstairs. Been donating tools and knowledge.

Mark - Kudos to Brennan for helping me organize stuff in the electronics room!

Holly - Kudos to Sam. I came in looking for just spray paint but walked away with a laser-cut stencil of my company logo! He inspired me!

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 or can be reserved for the discussion section of the meeting.

Discussion Items

It is recommended to post items for discussion ahead of time at https://pad.riseup.net/p/nbmeeting. (Check that the template for the meeting is in place already, and that last week's notes have been moved to the wiki, of course)

Item prompts should follow the format: From/Raised by: [your name here] Seeking [decision/outcome/advice/something else] On topic: [topic]

Discussion Item 1

From/Raised by: Farley Seeking Advice/Discussion On topic: Grant-Seeking Incentives/ Contract System

I propose a grant bounty system where people who seek grants can get built-in a bit of a stipend for doing the work of getting the grant and executing on the work contained therein.

Typically, you include some kind of compensation in the grant itself for administrative purposes.

JD - My personal take is that that seems a little antithetical to the spirit of noisebridge. There may be a way of working in compensation of some sort after the grant comes in? But maybe not pre-hoc?

Farley - it can be built-in to the grant, but its not always necessarily. I am proposing that we

JD: Grants are particular about the spendigs. If you get a grant to paint the place yellow, you get paid the time to go down to the store and doing it. Grants rub me the wrong way.

Brennan - the motivation should be aligned with the completion of the project the grant is about. Not about the getting of the grants.

Brandon - wanted to echo JD. Grants are very specific about how money can be utilized

Farley - want to clarify that currently almost no grants are gotten for noisebridge. If it is normal that the grant-seeker allots money for themself on the completion on the grant, then i suggest we make that more known and visible. People should know that they can be paid for doing work for Noisebridge. We need people to WANT to bring in grants. Its absurd how people are doing that work for free out of the goodness of their hearts and this realllly upsets me.

J Bird - Derisking it is really valuable to making the whole process sustainable.

Brennan - a place in my neighborhood just got a grant and made part of the grant for paying a person to handle all the work associated with what the grant was paying for.

Holly - is anyone in charge of fundraising?

Ppl - Nope. Its very on-the-spot, at-will. Someone wants to do thing, someone does thing.

Quinn - I am for this incentive program. As a writer myself, it takes a lot of time to write things. Its real effort and energy.

Brandon - general communication and education to the entire community about how fundraising and grant-writing occurs may be in order. I'd be concerned sometimes we are partaking in an activity that may cause a grant to be rescinded? (paraphrasing)

Wheezy - Do-ocratically raise money DAMNIT. But yeah, this idea of paying ppl to do stuff at NB for NB has come up before in other contexts. We are averse to profit-incentives. We want to keep this place as non-businessy and as community driven as possible. That said, I think theres a lot of opportunities to do this in a lot of places.

Brennan - if we are going to do any grants. We need to show how we finish projects.

Discussion Item 2

From/Raised by: Mark Seeking Discussion/Planning/Group Formation On topic: Woodshop Wall Project

JD - my wife is an architect by trade, 30 years. We know what needs to be done if we are to build this wall.

From a Slack message:

   The first, most critical step, which would be the only piece of the puzzle that requires a permit (if we’re talking about completely enclosing the shop) is to add a sprinkler on the opposite side of the main sprinkler pipe in the shop area.

The partition would also need to define an unobstructed 44” hallway to the back exit door, which needs 18” on the strike side for wheelchair access. A fire exit cannot be through another room, which is why we need to build in a hallway. I will attempt to entice my lovely bride to work up a quick pdf of the proposed floor plan that can be used for bids from plumbers, and permit purposes

Mark - Some people in the community believe we don't need to do all these things. I believe this project is very important. No one has brought any plans forward. I would love to see a document. We must resolve this.

Brandon :

   We need comunication of what is going on. I hadn't heard anything before this meeting. Broadcast it better to the greater group, so everyone understands what must be followed and so that we know that it CAN be done and how and that it will take time.

JD:

   We minimally need to meet fire exit standards. Its the anniversary of the Ghost Ship fire for goodness sakes.
   

Brennan - many ppl in the community may not even know about our frie exit in the first place and what the emergency procedure is.

JD:

   One of the grants we've applied for has to do with bumping up the physical security of the space - including things such as fire exit signage.
   

(Some side discussion about how to best disburse information to the broader community)

Brandon - we need a list of the ongoing projects that people can see and contribute to at a glance

Holly - maybe announcements should be opt-out, and by default ping everyone

Brennan - We can set up bots in discord and slack, so that if we have an announcements channel, that bots can automatically crib announcements from the meeting notes and post them in the channels

?: Maybe polls can help w/ getting ppl more engaged and invested in these happenings

Brennan - we should be putting project pages up on the wiki for each project.

JD: Now we are practically in december. Holidays coming up. First step in wall project is getting plumbers to come in, estimate costs/work. And then we have to select a plumber, yadda yadda. We need to get our ducks in a row before we start.

Mark: the main thrust of bringing this discussion item up was to see about getting a sort of task force together for getting the wall done. Let's get together and start planning. Who wants to lead the charge?

Brandon offers to take point, at least for now.

(Editor's note: please talk w/ Brandon and co in the #woodshop channel or in person. Ken & Sam are currently working on a temporary partial wall that can be built while JD works on the sprinkler issue, which is what's required for the full wall plan)