Meeting Notes 2015 03 24

These are the notes from the The 503rd Meeting of Noisebridge. Note-taker: louis ; Moderators: Kevin.

Introductions

Attendees:

• Patrick, swe in the city, like to tinker on physical thing and recently more security related thigns;
• Tom, mathematician worked in HS in western Kenya second time here;
• Louis, note-taker;
• Andreas, 'Don' biotechnologist 15 years of experience, bio hackerspace from south am;
• Olivier, discovered the place 2months ago, data analyst, looking for jobs, 6months here in SF;
• Greg, hackademy, like participating in learning and diy;
• Neil, 3rd time, SWE trying to turn into sensors/electrical engineering, wants to re-create fluorescent light the old way;
• Alias? High school student from SF;
• Jen neural hacking group;
• Dan programmer coming to NB for a couple years, working on the neural hacking things;
• Michel, web developer, first time here, making it easier for people to text each other;
• Matt, engineer as well, here because our friend is talking about react;
• Clement, from Paris, part of a group who created a bio hackerspace in the center of Paris, been worked in helping other places in France and Europe;
• Bill main interest in sociology
• Sharon, first time here, friend of Bill;
• Todd, artist, media activist, on tour in California, project called Citizen Kino, "cinema hacking";
• Daniella, inventor, working on a polyglot keyboard:
• Hanner SWE at day time, working on electronics, did the access control system here at Noisebridge;
• Hillary, first time here, was hosting a conference in the city earlier, historian, archivist;
• Efny?, works with Hillary, based in Vancouver, community hacker;
• Jay is RAD and has a blinking Noisebridge t-shirt;
• Mitch, co-founder, teaches circuit hacking, how to solder;
• Logan, from Cambridge, hardware engineer, working on voice synthesis;
• ???: chemistry, poetry, software;
• John: SWE, first time here, came here thanks for a rails dev friend;
• John 2: run a web consultancy agency, scan books at an industrial scale, runs tor stuff;
• Mark: from the UK involved in hackerspaces there;
• Dave: web dev company in the city, react;
• David: SWE, web;
• Kevin: moderator;

Short announcements and events

• Bill is looking for seeks for help to parse old data files and archive/digitize a library;
• Todd is doing a show on April 16th at ACTA:
• Jay: every thursday, we are working on table for maker fair, let me know if you're interested in electronics and wood work;
• Mitch: this Sunday starting at 1pm, Mitch is leading Arduino for total newbies;
• Daniella: my new polyglot keyboard app for iOS8 has been approved the app store, launch party on April 9th at 540 Howard at 6pm to 8pm;
• Logan: stupid shit no-ones need Hackathon on May 23/24 starting noon on Saturday ending Sunday afternoon, we are looking for help on how to advertise the event and an AOL sponsorship, examples projects: VR googles that show the world behind you, device you put in your food so it tweets when you take a bite…
• Mitch: American Library Association, is organizing their yearly event in SF, a panel about hackerspace will be held and I'm one of the participants, we should show off our book scanner while they are here, or any thing really, June 26th;

Membership Binder

• Sam: this application has been stale for 12 weeks and is being discarded, please apply again;
• Hanner:
  • First time here in 2009, I was a hacker so I came here, but not very often, I got to know more people at camp 2 years ago;
  • Got more involved during reboot and Noisebridge is now a nice place again;
  • Jay: what's your vision of the space in like 5 years? -> I wanna keep this space, even though it's getting harder, I wish we had a good, solid, more mature community so we can have a more accessible space, more interesting and bigger projects, we don't have that yet;
  • Jen: what are the responsibilities of members? -> first and foremost, provide an environment where people are excellent to each other, making sure that the community feels welcome, help people to be excellent to each other and the space;
  • Kevin: What is your approach to consensus? Most of this things that happens and are discussed in the space are usually good so consensus mostly is about not saying no. Get everyone on the same page, it has been abused before and I don't want this to happen again;
  • Bill: How do you deal with abuse of consensus: abuse happened with proposals that refused to be discussed and that were getting blocked, it can happen, but it can't be systematic. Consensus is a very strong tool because you can veto things so it has to be used sparingly;
  • Daniella: What you think we can to improve the diversity of the space and bring-in more women? Women are discouraged to do anything technical in our society, how can we improve that? One is spread the word about the space, encourage everyone creative to come. Since the community is male dominated, sexism is latent, this is something that need to change, watch for and regulate;
  • Jen: why do you wanna become a member? -> Because I like this space, it's kinda like getting married, you can live together without being married but it marks a commitment. I want to see the space thrive, I subscribe to what Noisebridge stands for, it's very important for the new generation to learn and ask silly question, learn they would have never seen otherwise and this important to me.
• Jay: participated in the reboot, love the people here and the vibe:
  • Mitch: what is consensus? -> When the space is healthy, all these ideas are being discussed. When consensus is working, you know the space is healthy. Consensus being blocked is a sign that the space is not healthy;
  • Kevin: why do you wanna become member? Membership seems to be the right way to do it, you show up for you a while, you work on projects, being a member feels like an acknowledgement from the community to be here; A member should be somebody that protects the vision of what the space wants to be.
  • Kevin: what is your vision for the space? -> I fixed my console when I was 13 and I would have loved to have space like Noisebridge to do it, I want to make this space good and safe enough so that women and kids can come. The dreams I had when I was a kid, I want to make Noisebridge where those kind of dreams can happen;
  • Efny: How do you think you could bring more people of color and/or from different kind of incomes? Show people around, show what the possibilities are and point them in the right direction, explain to people that the space can be used for meetings and so-on;
  • Jen: what are the responsibilities of a member? Pay dues, you have a financial responsibility towards the space, the other one is about consensus. Protect the space, its vision and future.
• Daniella wk3: got along with people, Noisebridge has been part of my life since the inception of my keyboard project;
• Louis wk2: I have been writing meeting notes.

New members:

• Hanner!!
• Jay!!

Consensus and Discussion

No consensus proposal.

Daniella: I wanna paint the tables in Church in black. People: Just do it™.

Efny (sorry this is probably not your name): I wanna take pictures of the space (while asking anyone that would be in the space); People: Just do it™.

Discussion Items

If any important discussion happens, it should be happening after forward progress is made during consensus.

Financial Report

Noisebridge just paid rent.

• Funds in bank: 19k checking, 3k in savings;
• Noisetor (See the bulletpoints at the bottom of http://noisetor.net/finances/#summary): 9k from the 21k above;
• Matching donation fundraiser still going-on, please talk to Patrick about it, we wanna have it public in the next two weeks.

Keep in mind we are a 501c3 so you can deduct donations from your taxes.

If you also wanna use money for the space, please, contact Patrick, patrickod on IRC and Slack.

Micrological society library move

• Danny - A 501(c)(3) with a monthly general meeting during most of the year. One of the elements is making our library accesible to members, but also accessible to the public. Only members can check out books but all are welcome to come to the library. One of the disadvantages that we've had is that it's open only 1 hour a month before the meeting every month. I'd really like for more peolpe to be able to access these collections.

• John - For background Danny put together a meeting to try build a book scanner and we got a lot of input. We've rolled through about 18 months of noisebridge, and it's at its most stable. It's been a great place for the scanning setup, to be able to leave the cameras out without worry is really great. It's awesome to have so many folks express interest. We're going to be building a new and improved scanner here after the meeting!

• Danny - As far as the concerns, only two things. How and when, and under what circumstances would access happen ? If noisebridge is a good fit for this and you guys feel like it's something you want here what does that look like? It could only be an improvement over what the society currently has. Also the feasibility of whether the cabinets could fit here, the logistics of having it here. The cabinents lock, which takes some of the liability out of it.

• Mitch - How big are the cabinets?

• Danny - They are 100 inches tall, 72 inches wide, 15 inches deep, per cabinet.

• Mitch - and they're solid? not like bookshelves which you can see through.

• Danny - They also have a platform which raises them off the ground for flooding reasons.

• Mitch - That's 8x6, which is quite a lot for the space we have.

• Danny - We have only one at the moment

• - A thousand of volumes must be 20ish linear feet, which isn't *that* many books.

• Danny - It's a relatively small library.

• Bill - I'm in the CA licens society, and I've inherited the books of many members who are no longer here. Some members are thinking of setting up libraries in random museums and making a public libary. One of the things I thought of several years ago, is instead of having a single libary for the association, have each members be stewards of the sections they're particularly interseted in. Have an online catalog of who has what, with contact info for each. If you end up borrowing some item, then you become the steward. It's a distributed library in the whole area. You remove the overhead of the public place.

• Kevin - Let's focus on the hosting the library at noisebridge.

• Mitch - I thought the original idea was to have them here temporarily to digitize them.

• Danny - that's a possibily. I don't see the point of them going back to the museum. They could be here temporarily for proximity to the DA group, but depending on how things go it could long term be the home

• Mitch - The only bummer of that particular location is that it'd cover the mural

• John - We have been working on stuff in the back of the space too. Noisebridge is a great spot for these types of libraries, as it's close to BART, it's very accessible to everyone, particularly out of towners. The old access was really inaccessible, and moving them to Noisebridge, to a space surrounded by tools and people to teach, sounds really exciting to me. That's why I thought it'd be a consensus proposal due to the possible permanent nature. Even were it temporary it cuold be really cool to have a rotating library.

• Torrie - So hearing about this, I really support the idea of having a super-focused library be here. I heard a concern about it being in front of the SW mural. Also there's sprinkler pipes and not much space. However there's been discussions about how to improve the former kitchen space, and I think one of the ideas was to induce more activity back there. maybe move the lockers back there and put the shelves by the dirty shop. I think there's a bunch of options to consider

• Dan - If you're bringing this up for conensus, I think it sounds awesome. It sounds really cool, to have an extension of our identity and purpose, if not back in the SW corner then somewhere else in the space. This sounds all worth it. The idea of it being temporary in the space, we might be too when our lease is up, but it's definitely worth some effort.

• Daniela - I think it's a great idea to bring new people who might steward the space here. Blocking the mural would be not great, but I think a good idea would to be to put it in the old darkroom. Plus it could be a reflective space. Where wuold it be in the kitchen?

• Torrie - I think it's a discussion for another day.

• Mitch - There's no guarantee that they won't be harmed or stolen. We haven't had such issues post-reboot, but we really can't guarantee. As for access we're building up to have the space as open as possible, but you or other people could get an RFID token to access the space. That relationship could be expanded.

• Danny - I'm thinking that the members of the DA group serve as embassadors to the library. We're a group of 3-4 people who live mostly in the Mission nearby, so I don't see an access issue really being a thing.