Meeting Notes 2016 06 21

These are the notes from the The XXXth Meeting of Noisebridge. Date: June 21 2016 Note-taker: Sophia, Frances, and others; Moderators: Alex.

• 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:
  • Since we are 501c3, we can't do political stuff like Bernie Sanders campaigning with Bullitt
  • Matt's Maptime meetup. Check out http://maptime.io/ and come map hack!!
  • BAHA is restarting 2nd sundays July 10th! Blake and people talking about it on a www.reddit.com/r/Hackbay reddit for security related stuff.
  • Sophia and Frances are doing a hands-on design workshop 20th of July Wednesday to hack together at the design process.
  • Digital archivists is having a meeting Thursday 7PM at the Noisetable. Trent wrote the code into the app, now we have to have it in the space.
  • Next Monday Python class taught by Gareth Morgan about GPU OpenGL programming. Bring a linux system with a video card!
  • Noiseconcert housing rally this Sat during Pride weekend @Community Center next to West Oakland BART. Ask Victoria about it, www.eastbayforward.orghas details. Noise bands will play till almost Midnight.
  • Last Tomorrow night Wednesday) is meetup of intermediate electronics group, topic of the night is salvaging parts from electronics. If you know about it or want to, show up because we're not just teaching we're going to process some of Noisebridge's backlog of electronics donations into useful parts. Usually starts around 7PM hacker time.
• Finances:
• New members:
• New philanthropists:
• Consensus Items:
• Discussion Items:

Introductions

• Introduce any experimental or unusual moderation techniques that may be using during the meeting like: direct responses, limited speaking time, orderless stack, &c.
• Round of introductions (remember, announcements come later):
  • What's your name
  • What do you do
  • What do you maintain at Noisebridge?
  • if you are new: how did you hear about Noisebridge?

• Marcus: Interested in Unity tonight.
• Jarvis: I do android apps and currently the Unity class.
• Frederick: Visiting from Germany. Studying computer engineering in Berlin.
• Edmund: Intern here from NJ for summer. I appreciate NB as a hackerspace to learn new things.
• Blake: Into network and web app security. Looking into getting BAHA restarted.
• Frank: Broadband radio and space development.
• Steve: Theoretical physicist/software developer. Working on maximum entropy system mechanics on flocking birds. Research done but I want to implement it in Cinder 3D graphics demo on Rift so your fingers are predators scultping the flock.
• Victoria: Been coming to NB over 2 yearsish. From the future.
• Trent: Work as web dev teaching Python class, work on library fair amount.
• Jehan: Working on incentivized routing stuff. Noisebridging for 5 years.
• Cooper: Second day here. Work with lasers, high current high voltage stuff and big electronics. Here to learn programming.
• Rob: Also my second day here. Full time job seeker seeking web dev job. Excited about virtual reality augmented reality and game development.
• Bullitt: I come here for whatever. Yeah! Currently in Sparkleforge helping construction painting ceiling.
• Rob: Working on Dockerizing containers for web applications. Occassional Ruby class teacher.
• Tayopa: I come to NB on semi-regular basis. Got things for sparkleforge.
• Zephyr: I thought I was into Ethereum.
• Levi: Came 6 years ago, floated around the country, back last few weeks. Learning apps for web development and non-profit work. Happy space still exists!
• Scotty: Software engineer, entrepreneur, digital nomad, SF is center of orbit. Making bookcase LEDs crash less and work on Flaschentaschen.
• Matt: I like maps! Come for circuit hacking and hardware stuff.
• Frances: Been here about 20 days. Web and mobile design consultant. Going to help co-run a workshop with Sophia in July about DESIGN!
• Razzi: I'm here to read and procrastinate doing laundry. I'll be here for a WHILE.
• Henner: I like programming and hardware stuff. Was involved in making Flaschen Taschen things. Next project is organizing our electronic parts.
• Sophia: I do web design. I'm really happy to have found this place here. The mindset and the energy is what I was looking for since back in Paris. Trying to learn new coding skills and circuit hacking and did a bit of Flaschen Taschen at maker faire. Doing design workshop in July on the 20th. Looking to find others willing to learn about design!
• Aaron: I make food, video games, and break security.
• Alex: I teach game development after Noisebridge meetings on Tuesdays.
• Sylvana: I used to come about 5 years ago. Place has really changed. It is wonderful. Seamstress by trade. Here to help people learn to use the machines.

• Invite a knowledgeable volunteer to explain what Noisebridge is about:

Noisebridge is a 501c3 nonprofit that provides a space for creation, collaboration, and learning about technology and creative projects. Noisebridge provides space, power tools, and infrastructure to help the public learn new skills and create cool things. Noisebridge continues to exist through and depends entirely on membership fees and donations. Our code of conduct is 'Be excellent to each other'."

Short announcements and events

• Bullitt: Is anyone using the space Thursday who would like to participate one day a week to collaborate on helping Bernie Sanders become president?
• Henner: Since we are 501c3, we have trouble with political involvement even if we agree with it. There's a fine line. I don't know what it is.
• Trent: We can't do election campaigns.
• Aaron: We had same rules at another hackerspace.

• Matt: Maptime is a meetup, very inclusive to help people do map and cartographic things. From setting up your own tile server to make web maps and doing hand-drawn maps. Looking for a place to have a meetup, used to be at Stamen(?) but we think it aligns with Noisebridge goals well. Some meetings have been crowded so we will possibly limit population below 40 people.
• Scotty and Henner: Check schedule and we can accomodate the people. Check out http://maptime.io/ and come map hack!!

• Blake: BAHA is restarting! I came to meetups and found no one here. What I would like to do is have some freely available virtual boxes that are computers designed to be hackable and vulnerable old versions of software. There's good walkthroughs out there. You can see the thought process to do it and we could do it on the screen and figure it out together. Second sundays July 10th will be our next event. We are talking about it on a www.reddit.com/r/Hackbay reddit for security related stuff.

• Sophia: Design workshop 20th of July Wednesday. Purpose is to go into details about design process from problem solving to prototyping final product app or wireframe. Open to anyone interested in getting deeper understanding about design process. 90% of it doesn't have to happen on computer. It can be learned on paper and hand-making prototypes.

• Trent: Digital archivists is having a meeting Thursday 7PM at the Noisetable. We're at the point where we can label all the books with magic tags with intended locations! This means we'll be able to find stuff. I wrote the code into the app, now we have to have it in the space.

• Trent: Next Monday Python class taught by Gareth Morgan about GPU OpenGL programming. Bring a linux system with a video card!

• Victoria: Mentioned last week, not relavent to non-Eastbay yet, but this Saturday we're having a noiseconcert housing rally. Show up to meet other cool people who care about housing. People from all over playing. This is Pride weekend too. Ask Victoria about it, www.eastbayforward.org has details. Noise bands will play till almost Midnight. Community center next to West Oakland bart.

• Scotty: Tomorrow night (Wednesday) is meetup of intermediate electronics group, topic of the night is salvaging parts from electronics. If you know about it or want to, show up because we're not just teaching we're going to process some of Noisebridge's backlog of electronics donations into useful parts. Usually starts around 7PM hacker time.

• Cool new projects? Something you'd like people to know? Say now, but keep it short! One or two sentences please!
• Any happenings at the space of which members should be made aware.
• Don't hog everyone's time since we all just want to hack!

Membership Binder

• Victoria: Membership at noisebridge is more a state of deep introspection. You don't need to do anything to be a memeber, but it comes with responsibilities. To become a member, you must get two sponsors, and write down what you want to join Noisebridge for. Then we talk about you for four weeks. After the four meetings, you show up and we interrogate you. Then we ask you to step out, and we consense. There are membership dues (again not required to be a member). You will be invited to be a member(?)

• 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.

• Alex: Read Scotty's romantic application to be NB member after a year of being part of the community

Philanthropists

• Invite a knowledgeable member to describe Philantropy, and the application process.
• 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(?)
• Scotty: The reason you become a philanthropist is to make a commitment to be excellent at Noisebridge even during off hours when there may not be a lot of people in space. In particular, to keep an eye on who comes in early morning and late at night. They get 24/7 access and agree to close up if they are last keyholder present and pay membership dues as members: $80/month or $40/month starving hacker rate or whatever is agreed between you and the Treasurer and Chtuluh. You just need 1 member to vouch for you at the meeting and it happens just like that.
• Henner: For those who are pretty new here, it is a good idea to get to know someone for your application sponsor to be able to vouch for you.

• Aaron: does game dev, penttesting, works at cafe.

• Alex: [the door and stuff are a big deal.] ... MONEY

Financial Report

• Funds in bank:
• Noisetor (See the bulletpoints at the bottom of http://noisetor.net/finances/#summary):
• Any other details by those participating in handling our financials

• Alex: Our rent is raised upon lease renewal, ~5k a month. expses, add 1k. we need money for nice stuff, eg la$er$. we're close but not there. Generally, we need more cash for more lasers, big difference, huge, mights, incredible... should pay for it. See NB donate page

Consensus and Discussion

• 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.
• Scotty: Noisebridge makes decisions most of the time by doocracy where you see things that need doing that people think are excellent and just do it.
• For some things that are more discussion worthy, we use lower c asking people consensus to figure out what is a good ideafirst.
• For big things that affect the community like big expenditures of money we talk about and agree by upper case C consensus. That process is we come to a meeting and announce that we'd like to make a consensus proposal. You write a written proposal that is read out loud. We discuss and see where we stand. We let it sit and be discussed electronically and in person and come next meeting to see if we're still in general agreement. If we're not in agreement and we want to find a compromise people are happy with by the second meeting, we can agree it is consensced. If it is problematic still, any member can make a block to keep discussion going to find a better compromise.

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.)

• Link to last week's discussion of this consensus item: https://noisebridge.net/wiki/Meeting_Notes_2016_06_15

• Victoria: Some quick background for those new to this. Week before last, Jacob Applebaum, a core dev of Tor project left Tor under conditions of accusations of sexual assault. This sparked a discussion amongst Noisebridge as he was a cofounder of the space. Over the last few years, we turned around the space and made it a place where sexual assault is no longer happening. In particular, we want to make it clear that under our anti-harassment policy causes Jake to be excluded from the space and formally ban him. It is symbolic since he was threatened legally by the US and won't be returning to the US. What we came up with on the words last week is here. We had some contention about the wording. Some words were blocked by a member but the modified wording is something we can all live with and it is not necessarily the words that we use that matter as much as what we do next that is more important. Going further from this day, how does Noisebidge deal with cases of sexual harassment and assault? People left before for these kinds of reasons and told the world Noisebridge sucked.
• A member blocked the wording "sexual assault" for reaons and we ammended it to "unwanted sexual conduct".
• Steve: An update of what I've heard since last week. Since meeting last week, 2 more people have come out and identified themselves as previously anonymous accusers of sexual assault against Jacob Appelbaum: Isis Lovecruft and Alison Macrina. Some of the people who had called him out before had remained anonymous. There was a contingent of the hacker community that was making the point that people accusing Jake might be full of shit if they are anonymous. It is significant that 2 people who we both know have accused him. I don't think the allegations are wrong in any way because the witnesses are people we know. I wanted to bring that up since it happened since last week.
• Scotty: Mitch had concerns with the wording about sexual assault vs involuntary sexual contact. His concern was that not only were some of the accounts anonymous, but also the site creator was anonymous. It wasn't clear whether there were people behind every account or if one person was taking advantage of the situation to smear Jake. That does not seem to be the case. It would be nice if Mitch was here to state how he feels now. He said on slack that he was still uncomfortable with the wording until he can see for himself the latest postings.
• Zephyr: So important. There was once a man who JZ who we all banned with his name on the Internet. Someone's friend of a friend accused him of rape at a festival. He went to court and proved it was untrue and the girl admitted it was untrue. Having someone we know says it happens rather than someone hearing something from soneone unknown makes a big difference. JZ had to change his name because shit people from Nosiebridge wrote about him (that is googleable) and it was sad how everybody got worked up about taking him out ( without first-hand knowledge of all facts).
• Scotty: We do need to make sure not to discourage people from coming forward if they're victims of harassment or intimidation or assault or feel uncomfortable, it is okay to report it anonymously and we will still respect that report. What was hard was that we didn't know if the people who reported were real so nobody knew who they were or if they were sock puppets.
• Zephyr: There's a long he said she said story that started with someone making accusations that someone read this report and came saying he was a Noisebridge member saying we should ban him.
• Steve: I'm not sure what you're arguing, I think it is be careful before making strong statements.
• Victoria: There was a long week-and-a-half discussion and soul searching amongst the group and we did not decide on a whim to do something about Jake. It wasn't taken lightly. Part of discussion that came out was to formally ban Jake to go further than saying he would just be unwelcome.
• Zephyr: This does seem to be a good model of well thought out process and it was done well.
• Henner: Knowing Isis, I trust her. I personally would like to put stronger words in the statement. Mitch is not here to get up to speed with her statements but I feel the wording as is can convey our content. On record I'd like stronger language but I'm fine with the way it is right now.
• Steve: Unwanted sexual contact is classified in Calfifornia as sexual assault or rape.
• Blake: There's no ideal way to deal with it. You just have to deal with it. It was an accusation against a schoolmate and it broke the whole group of people apart though it turned out to be false in the end. Allegations like this are serious and shouldn't be made lightly. A friend of a friend of a friend is a bit removed.
• Henner: We're not talking about friends of friends, we're talking about Isis who we know who described it and we trust her. In general, our goal is to make clear that this is unacceptable behaviour and has no place at Noisebridge. Whoever is doing such things has no place here. We are not stating an accusations or statements of fact, we are saying these things don't have a place at Noisebridge and people may be banned from Noisebridge for doing this kind of thing.
• Andy: Did someone get a statement?
• Steve: He put forward a statement.
• Scotty: We're having 2 conversations. First, there's this instance of Jacob Appelbaum and the statement to ban him. Then a broader conversation about how we handle accusations of assault and we finish the consensus proposal now and have the larger discussion after. Zephyr expressed concerns that some cases like JZ were mishandled in the past but I feel other cases we dind't respond adequately.
• Victoria: All in favor of doing one and then the other.

Members present:

   * Victoria, Henner, Steve, Zephyr, Alex, Trent.
   * Victoria: I'm calling for consensus. Does anyone block this?
   * SILENCE.
   * Victoria: It is consented. Jacob Appelbaum is banned.

WHEREAS: Jacob Appelbaum is a founder and former member of Noisebridge; and

WHEREAS: Harassment, emotional abuse, unwanted sexual contact, and other
non-consensual behaviors are entirely unacceptable from a member or participant of the
Noisebridge community; and

WHEREAS: It is the intent of Noisebridge to create an inclusive and
harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender
identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance,
body size, race, religion, housing status, or language; and

WHEREAS: Jacob Appelbaum has demonstrated a long-term pattern of
harassment, unwanted sexual contact, and non-consensual behavior with members of
the greater hacker community; now, therefore be it

CONSENSED: Jacob Appelbaum is banned permanently from the space due to
his long-term patterns of harassment, unwanted sexual contact, and
non-consensual behavior entirely unacceptable from a member of the Noisebridge
community. He is prohibited from entering the space or participating in
the community; and may it be

FURTHER CONSENSED: This ban is considered a safe-space ban for the
purposes of outstanding reciprocal ban agreements that Noisebridge has
established with other existing hackerspaces

CONSENSUS PASSED.

Proposals for next week

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

Discussion Items

• Can we get the notes?
• Yes. on the wiki.

ART DOOCRACY

• Cooper: Quick question: As far as the art on the walls, what is the policy? I'd like to invite my girlfriend to do art here. Doocracy involves a process to decide what to put on a wall.
• Frank: Don't disable a projection wall.
• Henner: Lower case c consensus applies. If you are here with her and members around you can suggest it informally with a clear idea of what it would be to people and get some feedback. Go ahead and get buy-in and just do it.
• Trent: One good test is if you make something that doesn't work out, be prepared to revert and whitewash it after.
• Frank: It has been suggested to make art portable so it can be re-arranged as a piece and still exist somewhere.
• Like a flatboard attached to a wall rather than wall itself.
• Trent: Wall is certainly acceptable as well.
• Alex: https://noisebridge.net/wiki/Artbridge has some of the ideas

• HOW TO MAKE NOISEBRIDGE A SAFER SPACE BY WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED

• Victoria: As we talked about this for about 3 weeks, historically Noisebridge has been bad at dealing with this stuff. More important is what happens afterwards. Earlier today a friend of NB Lee Honeywell wrote something about rockstar culture in tech communities. It talks about how Jacob rose to popular power in the community and was able to abuse that power in terrifying ways. I'd like to read her main points:

   * Have an official policy
   * Start with the assumption that harassment reports are true and investigate them thoroughly
   * Make it easy for victims to find and coordinate with each other
   

• Scotty: I also had a lot of conversations about this in the past few weeks. I guess this has been a time for me to learn a lot. I came into this wanting to know how we should deal with this. My initial reaction was of disbelief since he had previously seemed like a good guy in the community and I wondered how to trust anonymous reports on anonymous web sites. I learned that there are a lot of reasons for victims not to report the harassment and assault. There are usually many more reasons not to report than to report for them. There's little to gain and a lot to lose such as respect in community, losing job, further victimization.
• At the same time, the way we try and prosecute sex crimes and such through legal mechanisms often discourages victims from reporting crimes. They're hard crimes to successfully prosecute. A lot of people are acquitted that did something wrong but its hard to not devolve into two people arguing in court. I say all that because I've done a lot of thinking about how Noisebridge communicates our attitude and approach to sexual harassment, assault, and intimidation to our community. I'm not sure we do it well. We don't talk about our anti-harassment policy enough. I've learned from NB that the only way we keep community safe by talking. There is a certain set of topics around community health and safety that need to be continually talked about. We are good at constantly talking about door access and who is allowed, but not enough about complaints.
• We could talk about what it means to be a safe space and how to use our anti-harassment policy every week. The more codified the better it will be. Guys in particular don't know a lot about what women experience in tech communities and can learn from this how to help everyone feel safe. We may not be personally harassing people but we may not realize how to make an environment where people feel safe coming forward. Saying "we have to be careful about how we accuse people" shouldn't convey that people should be afraid of being believed and punished if they aren't believed.
• Zephyr: I totally agree and I think I muddied the waters with the previous topic. The meme of false accusations is something that circulates around society for so long that it is at a point where we all know that prosecution of rapes often fall through not because of facts of case but because of inadequate judicial system. They don't get acquitted because they don't have evidence, it just wasn't prosecuted successfully.
• This isn't a case like that. Back when JZ was around, he was someone who enforced Noisebridge safety rules and there were some parasitic people who wanted to kick out JZ to stop him from calling them out for sleeping here that may have been behind his ousting. Just because you heard something may have happened doesn't necessarily mean you have the write to say for sure what happened till people get a chance to investigate further.

• Cooper: It is a slippery slope and there is potential for both parties depending on what transpired. Either it happened and they got away with it or we crucify someone innocent. Neither are good. I don't have solutions just ideas. We need a system that is not overly sensitive but not so convoluted and dull that it lets things happen. It doesn't ned to be too strictly written that there are loop holes. We need to think long and hard about how to handle it like a framework and how many layers of separation. If they say a friend of a friend, we find the friend and keep going.
• Levi: It was interesting what someone said about JZ. When I came to Noisebridge there were individuals perceived as outsiders. Preschoolers and hippies and non-techie kids who came here. There was a consensus that people who weren't techies didn't belong here and should be pushed out. This is something that's being talked about after 6 years. The bigger discussion to have is a discussion with the tech community. I don't want to get all SJW but there is a tendency for people to talk about sexual assault... People are afraid of being persecuted themselves if they should be accused unjustly in the future. How in safe spaces can the language that is created is accessible to the people who need to know. How can Noisebridge shift paradigms? Can we make a social shift not just at weekly meetings? Can we create a better dynamic between genders and sexes and could we bring outside individuals and speakers who are experienced about this topic to teach about it?
• Chris: direct response, I think we need to have a trustworthy member of community to whom reports can go to without fear of spreading or retribution. There's not now a person known for such reports to go to and there may be more that we don't know about.
• Alex: a long time ago.. there was a case where someone in the community did some creepy stuff in the community... it was hard to tell if they were mentally ill or malicious. Alex approached him about it individually... it seemed like things were going in the direction of a sexual assult thing.... A few pp who are awesome helped me conduct a background check... produced a rap sheet that this guy was a sexual criminal. ... Honeywell's point was that... a dozen or so people produced different negative experiences.. Resources like the people who helped Alex were exteremely indespencible.

• Tayopa: We have ways of deliberating with a person in place. Is it enough for saying they're making people feel uncomfortable now?
• Cooper: A logical progression is do we have mediation services here?
• Zephyr: We do.
• Scotty: Mediation is not particular useful in cases of sexual harassment in general because it penalizes the victim. It isn't a matter of personal conflict. We have stepped back from so much mediation. It was a far better use of community time to remove a conflict-causing person from community and let the person deal with their conflict with someone on their own.
• Tayopa: It is important to keep the discussion to take people seriously about what makes the space of Noisebridge safe.

Zephyr: I remember that case and it was important for what Victoria said. If certain kinds of people do things, they seem like the kind of person we expect to hang out here, we assume that they are innocent too much.

• Cooper: I do like the idea of using an outside background check in these cases because people wear different faces in different contexts.

• Victoria: Touching a lot of things we talked about. Scotty mentioned saying things about anti-harassment as part of regular meeting. Historically, Noisebridge has been bad at pointing out missing stairs (If you lived in a house with missing stairs you work around by habit and someone new shows up shocked that the stair is broken until one day the stair rapes someone and everyone realizes they should have fixed the stair sooner). We are fairly radically inclusive space. The notion of bringing up the missing stair and reporting with confidence what problems exist that people are ignoring. It is important for us to have a safe environment for these things to be discussed. A way to foster that is to talk about it every single meeting. During reboot, we talked about what Noisebridge membership meant. Earlier today we had a long discussion about consensus and membership because we sort of forgot. Does Scotty have specific ideas about how to discuss it during the meeting.
• Scotty: Maybe we could have something like a section of meeting where moderator says "Does anybody want to talk about what it means for Noisebridge to be a safe space?" similar to talking about what membership means and how consensus works.
• Hopefully we talk about the anti-harassment policy to ask everyone at meeting, "Who here is willing lto talk to people about harassment issues that come up?" We could take a stab at it and see how it emerges. I think people coming here for first time might have questions about it and it becomes an ongoing conversation.
• Victoria: I agree except about encouraging people to talk about problem issues during the meeting. We have chosen not to encourage dramas at meetings because it used to drain people.
• Scotty: I agree.
• Alex: Was it about people volunteering about being points of contact?
• Scotty: Yes.

• Zephyr: omitted. socialist millionaires protocol is a *cryptographic* solution.

   * Aaron: Any system we come up with, as a pentester I can say, will be abused. There's nothing foolproof. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to come up with a system, but we should have the ability to 'patch' any problems that arise in a quick and transparent matter.
   * Alex: One of the questions about the handling of JZ's case and the potential misuse of second-hand info smearing his name till he could prove it in court is that the use of his name on our mailing list was hard enough that he changed his name.
   * Aaron: Possibly.
       *Cooper: Investigation is enough to ruin someone.
       
   * Henner: One thing I see is that when we talk about things at the meeting it can be like codified things we talk about the same every week without changing. While we have to do these kinds of things, I'd like to arrive at the kind of place where these things don't even happen. One thing we know is that tech community in general has a problem with inappropriate behaviour and harassment. One part of the problem is that people aren't called out for behaving inappropriately. Something happens and people look away because it seems it could be construed as an okay behaviour. While trying to change behaviour of tech community, we should be hyper aware that these things can and do happen all the time. We're not really aware that women face a lot of micro-agressions and advances all the time and being aware that it happens all the time is something we all should practice.
   * If someone is working together with someone and it seems like it could be innocent but you're not sure, you can ask how everyone is doing. I would like a book of such cases for people to read about what really happens in these cases that you may not have heard about. Addressing them where they could happen is important. We have general policy, to make it work we should make sure people are aware. Similar to other social problems. If someone comes in who looks fishy, we look into it. Similarly when there's interactions with two people and checking in on them. It should be essentially clear to anyone that might be a victim who hasn't come forward that they can feel safe in the community speaking to someone about it. We might want to ask someone who knows how to deal with sexual harassment cases to give us insight on how to deal with this. We might not know the whole story or how to work with victims adequately, so maybe we can invite some of the experts to teach us how to deal with it. How to get a grasp on how these things happen and how to deal with them. How to make sure that people can find each other and exchange information. It took Isis a while to put together puzzle pieces and realize she was not the only one. Getting external help could be good.
   

• Scotty: About putting together puzzle pieces... There's red flags for people who don't belong at Noisebridge. We have and haven't applied it. Someone may exhibit things. Someone walking in the door saying, "I know Mitch Altman," or "I know the owner", or "I've been coming here for years." These aren't automatically bad, but if you see more of these it may add up to enough red flags that we should be concerned. These don't condemn a person but if you mention one red flag you noticed in the community, you may hear from many others about concerns about a person that completes a picture. I think we do that well for a certain class of people to see if they're here for the right reasons to weed out people who might be here to sleep or steal things.
• We are not yet talking about the red flags for assault or intimidation. I don't know the right forum for this sensitive topic. I think we need to start putting together pieces about this sooner. It should be okay for a red flag without it being high-consequence if it turns out to be nothing.

• Cooper: We're in a bit of a loop. If people come in, we all take responsibility to compare notes with each other and seeing if anyone else shares our concerns.
• Scotty: For you and I, that's a comfortable thing to do, for others they didn't feel comfortable. That's what I mean
• Victoria: I'd like to ask Levi and Tayopa for input.
• Tayopa: I'd like to discuss this after thinking about it soon over Slack.
• Levi: One of the things I've noticed since coming back is lots of people not guys are here, much more than I saw before. Beyond that, these discussions are basically talking about social condition of women in tech communities. Broad subjects can't be fixed through safe space discussions. How are we going to work with people who refuse to be worked with? Is there going to be a level of social stigmatization? People who are part of minorities...(?) The way the conversation is going is into murky territory. The main thing should be to trust and support women who come forward. Some stuff happened to me before elsewhere when the situation was that everyone turned against me despite my evidence and it was the most frightening experience I ever had.
• Victoria: I don't want to shut down any conversation. My view is that tech community broadly needs Noisebridge to play a significant role to the global hacker community. We are a role model looked to. We should solve problems at Noisebridge to be part of cultural shift we want to have to echo your voice. It won't solve the tech world's issue but we can try to effect a broad cultural shift in the community.
• Bullitt: I have experienced sexual harassment in tech environments (not at NB) and what Levi was talking about, that everyone I thought was my friend... Over 100 people I had repor with but only 1 guy believed me and walked me to my car when someone was waiting for me daily around 2AM stalking me. I don't know what kind of sensitivity training works but men usually haven't experienced the treatment or female gender presentation dude.
• Victoria: It's 10:30 let's discuss on Slack.

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

End of Meeting

1. Return the membership binder to its rightful location.
2. Discuss any items for which there was not time during the meeting.
3. Enjoy the company of your fellow hacker, robot, or robothacker.

Note taker posts the notes

1. Clean and tidy the meeting notes including removing all these really verbose instructions.
2. Fill out the short summary at the top listing just announcements, consensus items, discussion topics, and names of new members and philanthropists.
3. Copy paste the notes to the next meeting page. (They will become Last meeting at midnight.)
4. Email the meeting summary to Noisebridge Discuss and Noisebridge Announce lists.
5. CC on the email treasurer@noisebridge.net and secretary@noisebridge.net if there are new members and philanthropists.
6. Edit the Current Consensus Items if anything is proposed for consensus next week.
7. Edit the Consensus Items History if anything was reached consensus or failed to reach consensus this week.

Fun things to do after

• Reprise of the Hackernationale. [This is anarchy - we do what the wiki says!]
• PGP Key Signing could happen now (if it doesn't happen before any given Meeting). Ask others around the space or check the list to see who wants in on the action.