Meeting Notes 2016 02 23

These are the notes from the The XXXth Meeting of Noisebridge. Date: Feb 23 2016 Note-taker: Alex; Moderators: J.

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

Meeting Summary

FIXME FILL OUT AT END OF MEETING AND SEND TO MAILING LIST TLDR what happened at the meeting:

• Announcements:
• Finances:
• New members:
• New philanthropists:
• Consensus Items:
• Discussion Items:

Introductions

• Patrick: I attempt to corral computers as a day job.
• Milo: I am unofficial treasurer of Flaschen Taschen if you need change for beer.
• Paul: First time here visiting. I'm interested to become a member.
• Jarvis: Android doer. 3D art.
• Mark: Game stuff. Teach game dev. Trying to do game archiving with classics.
• Alex: I type notes while I talk and I teach game dev on Tuesdays.
• Trent: I teach Python class Mondays intermediate level.
• Francis: I come to use the computer!
• Kenrick: Second time here. I work on silly programming projects. I got into hardware a few months ago.
• Roger: I'm also working on silly software.
• Jason: I'm taking a game development course, here to learn game programming.
• Scott: 5th or 6th week here, coming to Gamebridge and other things here. I donated Communion the book.
• David: Game designer/artist.
• James or Jay for short: Software developer working on payments related stuff and open source stuff. British (Scottish!) J as opposed to Mexican J.
• David: Moved to SF a month ago, also an Android guy, interested in open source stuff and game development.
• Valentine: Pretty much into anything 3D and Tuesdays now I'm doing a course on mobile development and Unity focusing on mixed reality.
• Lee: Hacking on phone systems here.
• J: I'm the Mexican J! Thing I like to do is teach circuit hacking mondays for about a year now. Teach how to solder and teaching how components work.
• Steven: I'm new, I'm checking it out.
• Leon: I use sewing machines!
• Robin:
• Max: I'm a member of Sudo Room and helping last couple weeks.
• Vivian: I'm at other hackerspaces and I'm hanging out at NB sometimes.
• Rob Manhattan: Master of disguises, man with a bicycle helmet...
• Chris: I do video game design stuff.
• Mark: 3rd time in the place, I brought my kids to learn soldering.
• Orion Sternlicht: Part of maker since long time ago. Love coming to different maker spaces as well as learning about different things that happen at different spaces like maker faires and mini maker faires.
• Julio: I'm Italian and I'm applying for membership, second week.

Click on this URL: https://giphy.com/gifs/ixVvcI4CqaaWY/html5

Short announcements and events

• Lee: Not a formal event but I'm working with phone systems on our payphone here. Goal is to have something to play with if you're interested in VOIP and video streaming for computers. Working w Asterisk. http://www.noisebridge.net/ https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Telephony
• Trent: Working library app now! Eg. a recent donation: http://library.noisebridge.net:8080/detail/1463/
• Alex: We are working on a hackerspaces simulation in 3D based on the hackerspaces API. Please come chat with Alex if you want to help out.
• J: Roundtable with Chinese hacker delegation Monday to improve communication with Chinese hackerspaces.
• Join the meetup.com/noisebridge and RSVP for the meetup event!

Membership Binder

• Invite a knowledgeable volunteer to describe membership, and the application process.

Being a member of Noisebridge is not like being a member of a gym or your local chess club. Anyone can come to Noisebridge to hack and learn: you don't need to be a member for that. At Noisebridge, membership is something different: it means taking responsibility and committing to help to maintain, improve, and govern Noisebridge. As a member of Noisebridge, you don't just come here to hack and learn, you actively work to improve what you see around you, help to deal with problems, and make this community and space better than it is today.

• Read off any names from the binder for the past month. Mark down a check or other indicator on every open application to keep track of how many weeks they've been read out.
• Anyone eligible to join this week should
  • introduce themselves,
  • answer any questions members may have for them, then
  • leave the area in search of gifts (traditionally beer and a lime, or cookies) for the rest of the group.
• The rest of the meeting should reach consensus on whether they may join.
• Remember to applaud new members when they return.

• UP FOR MEMBERSHIP:
• Jay: "My name is Jay. I want to be a member because this is my local hackerspace, I have a bunch of friends here, I enjoy hanging out here, and there's awesome stuff that happens here. My contributions: I do all kinds of tech, mostly open source software, Linux, decentralized bitcoin blockchain interests me and I'd like to help people out with learning this kind of stuff. I'd like to help people developing programming languages. And I want to support NB with dues as well."
• J is sponsored by Patrick and Torrie. 4th week!
• Q: What made you finally apply for membership? A: Been coming 4 years on and off and always felt I should. It was finally when I was at CCC that I felt I needed to be more involved.
• Q: Do you have interest in mentoring or organizing events? A: Anything Python related I'd love to help with.
• Q: Are you working on any projects with members here atm? A: A bit on Flaschen Taschen and I'd like to help with the Asterisk stuff.
• Q: What would make you want to block someone from being a member? A: Anyone who seems like they'd be a negative influence and create social problems or make people feel negative in the space. Someone who would disrupt the environment.
• Q: What do you think is the vision of Noisebridge and what is your vision of what it could become?
• A: There's so many tools for people to use and not everyone has them. It is a valuable place to chat about projects and share ideas. That's what it's all about now. My personal vision? I tend to be pretty independent and might not do as many group projects as some but I want it to be a third space to hack on things.
• Q: What does hacker mean to you? A: I always go back to the definition of someone who sees a device or tool and can envision other things to do with it, not seing something as limitations but possibilities. One thing that sparked my interest in hardware hacking was moding XBox to run Linxu for example.
• Q: Consensus process is very important. Have you been in a consensus process before? A: Not too much, I've got a lot of friends very into consensus decision making so I'm familiar with the process involved. I philosophically prefer it to authoritarian top down decision making. My understanding is that you raise a motion and people will speak to describe it and then you need quorum from the whole group and people can block the motion completely and it is not till you have no blockers and quorum that you can move forward.
• Q: In your vision, what would you envision Noisebridge as becoming. A: I don't want it to change too much! One thing I dislike is the hacker culture as defined a startups or people hacking by creating very valuable startups and that's a derailing of the original meaning of hacker and I'd be wary of Noisebridge being too much just software for sale oriented.
• Q: What do you think of Bitcoin XT? A: I don't want to get into a big argument obout that right now!
• Membership consensus discussion follows. J is officially now a member with no one blocking.

• Valentine is present but not ready to go through whole process tonight.
• Chris Simms: 4th week! Sponsors are Torrie and Alex. Next week he is up for membership.
• Julio: Not present tonight but 1st week and needs sponsors.

Philanthropists

• Invite a knowledgeable member to describe Philantropy, and the application process.
• Philanthropy is for people who don't need to be members to contribute to Noisebridge while donating to Noisebridge. Standard level is $80 and starving hacker rate is $40. Key benefit is a 24 hour access pass - still don't sleep here!
• You just need a member to sponsor you and understand how to close up the space if you're the last 24 hour user leaving at night.

• Read off any names from the binder for the past month. Any applicants must have their sponsor present to vouch for them.
• If there are no objections, they're a philanthropist! Their pledge should be handed over to the Secretary posthaste, after which their token will be updated to give them the 24/7 access they've earned(?)

• PEOPLE UP FOR PHILANTHROPY:
• Dave Erwin: not here tonight.
• Lee: Sponsor is Torrie fischer. Introduction: "I just moved to SF 3 weeks ago. I did some work hanging out a lot here a few years ago. I worked with a lot of the poor people and doing grass works media work with Indymedia before blogs and with anarchist collectives. I work professionally as software consultant and I want to be here to do projects, volunteer time and give and receive with the community." No objections. Lee is a philanthropist.
• Roger F: Sponsor is Alex! "I want to be here after 10PM, been here since July and I got tired of the Library, the NB community is much cooler. Sidebar: The bathrooms are a true miracle that those things can be cleaned. I really like the community, interesting people, usually in a good way." No objects. Roger is a philanthropist.

Financial Report

• Funds in bank: Wells Fargo is loading... Noisebridge has $48K. $4800 is about to go out as a check. After that 11-12K is out for Noisetor. That leaves $33Kish, of that we're about to pay $1100 for accounting for the year so we have around $30Kish which is 5 months expenses but it includes lumpy donations from December and isn't reliable. Noisebridge still needs more recurring donors donating. You can donate via donate.noisebridge.net. If you have an employer they can match donations. If you're here more than 3 times a month, you're getting value that you should appreciate from the space and donate for. Every time you come into the space, ask your self can I raise my hand today that I've donated recently to Noisebridge?
• Noisetor (See the bulletpoints at the bottom of http://noisetor.net/finances/#summary):
• Any other details by those participating in handling our financials
• Donate to specific projects by donating with a text comment and see the projects at https://donate.noisebridge.net/projects such as lockers and electronics supplies to make LED projects.

Consensus and Discussion

• Chris Simms: I want to build a table for Noisebridge. I would like to host a fundraiser to raise some funds for it. Something like a LAN party to get donations. I could keep that LAN party going weekly and use that to raise money for the space! $5 to play donations for example would let people play.
• Alex: I'm donating my Oculus to make a VR kiosk here that could be combined with the LAN gaming computer.
• Valentin: We'd like to do mixed reality to let people mix reality in hackerspaces. Come join us to work on that.
• What would be good in the space for a LAN party? Have video games, XBox, etc.
• We could combine this setup for a pre-GDC event and re-use the game stuff during the GDC party.
• Trent: A google cardboard would be useful as a VR device.
• Alex: I have a nice plastic Cardboard to contribute Does anyone have a mobile phone to put in it?
• We will have the prototype Flaschen Taschen to play with during GDC party.
• Everyone should talk to Milo about helping on the Flaschen Taschen.

• Trent: Discussing with Lee a RasbPi cloud thing in the back for people to experiment with configs that get wiped periodically. If you have RasbPi with ethernet we could use them.

• invite a knowledgeable volunteer to give a brief primer on consensus process
• It is important that everyone in attendance understands at least:
  • Blocking with verbalized principled objections.
  • Why we use consensus over other approaches to decision making.
  • How consensus isn't a legislative process
  • Why consensus isn't applicable to some things like conflict resolution, resolution of time sinks, and the like.

Proposals from last week

(Add any items which are consensed upon or someone has raised a principle objection for to the Consensus Items History page.)

Proposals for next week

(Add any new items for consensus to the Current Consensus Items page.)

Discussion Items

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