Meeting Notes 2024 04 16

These are the notes from the The 759th Meeting of Noisebridge.

Date: 2023_04_16

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• 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:

• Announcements:
• Consensus Items:
• Discussion Items:

Introductions

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

Mark Carm Julius Elle Elan Cloud Moof FareyCircles JD Daniel Pyconaut Fineline

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)

Open Mic Night this Thursday! 7PM

This sunday @ 3, Henry and I wil be at the space talking about lighting for the space. Want to put a motion detector in the upstairs hallway.

Elan: Thanks to everyone who made it to the first Spacebridge meetup. Based on our discussion we plan to have this as a weekly event for the near future. We're keeping project notes (that will be cleaned up before the next meeting)

Also I got a ot of neon signs to put around the space, they are on the upstairs coworking area shelf. Didn't come with usb power bricks, currently blocked on that, but ppl should doocratically put them up in useful places!

Game devs will be in Sacramento for an event called Capital Creative showcase this Saturday 10-5: https://www.capitalcreativeshowcase.com/

Closing reception of Jonathan Foote's light sculpture exhibit, this sunday 7-9pm at 478 25th St. #A Oakland CA 94612. Jon is a bay area tech/art/hacker legend and taught circuit hacking mondays here until his recent emigration to Sequoia Fabrica.

The Flaschen Taschen is working again!!!!

The board election list of nominees has been finalized

Excellence

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

Excellence is "not unexcellence"

Excellence is inquisitiveness - ask questions if you are unsure, even if you think you'll look like a jackass

The full sentence of the rule is "be excellent to each other". That suggests thaqt excellence necessitates thinking about other people, or that you cant be excellent without thinking about other oeople.

Excellence is trying to assume good intention until proven otherwise. If you walk into a room assuming everyone else has good intentions, that isn't gonna be good for any party.

Excellence is passing on excellent habits to other noisebridgers

Excellence is donating projects/money/time to the space

Excellence is do-ocracy and consensus and consent working together with eachother

Let it be written "ravenclaws are excellent"

it is UN-excellent to harrass people- follow the anti harassment policy

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

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.

Kudos to Elan for Elan for getting those signs, as well as communicating in order to get community buy in!

Kudos to everybody who did the reboot- cant be said enough!

EHR says:Kudos to JD for pushing for and painting the accessibility roads

Kudos to moof/julius for making the meeting happen last week!

Kudos to jade/erin for being the driving force behind flaschentaschen maintenence, and everybody else.

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.

Updating consensus policy to require 2 members to block

JD- the blocker (McMint) Thought the wording was wayyyyy too vague- the wording should talk about what should be done, not why it was being done

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: Ellen Seeking discussion On topic: Grants: pop up and Stellar Foundation

Ellen: First the pop up- we did not get the pop up :(. We got really close, they had 1200 applicants but we were one of the very few they interviewed

Any feedback?

Ellen: I will be soliciting that

Mark:

Ellen: The Stellar foundation is interested in giving us big money- wyatt is an amazing co-chatter, so was julius. They are very interested in the process of noisebridge setting up classes for their stuff. It might be nice to talk to a smaller subset of folx on that-- DM me!

WHAT WORKor tasks is involved in the stellar foundation grant?

Ellen: there is the big one, we have four weeks to get in. Lets have some more conversations. We had a meeting today, and there are more steps than I had thought. The Noisebridge discord has representatives of the stellar foundation on it. The smaller grant would come much faster, we would like to have a sit down discussion tomorrow on it.

Discussion Item 1.5 - ADA grant for front door

JD:what's the deal there?

Ellen: The ADA grant is only a matter of finding the time to do it-- I had hoped to be at the space to do it today, but I didn't have the car. Loren will have his email as the contact.

Discussion Item 2

From/Raised by: Ellen Seeking discussion On topic: Sewing Classes

Ellen: mikhal is going to do the sharpening class, on sharpening knives, scissors, gardening tools on a whetstone. It was super popular. We also are working on two others- looking for a teacher for the intro class, which at the end people will have an actual Yoga bag! The last class is lingerie(?), hacking the idea of lingerie-- Its for men, its for women, its for non binary people, so that everyone can have something nice and soft and they dont have to buy crap from victoria's secret that doesn't last anyways

Discussion Item 3

From/Raised by: Julius Seeking discussion On topic: Stenciling the the wheelchair access corridors

Julius: I didn't realize what these paths were for, I think it would be simple to add icons or words communicating the purpose of the yellow brick road- Make clear what it is for and why to do it!

Elan: If someone wants to tonight download print and cut a stencil, I can provide spray paint-- I am on my way from south bay

El: I have a stencil, I downloaded it and was going to print it-- I have a stencil ready to go, and I will bring it tomorrow evening. I can send it on the discord. The word doc with the stencil is just missing the icon

Julius: There is a mediawiki svg for the weelchair icon

Mark: If we keep using this stuff, it would be good to add it to our 'Identity' page on the wiki

Elan: I was wondering if we could extend the access corridor to the front gate.

Discussion Item 4

From/Raisedby: Julius Seeking discussion On topic: low effort process for (voluntarily) counting daily attendance.

Julius: I was sitting on the meeting for the grant, and it was unclear what our reach was. It might be helpful to have a ballpark for how many people use the space every day.

Mark: if its an opt in solution, how many people will use it

Julius: its not about having a definitive number, its about having a defensible argument for how many people show up

El: finding other ways to count is important, we have used our meetup page to provide estimates.

Moof: is it ok consensus wise to have a system that counts if "a anonymous person" walks through?

We shouldn't record what time people enter-- thats subpoena-able information. Also, the information that someone is in the space alone is potentially harmful

Elan: I think the low tech approach of just having a big red easy button where when you press it it increments a number would be easy enough that people would press it. If we communicate why we are doing it people would do it.

Julius: my goal was to just raise the idea

Elan: Someone mentioned having the stats of visitation, I was able to pull up our google business profile, they have some estimates of how many people visit per month

Discussion Item 5

From/Raised by: jd Seeking help On topic: big ticket improvement (door and woodshop partitions)

JD: we talked about the accessibility grant, On the woodshop partition we approved some money. Ken has gotten a hard estimate for the plumbing issue- it has been posted on Discord and Slack. It does involve inspections, and I think we should go ahead and do this!

JD: If we block in the woodshop, we are also blocking in the sprinklersthere, so we need to install new ones.

JD: I am leaving town for a month-- I need to hot potato this to somebody

Elan: I can move this forward, I am happy to be that contact

JD: Excellent, you and I talked about this the other day.

Elan: it would be great for me if its in writing

JD: The formal quote isin the finance wg channel-- that is the easiest way to find it. The quote includes the inspections. The simplest way to move it forwards is to tell ken to tell the guy to do the work, but that quote has a payment scheduel.

Discussion Item 6

From/Raised by: Elan Seeking: consent On topic: Locker Audits

Elan: I am doing locker audits in the next 3 weeks

Elan: if you are out of town for some reason, just ping me you and tell me, and say so and so can vouch

Discussion Item 7

From/Raised by: Daniel Seeking: Discussion On Topic: Cameras

I talked to a woman who currently does not feel comfortale at the space because another woman was assaulted. We need a solution where we can hold people accountable. Can we build a system where footage is saved for only 48 hours?

Fineline: There is a long standing tradition of in the space of no cameras. I am willing to experiment with having cameras, as long as there are steps for obfuscating footage etc.

Julius: If we are going to make a system, we need to think about how we would respond to incedents

Daniel: I want a system where the SD card is entirely off line, with a tamper proof physical box. If there is an incident, members should have to physically break into the box

El: the question of Women's Safety in the space has been a personal obsession, largely because so many women have left the space, rather than deal with the lack of safety. I advocate that the women who are currently in the space can come together and strongly advocate. I do favor cameras on the outside. It is a safety issue, and I believe it is a rights issue

Mark: are there alternative solutions that dont involve cameras? Mark: could we tie the camera thing to a consensus sort of thing?

Daniel: I would love it if there was a member that was on call, but I dont think that that is the current culture. I dont know how to change the culture, but I do know how to set up a camera

Cloud: culturally/socially there are methods to create a safer environment for women- People need to be aware of their environment and able to diffuse situations. We learn that women work in certain communities, but most people here dont have the training for learning how to resoond when people look uncomfortable. Once there was a girl at a coffee shop, and I had to figure out "how do I get her out of here as fast as possible?"

El: Asking the people who are sayingn "we need cameras" to find a better solution is very strange- we should be asking that to the people who dont want cameras. With that said, the cameras arent a complete solution- there are other things that need to happen. But we do need to install cameras, because they are such a low hangin fruit.

Julius: What exactly are we expecting the cameras to answer? 48 hours is a short window of time, so it will only be relevant for situations where there are accute physical violence. We should set realistic expectations about what kinds of questions the cameras will answer.

Daniel: Its not going to stop everything, but it is one tiny piece of the effort we can do to make the space safer for women.

Moof: we shouldn't waste too much time thinking about weather or not its going to be useful, because its an important first step

JD: we should probably have sensitivity training on top of everything else. It would be money well spent to pay somebody to come in.

JD: What do we need to do to make this happen? can we do it do-ocratically?

Daniel: whats stopping me is funds/assisnce.

Asher: Some other hackerspaces have jitsi live anyways, so you can just log in and chat with people in the space

Mark: Noisebridge has a history of privacy conciousness. Its very important to get buy in from the people who are vehemently opposed.

Daniel: I have talked to xxx, he is open to the idea.

Elan: I think that, given that there has been a history, it would be good to start this as an experiment. If we do put a camera in the space, we need to communicate it.

Elan: it might be a good idea to have people on discord, or a list, or people who have their photo up on a sign that says "hey, talk to me"

Daniel: it might be nice to have badges/lanieards that indicate that someone is here to support the community

Elle: We have made improvements since I started getting more involved six months ago. I have a friend who doesn't want to come to the space yet and is holding off/waiting for potential cameras

Cloud: When most of those things were happening there seemed not to be a regular member presence. That means that it's easier to do those things

Mark: It's a question of who we trust with stewardship of the space, and we probably just need to reackon with that.

Elan: Verifying trust is hard

Mark: I would call them strong yellow flags

Cloud: I personally never saw that side of him until there were fewer people in the space. But when all of us were there, that person didn't cross boundaries that much.

Mark: How do we deal with those grey areas? I don't know.

Dan: I never talked about the yellow flags I saw, but maybe we should talk more about these things.

Mark: We probably need to be careful. We don't want to turn the space into...what's that story? Also, do cameras help in situations like in the previous assault situation where the victim chose to withhold information from noisebridge? We have the people here ready to help, but there are weird edge cases where like what do you do?

Elle: Understand that it makes sense for her not to trust nb folks at that time. There was a person within noisebridge that was creating the environment...It was reasonable to not trust noisebridge at that point.

Elan: Would anybody be opposed if I put up a sign in front with people who have volunteered themselves?

Mark: the conflict resolution safety council?

Elan: basically that but people who have volunteered...

Mark: Yes if those people are onboard to get the training...so it's more of a system and not people endlessly trying to fix shit...If you want to extend the idea of space guardians

?: (On encryption) who has the keys and how many of those people are needed?

Dan: THe idea is that everything is getting destroyed after a certain amount of time. The other idea is that it is tamper proof so that it will be clear when somebody has accessed it.

?: What's the norm around this. Is it the idea that anyone at any time can access it?

JD: You would need three trusted people

Erin: So the idea is that access control is purely physical?

Josh: He used the right word - "tamper evident" not "tamper proof" ...check out the Zone Minder project. As for the question of who is watching the watchers, keeping it super low tech and simple with physical controls is a good idea, but probably not hard to add encryption on top of that.

Dan: NB as a anarchist space - anyone who wants to see it can go through the process

Josh: Physical lock is simple, but there is a history of considering privacy considerations. With just physical protection, police etc can bypass that pretty easily

Aaron: THeres the risk of people getting access, but there is also the risk of not having access to footage when needed.

Josh: We can probably set it up so when you lose power it stops recording.

Dan: People could just take it and run off with it. THe idea is to increase the barrier to bad actors.

Josh: But if you can address the concerns of people who don't want to be recorded (legal risk) then you might win over some of those people.

Elle: I think Sophia was 86ed weeks ago

JD: She was not. At least not technically

Elan: Her advocates in medaition declared that if Sam wans't coming back then she had no interest

Elle: Well she's in the chat

Elan: People who were 86ed always show up in the chat

Mark: Is there a reason you are interested in hearing what we're talking about?

Sophia: Yeah I'm moving/getting a new job

Mark: We assumed you weren't interested...

Sophia: Just because people I was associated with were 86ed doesn't mean my interest in the space has changed

Elan: If you're still interested in being a part of the community you will need to go through the mediation process...small c consensus item to formally start the process. Sophia was supposed to be part of mediation but she refused to be involved. Her representative said that SOphia has no interest in NB if Sam isn't involved, but it seems no longer the case.

Ben: If we didn't ban her then why go back and do it retroactively. That seems unfair. Let her come. If she does bad shit kick her out.

Elle: The reson I asked Sophia to ask right now is because she has been in the comments section in these meetings multiple times when I have been in the call...at one point she pretended to be brand new.

Dan: I have seen instances where she has said something and Sam has texted someone else about it. It seems correlated.

Elle: Has it been agreed that she be 86ed or has that consensus not been reached?

Elan: It seems like Ben was against. I'm going to push for it. We can have a discussion offline.

Mark: Needs further resolution I think. The answer is no - no consensus yet. We need to address these objections.

Dan: Sleeping in the space is 86able. I saw her sleeping in the space. Delayed 86 seems fine.

Mark: Lets go excellently hack on things.

Steve: Art exhibit Sunday 7-9. Address is in the announcements