Metaguild Meeting Notes 2022 08 04

These are the notes from the The 3rd Meeting of Metaguild.

• Live notes
  • https://pad.riseup.net/p/metaguild
• Virtual Meeting (jitsi mic/cam off by default)
  • https://discord.gg/kj2dkV3Pcv In one of the voice channels, varying week to week

Date: 2022_08_04 as below

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Note-takers: Mark, ???

Moderators: Mark

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

Meeting Summary

Discussion was all over the place, spent a lot of time on defining terms that we could all agree on. Also talked about the projects project, which is now currently known as the "projects CMS".

Introductions & Roll Call

Attending - Moof Culteejen (TJ) Pawper Arity/Mark Mcint LX

Progress Report / Announcements

• 60-second description per item in bulletpoint.
• Go through each guild represented at the meeting
• What did that guild accomplish over the week since the last meeting
• Does the guild have any announcements for this week?

Mark - Games guild is hosting class on Wednesday as aalways. We just started learning Blender this past week. A couple of us are going to work on the game lounge arrangement and also try to fix the game lounge computer. Details will be logged in #games in discord. Looking for interested ppl in game jam bootcamp starting early september.

Tea- Music Guild: The music guild is looking to start regular meetings, we currently have many interested people

New Guilds Proposed

TJ- I have some githubs I pulled together for the AI class, I plan on gathering some for an ai related project list, sounds like there is some interest. Perhaps that could be an AI guild. There's a machine upstairs, former neurohacking machine set up with a few things. We want to set it up for SSH so ppl can use it remotely.

What are they? For each one, are there at least 2 people ready to take responsibility? What would the guild do? What kinds of resources would it manage? If no new guild proposals, move on. No long discussions.

Pruning

Are there any abandoned guilds? What is the criteria for "abandoned" status? What housekeeping needs to be done? Does anyone want to step up to revitalize an abandoned guild?

Top Bar of Guilds in the wiki has a bunch of guilds that aren't really maintained

LX - I created that bar - the guilds maybe aren't active but they are pretty accurate representation of what already goes on/exists at noisebridge in some capacity.

(Some discussion about what to do about these. LX suggests reaching out to ppl and getting them to start the guilds more officially.)

Mark - I think for this section of the meeting part of it could be finding the people first who do things for seeming abandoned guilds.

-Points of action- Talk to HB about trying to recruit ppl for a security guild.

There are tons of people who do fabrication stuff, but they are not in the guild discussion. We need to loop these people in and try to have them actually be guilds.

Potential guilds

What are some important guilds that SHOULD exist?

TJ - I want to start Electronics guild and help get ideas together, especially as pertains to desires of usage/layout of the electronics room.

Tea - We should do a workday.

Pawper - Is there a coding guild?

Mark - not one currently. would you be interested in starting one?

Pawper - Was thinking I'd go to the free code camp thing tomorrow and talk to ppl and see who is there? I think it'd be cool to have a coding guild a bit distinguished from the AI guild, etc...

Mark - On that front, I'm going to talk to Noah

LX - historically we've had lots of coding classes and groups. the goal of a coding guild ought to be "keep those things going and make sure there are always multiple maintainers". traditionally a lot of good classes have stopped when the teacher did.

Tea - makes sense. we will ideally have communal pressure to maintain the good things

Lx - the person who's good at teaching may not be the person good at promoting. Like event support, but within the context of the guild activity.

TJ - maybe they could maintain coding stations of some sort

Tea - I value the idea of maintaining workstations, but I'm not sure who should be responsible for them

Mark - I think whoever uses them should maintain them

Pawper - I think it'd be a mistake to give coding guild ONLY a scope of teaching and maintaining classes. We could provide resources in a less instructive but more general sense - software jams, job search help, etc

LX - i filled out the coding ctaegory of the wiki navbar already, but it could use some more love

Discussion

Item 1 - Noisebridge Projects Project

Mark- The idea here is its an interface for working with noisebridge projects. A piece of software, probably in the website which people interact with in order to do things with projects-- could be links to discussion areas for the projects, donating to the projects specifically, repository information about them, status, let you find projects by guild or other sorting, a way to contribute to projects.

Pawper - sounds like a profile/linked list combined with mailing list, linking to Discord channel for project. Perhaps coding guild could create something for working groups to have like a "virtual booth" of sorts, that people could engage with. Could help get some groups gaining some kind of traction. Its an entry point into guilds.

LX - sounds like it has overlap with what wiki does, and what people do with concurrent fields and templates

Pawper - Probably be on wiki. Could come up with templates. a URL people could go to to upload images / video / etc. Specific fields to serve this, convert to Wiki page.

Have a set look to it. Have a page for one working group, recognize format and make it accessible.

LX - Currently have projects section, it has whatever is listed in category at the bottom. Collection mechanism for projects. Templates. Concepts vs. proposals (want to do vs. planned item). <Example: Telepresence>. Current system is a standard more than a template. There's a Q&a, etc.

We could simplify this and turn it into a template page, etc. Could change status from one stage to the other. Coudl have a concepts category, another for Active/completed. What would make/break it is qualituy of template. A set of more in-depth question would go farther. In rebase, dozens of projects got fleshed out because of template. <Example: Kitchenware>

TJ -trello and githubs, etc have stuff like notifications, etc that wikis cant do.

Mark - in my mind it is for reasons like this that we need an app, not a wiki. We don't know what features we'll need in the future.

LX - if what we design in terms of scope can be met with other existing webapps, lets just use that stuff is what i am saying. let's not reinvent any wheels. We also need to have our wiki work properly. We had some ppl from the debian project offering to help us with our servers and with upgrading our mediawiki thing.

Loren - I agree that the wiki is high friction, and bad for active-shared-editing let's make that easier! let's make vouching easier let's whitelist / upgrade / approve of access from inside noisebridge ++ i've been wanting to do this too wiki is a good target — end goal ( to be clear, we get ~ 20 spam wiki accounts created per day, that's why we have the auth )

Pawper - discord bot, plugins for trello and our other tools could be part of the solution, I know here's a nebulousness around slack vs discord, so idk whats going on their, need to do some research. one problem with wiki pages is that they are quite static - we need something more real-time and dynamic. Also ease of entry for new projects is ideal

TJ - (we have a Slack plugin for trello at least)

LX - modern CMS is much better wiki format. Maybe we should adopt tech from CMS systems. Discord integration is cool. We shouldn't reinvent CMS. I had to do this myself, wasn't fun

Pawper - We should have idea of what the goals are, after identify problems. Druple, MongoDB, etc.

Mark - What should we start to list goals?

Pawper - Discord is nice, then once we identify, put on Trello. We just need space to hold it.

LX - Could we call it Project CMS. I get the joke, but it's confusing

Mark - Please rename to something not confusing but also funny

Pawper - If you want to chat sometime, I'd be down.

LX - I'm a game developer because writing CMS then finding out about it made me not want to do it anymore. I have knowledge of CMS. Hope there's better than Druple.

Pawper- Hope we can find simple soltuion so not reinventing the wheel. I'll look at recent project. Did some coding projects recently, can look at blogs.

LX - Druple is powerful, but written in *PHP*

Pawper - PHP is not funny.

LX - need extra features, i.e. Youtube videos. And add features.

Item 2 - Authority and terminology

Pawper - I think there might be this unwritten standard that has to do with a group of people with an intention of associating with eachother and having goals as a group.

TJ - if we tie ppl too much to something where it's hurting their ability to govern themseleves that is harmful

LX - in agreement. we have to remember our job is to try to provide a successful pattern that will help them and their group flourish. In the case of many groups, some things that would help would be things like - regular recruitment efforts, asking for volunteer maintainers, etc. We as meta guild are trying to rolemodel te most successful patterns that help groups flourish, which are called guilds. We need to ask what guilds are already doing so we can see what the guild pattern can do for them. We need to flip our thinking in a way.

Tea - back to the topic of pruning. I'm with you LX in that the function of the metaguild is to encourage do-ocracy. We have fabrication listed as a guild at the top, but not its sub-parts. Which suggests there are ppl who meet to talk about fabrication in general, when really what they meet for is the sub-interests.

LX - Well, there has always been a fab channel in slack and discord where lots of communication does happen in the general sphere. I do agree these are distinct guilds, but its like metaguild where there are sub guilds.

Tea - feels like we are increasing beuaracracy giving names to things that don't need names. Potentially a barrier separating the model from reality. Just because there is a slack channel, doesn't mean its a guild.

LX - I agree. But don't think we should be arguing about this stuff right now. Let's not worry about it for the moment but focus on getting the groups operational.

Tea - Let's do that then and work on working on the wiki. LX - we'll do that outside of this meeting.

Loren - Let's have nomenclature for what we're talking about.

Mark - There's a documentation sub-guild LX - We want to get productive and have people doing stuff

Mark - Meta guild is meta. Part of discussion is how MetaGuild works and what should be done. Question: to what extent should pruning be part of meeting? That's the true discussion topic here. WE need to quickly outline tasks for Documentation WG. Should be quick section. Is that wrong?

Tea - That makes a lot of sense. Also , the whole part will be easier if we have routine, clear Guilds

Mark - We need to agree what needs to be done. Makes doing this section difficult.

Tea - Once agreement is reached, shoudl be nbd.

Mark - That is the whole point of this discussion item. Who has authority, what if disagreement, also what we call things. Do-ocracy = people can do whatever on wiki. I personally would like to see collective effort on understanding what to do.

Loren - One last point to add for future discussions - focus on short problem statements/descriptions. Help keep focused and clear. We can introduce new concepts, like Guilds. Some notion of inactive Guilds, Interest Groups (Guilds without official Members in Guild community).

Tea - I think LX would say those would still be Guilds

LX - Could be De Facto Guilds, but not all the way there could be more interest groups. May never want to become Guilds

Loren - Use new adj/noun combos, new nouns. Use new words rather than changing definitions.

Tea - Meeting group, because interest group = lobbyists.

LX - Working goup was the original term. Door working group, etc. What we're talking about is kind of like that. Group of people working on something. Working group could be both event and functional groups of people doing things in a Guild. Ex. Coding guild has a lot of disparate activities. Teaching, hackathons, etc. Not guilds if groups within a guild. Just groups of people doing differnt things.

Loren - Suggestion: Working group name has nice model. Calling from IETF. Working on finding their enumerations. Exist well enumerated structures we can copy from. Don't reinvent the wheel! (paraphrased)IETF has BOF "Birds Of a Feather" sessions — cute name. Connotes shared interest and flocking behavior [10:12 PM] But I like hyphenated names more [10:12 PM] one-off-WG

LX - We do already have a pattern of sorts in the form of "working groups" All WGs were from IETF stuff, if I'm not mistaken. I agree it helps to clarify differetn states, be on Guild page. 3-4 different statuses they could be in. 1-minute descriptions for each of those. Guild -> Strongest form of organized group. De facto guild -> like Woodshop, Laser cutter, etc.

Mark - I think Guild is a sacred word. I'm using strong language. I think calling something a de facto guild diminishes its meaning.

LX - Goal is to convert de facto -> active guilds.

Loren - Or aspiring, or whatever. Glad we have adjectives now

LX - We have groups who have the base, just need to make the steps. Need to convert them to guilds. There are potential guilds, have makings but should be. And inactive guilds, which have ideas but no one behind it (ex. HAM radio group. People who teached it aren't here anymore). Potential guild ex. Coding. There's material, but nothing together yet. Once the process started, it's a Proposed Guild.

Same as project life cycle: Potential -> Proposal -> Active

Should have the terms for clarification at top of page. Give people a life cycle of terminoology. Get de facto "almost guilds" , identify contact de facto leaders, invite people to meeting, talk 1-1 . Check boxes they don't check. Get more than one organizer, etc.

Pawper - Mostly agreeing. Terminology useful because can be shorthand. Easier to talk shorthand. Come up with descriptions with good implicit meanings. Candidate guilds - qualified, but not there. Potential guilds is good description already. Ghost guilds are those that are no longer active. potential guilds someone said already (alt. proto-guilds, almost guilds)

Tea - Words with definitions: Active guilds, Inactive Guilds, Proto-guilds (do-ocratically organized?) Proto-guilds should be converted to Active Guilds in the future by Metaguild.

TJ - that's like prototype though, suggests it is in early stages

Difference between proto and defacto: woodshop is defacto, its been around forever. Proto is early stage idea.

Cloud : A suggestion - it'd be productive to make lists separately and come back for now.

Mark : Let's drop it for now, revisit the question next week after some suggestions.

Elan what do these names connote?

Mark : the level of organization as well as where in the lifecycle they are

Elan : at some point is there going to be a consensus item of promoting a proto guild to a defacto guild? what does this advancement through

Tea - advancing the lifecycle means they are involved and being active in the guild system

LX - The thing people to get from Active Guild. Metaguild trying to get Protoguilds to become active. Maybe need help with fundraising, volunteers, etc. to become the Active Guild.

Tea - "Pop-up group"? Implies it is just people who show up and do stuff related to specific topic.

Mark - Probably de facto, but there's a gray area

Loren - Adjective-noun is nice because central idea + modification

LX - Working group for things that aren't fully guilds. Just call working groups if not guilds.

Pawper - Can we say Guilds help working groups form and organize. Guilds contribute to working groups, serve as venue to funnel people to working groups

LX - working groups existed before Guilds. All groups called working groups.

Tea- guilds are working groups maintained by the metaguild

LX - working groups have no commitment to maintainers. Guild has a maintainer in the 3-5 range and a much greater effort into keeping groups alive.

Mark - at *least* 3-5

LX - 20 people, but only 1 person with practical knowledge. And it all collapses when one leaves.

Tea - I suggest then "Guilds, working groups, and inactive groups"

LX - I like the term "ghost".

Pawper - I think there is this thing we can zero in on - metaguilds purpose being to promote the guild model - to deliver these best practices and consensus models to groups so they become more like a "guild". To enable success for groups. Once a group then is a "guild" they are more self-directing and they are actually trying to stay alive at that point. A thing they are cognizant and self-aware of. We guide them to that sort of stasis. I alos like the term "ghost". Its like its kind of there, it has a history and has left an imprint on the space, but it needs to be revived.

Elan - I think having community support to keep a group going is good, we need to help assist in communication as much as possible.

mcint - IETF has BOF "Birds Of a Feather" sessions — cute name. Connotes shared interest and flocking behavior But I like hyphenated names more one-off-WG culteejen (TJ) - g i t h u b s Github >>>> wiki for projects mcint — I agree that the wiki is high friction, and bad for active-shared-editing let's make that easier! let's make vouching easier let's whitelist / upgrade / approve of access from inside noisebridge ++ i've been wanting to do this too wiki is a good target — end goal ( to be clear, we get ~ 20 spam wiki accounts created per day, that's why we have the auth )

Item 3 - What's missing from meeting notes template? What is excessive?

Mark - If you have feedback about the meeting format - post it in metaguild channel.

Tea - really briefly. For "progress report" - working groups should give progress reports as well.

LX - something about different names for kinds of working groups.. see : https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/FractalWorkingGroup

Each item (esp discussion) needs an ask: what is the desired result, product, of spending group attention on the topic.

End of Meeting

Keep it to an hour please? - this meeting is essentially just a check-in and progress report

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, discussion topics, and names of new guilds w/ organizers/maintainers, and pruned guilds.
• Copy paste the notes to the next meeting page. (They will become Last meeting at midnight.)
• Email the meeting summary to Noisebridge Discuss and Noisebridge Announce lists.
• CC on the email secretary@noisebridge.net.

After the meeting

Go forth and CREATE STUFF!