Meeting Notes 2026 05 12

These are the notes from the The 863rd Meeting of Noisebridge.

Date	2026-05-12
Note-taker[s]	- Dave, -
Moderator[s]	Jet

Previous Meeting

Next Meeting

Meeting Summary

Meeting covered introductions, equipment maintenance needs, knitting machine usage standards, and power tool acquisition discussion.

• Announcements: Libra Local meetup 4th Saturday of month (replaces decentralized web meetup); Woodshop Wednesday moving to Monday 6pm–9pm; defcon this Tuesday; hackergames Thursday 5pm; organ viewing Saturday 6:30pm
• Fundraising Update: NB18 party in the fall planned as fundraising opportunity
• Finances: None
• New members: None
• New associates: Jeremy, Becky, Chaz
• Consensus Items: None
• Discussion Items:
  1. Officer elections: meeting of newly elected board after this meeting
  2. Sewing machine: needs cleaning, maintenance, organization, possible shelves
  3. Flaschentaschen Voltron Force: LED upgrade needed, see #flaschentaschen on Discord
  4. Knitting machine accountability: 3-month usage trial building to 1/week minimum usage standard by Sept 1
  5. Power tools acquisition: no blocks; coordless drills approved; security measures discussed
  6. Event tent: designate folding table kit; Newman and Chaz volunteering

Introductions

Jet asks "what is a piece of technology you have a personal grudge against"

Micheal Newman - the embroidery machine upstairs. It's missing essential components

Heather: Has a grudge against the dishonsest part of LLMs

Jeremy: Dislikes the TV, it doesn't behave

Dave: Tar flags.

Ron: Operational technology which has zero security considations

Chaz: Loves all technology, except the dual-shock drivers on windows

Chris: Dislikes progression in cars

Connor: Windows

Mr Name: only resents migrating linux servers

Zacchae: Hates chairs

Julius: Dislikes GPS antennas, is being hunted by the Russian military. Has replaced multiple antennas with more broken antennas

Carl: dislikes plastic disposable bottles

Alex: Does games stuff, dislikes things without wheels.

Solderfumes Daniel: not preseent

Jet: Resents lighting systems indoors which flicker and are bad. Mostly a complaint to their workplace. Also printers

Anh: Resents flock cameras

Jane: Hates printing things from the ipad

Naomi: USB, the bus of the devil

<everyone hates printers>

Short announcements and events

Dave: Loren did a walkthrough of the knitting machine. I will upload the video once it is edited.

Zacchae: 4th Saturday of the month there will be a Libra Local meetup, replacing the decentralized web meetup

Chris: As of next week, Woodshop Wednesday is moving to Monday, 6pm to 9pm.

Chaz: a bunch of people will show up on 6:30 on Saturday to look at the Organ

Alex: This tuesday is defcon. Will do hackergames this Thursday? Much hax games 5pm.

Julius: working on a C02 dragrace

Heather: There's water accessibility issues downstairs

Chaz: Gamified task system

Excellence

Our One Rule is to Be Excellent to Each Other.

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

Jet: asking what is excellence:

Chaz: Leaving hte space better than one found it

Zachae: the act of fostering communication and hears all voices

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

Daniel: kudos to Jeremy for giving some folks assistance with the cutter. Mervaiux

Sumeet: Has donated a lot of comuters

Naomi: Kudos to SuperQ (Ben Kochie), working w/ him on our wiki_dumps site, I made a silly mistake, and he brought it to my attention in a very respectful way.

Consensus Items

Alex: Everything that needs to be on the hackitorium that could be on wheels, should be on wheels.

- Jet, Julius, Zacchae: This might be hard to do entirely

Zacchaeus: Fuck Nvidia?

Everyone: Not sure why but ok

[note, these weren't proposed properly as consensus items but, like, banter]

Discussion Items

Julius: What is the status of the officer elections

Heather: Access and vouching for people

Jet: explaining what that is...

Two folks put their hands up for access membership: - Jeremy - Becky - Chaz

Recommendation: Do the paperwork first

- Core member: - Newman (Daniel [web], Naomi) - Heather:

Daniel: Sewing rooom

Naomi: I would like to get updates on the knitting machine at least every other week.

1: What is the status of the officer elections

On topic	What is the status of the officer elections
From/Raised by	Julius
Seeking	information

- Board meeting will happen after this meeting

2: Sewing machine: Needs cleaning, maintenance, an ask to take more ownership of it as it needs a lot more maintenance.

On topic	Sewing machine: Needs cleaning, maintenance, an ask to take more ownership of it as it needs a lot more maintenance.
From/Raised by	Newman
Seeking	discussion leading to action

Heather: An agreement that it needs more organizing and needs some shelves maybe

Proposal: sweeping on the floor

Alex: We have some bags for organizing (somewhere)

Jet: Sewing machine is locked

3: Flaschentaschen Voltron Force

On topic	Flaschentaschen Voltron Force
From/Raised by	Naomi
Seeking	coordination/awareness of maintenance burden

Context: Very old / obselete LED that it's made of. Thanks to Zack for maintaining it previously.

- May need some long-term systematic upgrades with LEDS that are actually available.

Jet: has been doing a history of the device. tl;dr Brennan has an LED that can be used to maintain it:

50pcs WS2811 2811 IC RGB Full Color 12mm Pixels Digital Addressable 5V 12V Dream Color LED Pixels Module IP68 Waterproof Light https://a.aliexpress.com/_mqEYhvX

Naomi: We will need to probably spend some money on this

Jet: 50 LEDs should cost $500

Zacchae: bring receipts plz

4: Knitting Machine Accountability

On topic	Knitting Machine Accountability
From/Raised by	Naomi
Seeking	outcome

Naomi: Not against having the machine, just against keeping it if it's never actually being used.

Naomi: There has been a pattern of usage of people questioning its presence, suggesting removing it, doing the legwork, and then folks coming in with a spurt of activity and opposing its removal, then not really doing anything with it. We should set a frame (3 months?) and expect accountability

History of this conversation: https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Talk:Industrial_Knitting_Machine

Dave: a bunch of us were trained this weekend, and walked through making a basic stitch pattern. It is an industrial machine and requires quite a bit of understanding, but it is tractable.

Naomi: the kind thing to do is to set a deadline and see if we have successfully created a knitting guild, and people are using it consistently. Once a week on average as a reasonable standard? I don't care *what* is being produced, as long as it is being used.

others chime in: consistent usage is the priority

Alex: we should make the machine pay off its back rent. Merch etc.

Naomi: pretty sure this is the first time Noisebridge has ever had an OKR for a piece of equipment

Elan: can we have this as a general rule for equipment in the space? We have a lot of long term resident equipment/old projects that people aren't sure if it has been used/or is working (fiber laser, lathe, book scanner, kiln, welding equipment, large frequency analyzer, sewing machines, broken arcade booth, vinyl cutter, etc).

Recent industrial knitting machine activity: - two weeks ago there was a knitted square produced - last weekend (3 days ago) there was a class run to teach some new folks. A video was taken to documented usage, mainly a basic stich pattern

5: Memorial weekend discount coordless power tools

On topic	Memorial weekend discount coordless power tools
From/Raised by	Chris/Blitzkreig
Seeking	request for $500 for buying power tools

Alex: there's some theft risk, probably need tracking tags

Julius: RFID reader for the gate for detecting theift

Jet: a locker is probably a thing we might need

Items: a couple of coordless drills, a coordless power-saw if possible

No-Name: an ask for analysis on this affects our long-term horizon / funding / ROI on this spend

Jet: This is on the heavier end, but pretty reasonable typically, let's see about consensus.

Julius: a future treasurer should probably look at a burn rate. Plz do (nods at Zacchae)

Elan: It'd be nice to find a way to pre-approve expenditure, this is annoying from a financial point.

Daniel (solderfumes): need a plan to avoid this from getting stolen

Chris/Blitzkreig: we have a locker, the current locker has some power-tools already (personal items)

Daniel (solderfumes): stuff's been stolen

No-name: Just not long ago that we were running out cash. Nothing against anyone folks putting proposals together, but it's unclear what we're doing or planning for horizon. It'd be needed to planned for.

Julius: The ballpark cost is 12k per month. one-off expenditures are relatively small, things that enhance membership expierience and membership revenues helps

No-name: this is still not a critical analysis

Naomi: We have a NB18 party in september coming up soon, now is the time to plan for this as a fundraising opportunity.

Daniel (solderfumes): don't folks just bring their own stuff

Chris/Blitzkreig: Folks, particularly in classes don't have their own stuff

Naomi: Chris/Blitzkreig, Blue, and others have taken a sense of ownership, these folks have done a good job of owning the space. They're actively building systems that are going towards supporting a guild. They've put a bunch of effort in.

Julius: Agreed, we could do some more membership tag, such that things can be tracked. The place is surprisingly doing well.

Naomi: Loren has proposed some smart locks in the future

Chris/Blitzkreig: not sure about the feasibility of this

Naomi: Some more info about access is worthwhile

Chris/Blitzkreig: In the here and now, these solutions are probably not immediately reasonable. I'm totally ok with folks denying the request. It's good that we're having the discussion about security and funding.

Alex: The benefit of an RFID tag system will help track tool use habitually.

Elan: Do we need coordless tools? Last year we had issues with battery/charger mismatch.

Chris/Blitzkreig: The coorded tools are a bit larger / more combersome.

Julius: These are probably two different things, it's maybe unhelpful to mix these two concepts

Chris/Blitzkreig: Coordless drills are significantly more tractable and easy to use

Elan: Ok, that's fine - was mainly curious

Chris/Blitzkreig: Woodshop guild is not volunteering to do the RFID work. happy to be a testing ground, but is not taking the burden of that responsiblity.

Jet: Anyone block the proposal?

<no one has blocked>

On topic	We have a tent
From/Raised by	Alex
Seeking	We need to designate a folding table and kit to go with this to go to events. This is good for fundraising

Alex: A call for volunteers for table / team

Newman, Chaz: volunteering - Sunday Streets, Valencia Street Market (every Thursday), Valencia closes the street on the second Thursday

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!