Meeting Notes 2026 05 05

These are the notes from the The 862nd Meeting of Noisebridge.

Date	2026-05-05
Note-taker[s]	Naomi, Daniel (Webmaster), -, -
Moderator[s]	Jet (The GOAT)

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Next Meeting

Meeting Summary

Meeting covered space improvements including back room construction, break room organization, knitting machine deliberations, and financial updates showing net income of $13,700.

• Announcements: Whetstone availability means knives may be sharp now; HCI special session during gamebridge at 7pm with LX and Eugene; libre-local meetup Saturday 4-7pm; NoiseTor reboot discussion available after meeting; embroidery machine training Thursday at noon with Newman; board meeting next week to appoint officers; Noisebridge anniversary party (NB18) being planned
• Fundraising Update: Stripe now represents 1/3–1/2 of revenue; $10k donation received via Benevity; noisebridge.org should be front-facing for fundraising and grant consideration; EIN needed for donations over $500
• Finances: Year-to-date net income $13,700; monthly revenue and expenses tracked; rent and laser filter expenses; Ken has spent $1,600 on back room materials, MAY need NB to reimburse.
• New members: None
• New access members: Jawa (sponsor Naomi)
• Consensus Items: None
• Discussion Items:
  1. Back room construction: roof repairs and metal room expansion underway; landlord coverage unclear; contact Ken
  2. Break room organization: clutter cycle recurring; open cabinet for dishware proposed; remove excess bottles and critterterium
  3. Upstairs toilet: flushes slowly; professional plumbing snake needed; contact Dennis
  4. Knitting machine: training required; intro session tomorrow 9pm at Sequoia Fabrica; Naomi documenting progress accountability

Introductions

• Name - Favorite Cat
• Jet - Garfield or My roomate's cat Tammy
• Dennis - Felix
• Daniel (web) - Peanut, my parents' cat. shes very tiny (smol) and old
• Elan - uhh...cats... i had a cat that thought it was a dog
• Ecco - my cat, Elanzo Garbanzo Methuselah James
• Naomi - Spartacus, my cat... now lives with Jess
• Heather - any friendly cafe cat
• Jawa - allergic to cats.. but maybe Nyancat
• Jojo - Maine Coone cats
• Lucifer - my roommate's college cat, Queen Ellie
• Eugene - my mom's cat Miley, my wife's dad's cat Yang
• Carl - Sylvester (as in "sufferin' succotash!")
• Asher - the hairless cats, they're so funny and fragile, e.g. Sphinx
• LX - Pirate Cat Radio
• Loren - Cheshire Cat b/c Lewis Carroll, love of math and games

Short announcements and events

• Heather - got a whetstone -- you can finally CUT THINGS! and, YOURSELF!

• Eugene - HCI during gamebridge time at 7pm, LX and me will do a special HCI session

• Daniel - announcement from Zacchae centralized web meetup. a libre-local meetup -- from 4-7pm Saturday. LibrePlanet is a yearly event

• Jet + Caitlin + Zacchae: we're rebooting NoiseTor - come talk to us later if you know what that is and want to know more.

• Newman: embroidery machine training on Thursday at noon

• LX, Blitzkrieg: the board is meeting next week to appoint officers.

• Jet: The Noisebridge anniversary party is about to be planned. NB18. Yes we are skipping NB17, we have to catch up with reality; don't worry about it.

Excellence

Our One Rule is to Be Excellent to Each Other.

What does that mean? Please see our page on Excellence!

Heather: do things that make other people happy, don't do things that make other ppl annoyed.

Anti-Harassment Policy & Community Standards of Excellence

Noisebridge has an Anti-Harassment Policy!

Everyone is expected to follow the Anti-Harassment Policy, please familiarize yourself with it.)

For approachable & specific guidelines see: Community Standards

Please note: https://safespace.noisebridge.net/ is one way to quickly raise issues which will be seen by people in Discord.

Brief Kudos

Heather: to mimizone / Jeremy - for sweeping up around the laser cutting area

Dennis: to everyone who's made the place look awesome! it looks so much better than i saw it last a few weeks ago

Jet: kudos to team who installed the dragon

LX: to emily for making possibly bootleg credchips for NB at Neotropolis, wich i just went to over the weekend. we're lucky to have that crew at NB. and to nthmost for making the bot XML dumps page, it's pretty funny.

Guilds & WGs

Newman: is going to have an embroidery class on thurs evening

New Members/Access Members

JAWA: Access member - sponsor Naomi - i enjoy sewing, community, would like to be an access member b/c sometimes i'm sewing late and i like to come in early to come to the space. and i'd like to make it possible for others to be here late with me too.

Financial Report (first Tuesday of month only)

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

Loren: updates from the Stripe dash: it's a 1/3-1/2 of our revenue now

Daniel: to Loren - can you request the special query thing that Stripe has?

Loren: yes but it costs money to operate (probably). Income for the year looks like: Income is negative.

Expenses: rent and a seperately cut check for laser filters via card

Jet: Someone donated 10k via benevity

Loren: roughly, NB brought in 20k and spent 15k

Net income of $13,700 (for this month? how to square w/ previous statement?)

• 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

Spending Needs

• Ken has already spent on building out a back room over the patio about $1600 and will expect to be paid back

• Heather and Naomi are looking into making a filtered water spigot out from the back bathroom for drinking water. Will look into the buildout, find out $am't needed for this.

LX: i donate a box of a bunch of LEDs a few years back - now that we have the super ladder -- there's a project called Relighting, i would like ppl to weigh in on what we should get for this, it's time to build out the hackitorium for real now. Already spent about $200 on these.

Fundraising Update

Dennis: how do i approach investors or whatever?

Jet: not... investors...

Loren: we need to have our EIN given to folks for amounts over $500. We should also make noisebridge.org the front-facing thing for fundraising and "what are we about as a non-profit". ppl who consider giving us grants, checking out who we are / who the treasurer is, the wiki isn't a reliable source.

Discussion Items

1: what's he building back there

On topic	what's he building back there
From/Raised by	Naomi, Ken
Seeking	decision/outcome/advice/[?]

Ken monologues:

It started by fixing the leaks, mildew, roofing. as i was looking at the rest of the roofs of other warehouses, they had smiilar problems. started tearing down the roof, long story short, i had to tear a lot more down than expected. talked to the landlord, we foundt he best way to go about it was to enclose the back porches which would reduce the number of outside surfaces.

So now we have a roof that shouldn't leak.

The metal room has always been a mess, mostly b/c it lacks stewardship, and anytime ppl stepped up they ended up giving up. it's a lack of space really that makes it so (clutter makes it more difficult to keep in order).

so the idea is to expand that area, move one of the machines, make it organized better.

as of now there's still a window between the two spaces. it deosn't have to be a window there.

what i'm providing is infrastructure for covered space w/in the space. we can appropriate it as we wish.

There is presently a roof over that area. the outside wall isn't finished. the wall between the bathroom and the new room isn't done yet.

Landlord is paying for the wall that was damaged by mildew. UNCLEAR whether landlord will pay for the opportunistic construction of the new room.

Ken was at first under the impression the landlord would cover all of it. then he said he wouldn't cover "the noisebridge side".

ELan: it does sound like this is fixing an existing tenant issue (roof leaking, was designed in a way w/ 3 open sides instead of 1) the landlord will benefit by having fewer exposed surfaces. we suffered water damage and we still don't have a downstairs bathroom b/c of the water damage he let go b/c there were roof issues. WE should push for the landlord to cover it.

Ken: lemme see what happens..

Loren: brief POI - in our lease, lessor is responsible for repairs to the building on behalf of tenants

JD: closing in the back porch, ar ethe 2 walls going to remain intact between the machine shop and the bathroom.

Ken: machine shop + back porch, we can turn that into a doorway if we want a big rom.

JD: currently that bathroom which is ideally an ADA compliant doesn't have a complete 5 foot diameter circle turning radius b/c of the cabinet in there that impedes it. don't want to make more work for Ken but maybe some excellent folks could build out some shelving in that back corner to hold the sundries that belong in that room.

Carl: we should look into whether ADA compliance is the landlord's responsiblity too.

Ken: we could potentially build cubbies INTO the wall

JD: maybe just nick that corner off at 45 degrees?

Ken: sure

Jet: Ken what is the overall cost of the project so far?

Ken: about 1600 in materials [have already been spent, here waiting to be used -- does not include if we wanted a door installed]

Naomi: what about ventilation and electrical sockets?

Ken: Rick's supposed to come (electrician) and also bring another light that would work in the bathroom

Carl: Is plumbing working?

Ken: Yes, it's all working.

2: break room

On topic	break room
From/Raised by	Newman
Seeking	do-ocratic momentum

Newman: I originally had maybe overzealous plans to retile the floor. haven't made a move on it yet. would still like to see that space get better. it's more functional since i moved the table. there's an annex of shit there needs to be sorted out (from the music room). The critterterium could be sorted out.

Newman: if anyone can help after this meeting for like 30-40 minutes we could get a ton of this knocked out. we gotta get rid of the little buddies hanging out in our sink. they love damp particle board. we could remove all of it.

Heather: concur w/ the hallway being clutter up there. been noticing it's hard to get past. if there's a fan going my skirt gets caught in it! we've got like 2 spoons and like zero forks. but a ton of chopsticks and butter knives.

Elan: would like to purge 2/3s of our dishware before, like 60 water bottles that never move.

(ppl debate best processing methods for overproliferation of bottles and cups)

Ken: i've been through many anticluttering cycles of that hallway. it gets to about the same over time.

Newman: Ken's got a goodpoint, if we put something there that isn't a limbolandia it won't fill up like that.

Ken: limitation of dishware -- maybe an OPEN cabinet (tear off the doors)

LX: we want to have symmetrical stuff between upstairs and downstairs (hot water dispenser, etc)

Elan: i think Farley would be fine if we just brought his filter contraption downstairs

2: Popcorn Discussion

On topic	toilet, knitting machine
From/Raised by	Jet
Seeking	open discussion

POPCORN while we wait for the Treasurer's Report to be ready...

Steve: i noticed the upstairs toilet flushes really slow...

Heather: i did notice this a few weeks ago, janky mechanics

Dennis: there's an adjustment that could be made... [ppl think it doesn't stick]

Ken: the water doesn't actually drain well into that pipe, we might need a plumber w/ a professional snake

Dennis: I have one, maybe i can help.

Newman: i wanna bring back up the knitting machine, i was under the impression

Loren: i met w/ Daniel after but we both had things to do, that didn't happen... 3 ppl expressed interest and then went off to do other things. Made plans w/ someone to get training elsewhere on a similar knitting machine for tomorrow. haven't announced it b/c i have a very busy Wednesday. i still want to offer a followup class and get more ppl on board. i've reached out to a few, 3 to 8 ppl maybe? i guess i'm wanting to keep pursuing that.

Newman: There was a lot of interest in the knitting machine in discord.

Loren: Daniel and I have recently produced a single yarn knit. It takes much more effort to get the automation right. Time needed to work on making adjusments and minor fixes to machine

We can knit this [item] on demand.

Steve: is that a washcloth?

Loren: this sample has a level of tightness that doesn't scale much bigger than thisi.

Dennis: how much do needles cost?

Loren: they're cheap... if the knitting is stressing the needls you often won't get past the first few rows, so that tension issue is part of the problem to solve.

LX: at CCC i saw banners that were fairly big, and we can knit giant banners like this

Heather: is there any barrier to actually using it? if i wanted to just get on it on Thursday, could i?

Loren: training required, basics of how not to ruin the machine, how to listen for what it's doing. want to make sure that ppl who are using it are keeping it well for others who are using it. there's a wiki page with a bunch of informartion, though navigating the menus on this thing using the info on the wiki page is tiresome even for ppl who know what they're doing.

Heather: sounds like RTFM case or do you specifically want training hands-on

Loren: it'd be NICE to orient towards RTFM, but.

Ken: as an argument towards keeping it, i'm annoyed w/ it but it's cool... maybe we should somehow find some ppl who know something about this... at least a couple of sessions.

Loren: yeah there's an intro session tomorrow at 9pm at Sequoia Fabrica. they have a similar machine / same machine.

Weezy: There's a knitting meetup on Thursday [this is hand-knitting, not the machine]

Naomi: all of this has been said before cyclically. i'd like to ask for some accountability -- like in the next few months verify that things have actually been done. Because we keep having the same discussion.

Jet: I concur.

Naomi (writing): Here's the history of this machine in terms of actually using it. I'll be adding this conversation to this page after each meeting we talk about it.

https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Talk:Industrial_Knitting_Machine

Jet shows off a new tour-of-Noisebridge video that Jet and Daniel made.

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!