Meeting Notes 2014 01 21

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Don't forget to post the meeting notes to the wiki and e-mail the discussion list with a short summary.

These are the notes from the The XXXth Meeting of Noisebridge. Note-taker: JARROD; Moderator: KEVIN.

  • Ari Lacenski is now a member of Noisebridge
  • Noisebridge is going to pay for the purchase of and maintenance of fire safety equipment

Short announcements and events

  • Sidewalk Graffiti is dealt with - Ronald
  • Mondays at 1900 have new people come to a meet and greet and show and tell. -Al
  • Monthly cleaning day this Saturday. Starting at noon. Taking on bigger projects - Madelynn
  • Board Elections, see email for details. March 4th at 1900. Elections start on Feb 4th end on March 4th. Nominations on wiki. Also, if you are interested in becoming an officer, please contact the current officer - Tom

Membership Binder

  • Hephaestus wk1
  • Ronald wk3
  • Ari Wk4!!
  • Kate wk3
  • Douglas wk4+

Membership of Ari Lacenski - Consensed!

Tom - 1. Opinion of anti-harassment AL: Generally a good thing, the process is indicative that people buy into it. Tom: Would you oppose it AL: No. Tom: When would you block: AL: Accepting donations from sources that I consider ethically questionable (ex DARPA), allowing sleeping at NB. Tom: What about the check from the Teal foundation. (Explanation). Robin: Cooking? I have never been happy with the cleanliness of the stove. If you want to heat up food fine, but don't leave it in the space. If the preparer is committed to cleaning up and removing the food that is okay, but that is not typical. Ronald: Do you plan to come down and help out when you have time? J.C. How do you use the space now? Mostly hacking by myself now, I was working with Johny Radio with the noise jam. Vee: How do you feel with sharing NB with homeless people? Being homeless does not make one unwelcome. If one is using NB as a shelter, then that is a problem. Madelynn: What how do you define a hackerspace? A hacker space is 1/2 physical 1/2 emotional place. (Also Ari is now an associate member based on "hands") (Ari leaves and we deliberate)

Financial Report

  • We haven't suddenly veered in a bad way.

Consensus items

Proposals from last week

Pay to recharge fire extinguishers. - Consensed

Pay to recharge fire extinguishers. AL: 1 in 4 change of having working fire extinguishers in an emergency. Tom: are we in violation? Robin: what will it cost? Q: how have the current fire extinguishers? AL: Trash can. ARI: what are your findings? Ron: How often do they need to be recharged? We should keep them up to date. Kevin: Al is chairing the safety committee at NB. J.C. I propose an amendment that we include 200 per year for fire safety maintenance, as a base line. Al agrees with amendment. Tom: not to exceed x number of dollars and after having a collection. AL: I would prefer having the treasurer write the check.

"Noisebridge will pay a service to recharge all the fire extinguishers in the space and/or purchase new fire extinguishers, and buy smoke/CO detectors for the space. We will need about a dozen working fire extinguishers for the space. NB will also allocate $200.00 per year, with an initial cost not to exceed $300.00 initial cost."

Adopt the draft anti-harassment policy in its current form in the git repo. - Consensed

J.C. should we include steps to handle harassment? Tom: There are directions elsewhere on the wiki; it may not need to be articulated in the policy. I would prefer not to have that conversation derail the adoption of the policy that has been generally agreed on at this point. J.C. should we outline a reporting system. Hanna: I think that having an explicit reporting system may create further hardships or a hard time if they do not follow the procedure correctly to report being harassed. Ari: it would create additional hardship for the victims of harassment. J.C. and anyone can ask anyone to leave. Tom: it creates an indisputable no grey area situation where a member/AM can ask someone to leave. V: are the harassed obligated to report TOM/Madelynn: No, but they are encouraged.

Ban Dante for vandalism in the bathroom. - Language adjusted and Consensed.

AL: Dante used a sharpie to write on the bathroom walls. People asked him to leave and he was cussing people out. Eventually he left when the police were going to be called J.C. Has there been mediation? Madelynn: Dante has made it clear that he is not interested in mediation. David: It isn't fair to ban him without his presence. Madelynn: we have made it clear that we would be speaking about him. He has chosen not to attend. Q: Do we know that is was him for certain: A few respond yes. Howard: He became very aggressive when confronted with it. J.C.: I don't think that writing on the walls is grounds for life time ban. Ari: my knowledge of this person is in connection with his vandalism. What does he do in the space? Al: we can use the generic language. He wrote over artwork in the bathroom that was in progress and with offensive language. V: What was the obscenity? Ronald: I can show you. J.C. Tom: I agree that writing on the wall is not always vandalism but in this case it is of the vandalism variety. Writing over a piece of artwork that someone is working on is the behavior of a jerk. Q: He isn't adding to the space. Tom: he has not made an attempt to communicate with us or attend the meetings. My perception is that he doesn't want to be here. Robin: Dante isn't even a member; he is using this space for eating his burgers. There isn't much of a reason for us to bend over backward to keep him in the space. J.C. I think he does care about the community and needs a chance. Madelynn: I am okay with the change of wording. I am okay with the wait. We have people who are vouching for him. He is not welcome except at the meetings until this time. So if after 4 weeks this passes, this is fine. Ron: When did you get this information that Dante was not available? J.C. (Explains) Robin: Dante said that it was okay for the restroom to look like a public restroom. David: I think there is enough evidence for a temporary ban. Monad: His behavior was offensive. That alone should be reason to carry this through. Hanna: I think the way he responded when asked to leave was unacceptable. We are banning him because he is a jerk and changing the text is minor. AL: I don't feel strongly about the language, but the 2 week consensus process is how we do this. Kevin: are there any strong reservations. J.C. We should reach out to this person. We don't have to just have a process of someone messes up then two weeks they are gone. We can give this a week. There is a proposal to not allow proposals with wording changes and we should apply this spirit to this process: Robin: He verbally abused people, refused to leave, Ari: I propose an exception, you are banned, but you have a friend who will sponsor you to come to a meeting and get you un banned. Hanna: if the issue is procedural then why don't we go with the current language since the vandalism is what led to his bad behavior. David: I don't think that people should be excluded in absentia. I will contact the guy and work to give him an opportunity to come back. Madelynn: I want to work with J.C. here. I don't see a problem with waiting a week. He cannot be in the space until next Tuesday. We have someone willing to find him. J.C. Shall we just move away from the vandalism. Change the wording to the standard working, give a week to contact him and come here, he cannot come until next Tuesday, and then we have the consensus on banning him. If Hanna: Can we have language that if he does not show up next Tuesday, then he is automatically banned and we do not discuss it further. AL: (Explains what he wrote)

"Dante is unwelcome at Noisebridge. He is prohibited from entering the space or participating in the community. He has the option during the meeting on 2014-01-28 to attend and object to this ban, if he does not appear this ban will become permanent with no further discussion required. If Dante attends, then this item must be discussed, and consensus shall be required to ban him."

AL: Is anyone blocking my existing language? J.C. I will, if force to. Hanna: Are you okay with my proposal? J.C. it is pushing too far into the future. We could just go through the standard process. Let's just have the discussion next week. Tom: The modification that is most respectful of the people who will have the next discussion. It reduces the discussion for next meeting. I think he should be banned until next week and then indefinite unless he shows. J.C. Why not use the typical language; it is essentially the same thing. Hanna: I am offering a friendly amendment so that we can end this discussion now. Kevin: I believe that the theoretical underpinning of J.C.'s concern is that there is a J.C.: explains that he is not able to make decisions at the moment. Tom: Let's take a break. J.C. (Stands aside.)

Consensed Language:

"Dante is unwelcome at Noisebridge. He is prohibited from entering the space or participating in the community. He has the option during the meeting on 2014-01-28 to attend and object to this ban, if he does not appear this ban will become permanent with no further discussion required. If Dante attends, then this item must be discussed, and consensus shall be required to ban him."

Ban Dan from the space for a pattern of verbal abuse against Al. - Suspended

Dan and Al have agreed to enter into mediation. Mediators are Praveen, Madelynn, and Norman. This item is suspended to allow for mediation.

Proposals for next week

Proposals shall only be eligible to reach consensus in a weekly meeting in the exact form that they were agreed at a previous weekly meeting. - Discussed Tom: Passing the strict 2 week language proposal should be briefly discussed to meet its own requirements and discussion should be tabled for now. Hanna: I think we should table this. (brief discussion ensues) TOM: This is a new next for Al's language that was previously proposed. This item is being discussed this week instead of it being condensed on. Discussion of this item is tabled for next week for consensus.

"Proposals shall only be eligible to reach consensus in a weekly meeting in the exact form that they were agreed at a previous weekly meeting. Items shall not be eligible for consensus unless they were recorded on the Current Consensus Items page on the Noisebridge wiki before 24 hours have passed after the end of the weekly meeting in which they were proposed. If a proposal is modified at a weekly meeting, it shall not be eligible for consensus at that meeting."


The canonical location for Noisebridge policies and processes shall be a git repository. - Discussed

"The canonical location for Noisebridge policies and processes shall be a git repository. The canonical process to modify these policies and processes shall be the merging of a proposed changed version. The decision to merge a patch shall be made by Noisebridge's consensus process. The most recent version of all such policies and procedures shall also be posted at an appropriate page on the Noisebridge wiki. It shall be the responsibility of the Secretary to operate and maintain this system."

Monad: So you are making the secretary's job this repo and future secretaries would need to do this. Tom: Not really, there is a support team that assists the secretary and takes on tasks like this. A future secretary would be able to find volunteers with the skills to maintain it even if they personally could not. Madelynn: How do I participate if I do not know git, github etc. Tom: I would use github. Showing people how to us github is easy, and is easy to use. There are many members of the NB community that have these skills and could help amend language for you. (Ex. The anti-harassment policy.) Hanna: I learned how to use github when working on the anti-harassment policy and found it no more difficult than using the wiki Robin: what is git? Tom: a distributed version control that makes comparisons between changes very easy to compare. It is easy for a single person to make mistakes incorporating all the language of changes regarding our space. This would help negate those changes.

Discussion Notes

Meeting ended before open discussion.

Attendance

Tom - Shadowy Cabal

Madelynn - programming and led, collaborative communities

Al - programming for kids

Jeff - physicist

Hanna - Science Teacher.

Snail -

J.C. - Takes shit apart

Howard - clothing and CHM

Robin - merging fashion and technology

Monad - installs windows

Praveen - Mach Learning bio hacking

Ronald - Computer stuff and projects

Kevin - Moderator, biohacking eeg neurohacker group.

Jarrod - Notetaker

Ari - LED panels via android

Donald - Net Art web dev

Shirley - Math Professor

Mikos - Physicist, Jack of all trades

Tina - Biologist, Working on a project

Vee

David