Meeting Notes 2016 07 19

These are the notes from the The XXXth Meeting of Noisebridge. Date: 2016-07-19 Note-taker: Ben W-R; Moderators: Ruth

• General discussion of Noisebridge policies and membership rules for new members
• Discussion of laser pointer class

Meeting Summary

• Announcements:
• Finances:
• New members:
• New philanthropists:

   * Adrian
   * Ruth

• Consensus Items:
• Discussion Items:

   * Class on laser cutter

Introductions

• Ruth, software engineer at Pinterest
• Ryan, Noisebridge veteran, planning to maintain the laser cutter
• Scotty, software engineer working on more hardware, maintains hack shelves and LED infra
• Mary Jane, Came from labor fest event, looking for roommate
• Darryl, AI programmer, builds funny mechanical objects
• Ben, programmer, new to the space
• Adrian, electrical engineering student, maintains electronics and 3d printers
• David, mechanical engineer who works in operations, new to the space
• Frank, also a noisebridge veteran

Safe Space

Info from Scotty:

• If someone's doing something that makes you feel uncomfortable you can reach out to anyone you trust in the community (particularly core people)
• Many channels, including Slack and the safe space working group, which meets as needed

Info from David and Scotty:

• Radical inclusiveness means going out of your way to include people and reach out to them if they're not being included
• We don't exclude people based on gender, income, sexual orientation, *

• There is an antiharassment policy, which is on the wiki and the walls

Membership Binder

• A member is a person who commits to maintaining and making noisebridge better
• By becoming a member you gain the ability to block a consensus item, and to add other members and philanthropists
• Encouraged to have a wiki page
• Membership is not required

• In order to become a member you fill out a form, and acquire two members as sponsors, and then show up to four consecutive meetings to demonstrate that you want to become a member
• At the fourth meeting, the members discuss and vote on whether you can become a member
• As with most things, membership can be blocked by any one member, but this is rare and has historically come with a recommendation to wait for a while to fix problems
• Members must pay a membership fee
• Members (and philanthropists) have 24 hour acces and must be able and willing to give tours
• There must always be a member or philanthropist in order for the space to be open

Philanthropists

• Philanthropists are like members but don't get to block consensus

• Adrian's philanthropist form is sponsored by Scotty

• Ruth's philathropist form is sponsored by Trent

Financial Report

• Funds in bank: $??? not enough, please donate
• Noisetor (See the bulletpoints at the bottom of http://noisetor.net/finances/#summary):

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.

• Consensus is our form of deciding what Noisebridge wants to do as a hackerspaceship
• It's only really used for things that really affect noisebridge (like putting in sparkleforge, or taking out a wall, or something that will cost money) (i.e. when necessary)
• Everything else is done as a do-ocracy (assuming it's not really big, and doesn't harm or massively change noisebridge)
• Propose a consensus item at a meeting, then wait a week for the next meeting and talk to people about it
• When consensus occurs, if someone blocks, you can discuss it with them and bring up the consensus item at the next meeting
• Anybody can bring up a consensus item and participate in the discussion, but only members can block
• At least three members must accede to a consensus item ("a quorum")
• Gaming the consensus process is not particularly well-regarded
• The canteloupe being considered for membership did not receive it

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.

• Ryan: When people are trained on the laser cutter we should start a class
  • Currently writing a rubric

• Ruth: At NYC resistor there was a required $75 class to use the laser cutter
  • Ryan: The class under consideration would not be on certification but on techniques such as inlaying glass and etching edible items
  • The students' would choose the focus of the class

• Frank: Safety equipment and safety person training as a separate class
  • Ryan: It would be a three-hour class, with 30 minutes devoted to basics while other students would work on projects
  • 1 to 1.5-hour tutorial on technique
  • Last hour spent on helping students with projects if they're not certified
  • Each person would get only about 10 minutes of cutting time, for equity

• Ruth: NYCR charged laser cutter time per minute
  • Ryan: Noisebridge may not want to do pay-to-use, since no other tools are,
  • Adrian: But we are going to charge a "recommended donation?"
  • Scotty: We'll charge several dollars per hour in order to maintain the laser tube
  • People will provide their own materials or we could have material that they could use

• Locked containers for materials
  • Ruth: This sounds like there are some details that need to be worked out before beginning the class
  • Yes, this is possibly a project that will start in a while

• Darryl: Some kind of key for the laser cutter?
  • Scotty: There may be an RFID system, similar to the door, in the works