sudo-discuss June 2022

sudo-discuss@sudoroom.org

20 participants
47 discussions

ok NFTs aren't cool anymore... we can talk about them again

by romy＠snowyla.com

ok NFTs aren't cool or making money anymore! we can talk about them again! Just kidding, (actually I'm not), but Jake did make a good point that NFTs aren't ecological. I was involved in the early days of NFT (d'oh) since I live here. I'm interested in jump starting any kind of digital printmaking, online or in person art gallery through SudoRoom for the common good! It's a topic brewing, but whew, thankfully nobody is making money on NFTs anymore.

1 year, 10 months

getting the robot working again

by Jake

the other day when Fitz was there I remembered some of the tricks needed to get our monster Yaskawa robot to work. I made some updates to the wiki. https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Giant_robot_arm Here are some pictures: https://spaz.org/~jake/pix/2022-05/robot.html we replaced the battery in the robot arm (behind the connectors in the base, this battery is to preserve memory in the position encoders) and the battery in the computer cabinet (to preserve its configuration memory and "disk" when it's off) but a couple of the position encoders on the arm are not happy and it's doing this: https://spaz.org/~jake/pix/2022-05/20220531_205803.jpg although sometimes it doesn't even get that far. Anyone interested in learning how to get this machine going? I don't want to be the only one who knows -jake

1 year, 10 months

Kinesis Advantage2 keyboard

by Jake

Does anyone on this list want an ergonomic keyboard? It doesn't belong at Sudoroom but is worth something to the right person. https://kinesis-ergo.com/shop/advantage2/ take it and make a donation! or tell a friend! or just take it. it's cluttering the space -jake

1 year, 10 months

thoughts on helping new members get up and running with SudoRoom (non obvious approaches to diversity)

by romy＠snowyla.com

I have some thoughts about helping new members get up and running at SudoRoom. - I haven't been participating in discussions as much as I could have because I get everything in a big email summary. It's hard to see when people are replying to me, I guess over the years I forgot there's an easy web panel board. Maybe we could link to this more directly? https://sudoroom.org/lists/hyperkitty/list/sudo-discuss@sudoroom.org/ - Helping out women and non binary folks Over the years people have asked me to help get more women and cool people get involved in hackerspaces. This is a noble cause, but a lot of the approaches like celebrating diversity etc. might not be the right approach for hackers and nerds. How do you get more women and minorities and hackerspaces while keeping the spirit of the hack? It's quite complicated, true, because SudoRoom is not for everybody. There was a time when there were a lot of brogrammers working on startups who were interested in joining. They were not interested in any social good causes or making the world a better place - I think they were looking more for something like WeWork, and that was fine! Maybe they could join a "tech incubator space" At the same time there has been a cool drive to get more minorities and women into tech spaces. I think this is very cool! It's obviously "complicated", with so many social and class and gender structures going on. I've seen a lot of these initiatives, and there are some easy wins that nobody can deny that mostly focus on: (A) People trying to break into tech to get a good job that pays well. These initiatives have a lot of corporate and branding pep talks. They have their place, and we definitely want to help people learn to fish so they can fulfill their basic needs. These kinds of initiatives involve a lot of interview training, career development initiatives, and basic intro to coding or git courses. I should know because as a self taught programmer I participated in these, and I benefitted a ton from these! The downside to career-focused tech diversity causes is that they focus on money and careers. We all know that the obvious money and career topics are actually not the best choices for people who are truly interested on creating and learning about programming. Even for long term career growth you want people who want to learn programming, not just how to build websites on Ruby on Rails and javascript shopping ecarts. (B) Initiatives around teaching local youth to get into tech or workshops to tutor kids. Who can argue against these? It's very feel good. The only downside with teaching and volunteering with kids is that the pressure is heavily set upon women in tech to lead these, and I personally don't think there is anything about women that makes them more appropriate for taking care of kids or teaching them. Also, societally we need more male or trans folks to teach kids for diversity as education below the university level is heavily skewed to females. So if SudoRoom wants to tackle the diversity topic, I think we have to find a more unique way to do this. (A) careers for minorities breaking into tech and (B) educating women are well served by people outside of hackerspaces. (A) and (B) are not what SudoRoom is particularly great at, and I do not see how most people can become their best hacker doing either (A) or (B) when they are not suited to it. We also come to one of Omni Commons' greatest weaknesses - a love for administration and endless meetings. I know it's the nature of the space, but I'd like to help get people who are hackers to come and hack here without having to get involved in endless meetings and discussions. A hackerspace should provide an environment in which hackers can come, socialize but also reach their ideal flow state and creativity. If people are going to a lot of administrative meetings, are coordinating meetups, or hyping other hackerspaces in red states in the United States, that doesn't leave them the opportunity to develop themselves as hackers and create and add to the vibe of the space. (It is also extremely irresponsible to hype any place in a red state at this time, or tell any hackers it is a good idea to move there, especially women or anyone who has a woman in their family. Women are literally getting prosecuted for murder for having miscarriages! oh my!) OK so this was all long winded but the gist of it is: Let's try to get the diversity ball rolling in hackerspaces in a non obvious way, something different from the diversity non profit complex. Let's help people get ramped up and into the flow state. Let's free women from the obligation of volunteering to educate kids or do noncreative work. Let's make complex technical projects easy to understand and ramp up on, and not cage women and minorities into endless beginner's projects in the name of making technology more accessible for all. There are many ways to make things better, and one of those ways is being the best hacker you want to be!

1 year, 10 months

Weekly Meeting! (Week 21)

by Andrew R Gross

Hi everyone, The weekly meeting is scheduled for tonight at 8 PM. You can join in person or at *https://meet.waag.org/turtlesturtlesturtles <https://meet.waag.org/turtlesturtlesturtles>* I don't know what's on the agenda, but stop by. There's always stuff to discuss (plus show and tell!) If you have anything else to add, feel free to add it to the agenda: https://pad.riseup.net/p/sudoroommeeting-keep. *Andrew R Gross, (he/him)* 412.657.5332 - shrad.org <http://www.shrad.org>

1 year, 10 months

thinking of starting a Blender learn together meetup / online thread

by romy＠snowyla.com

Hi! I'm thinking of starting a Blender learn together meetup/online Course. Ideally this should be during a weekly or semimonthly/biweekly night (not even sure). What would be cool is if we made tutorials that were very SudoRoom specific, such as constructing a 3D model of the SudoRoom space, or creating a SudoRoom logo in 3 dimensions. Also, this would be a cool way to get video editing and the light projection stuff wrapped up into the SudoRoom projects!

1 year, 10 months

[omni-consensus] Fwd: Proposed budget process for the events team (fwd)

by Jake

Dear Sudoroom, As delegate I have to represent the interests of the sudoroom membership on issues that affect everyone. I haven't got a lot of responses to other proposals i've put forward. I want to remind everyone that the best way to stay involved with omni-wide decisions is to join the consensus email list, and even attend delegates' meetings if you like. They're open to everyone. Below is a proposal to let the events booking group have a fund made from money that events bring in, that they can make use of with less supervision, in the interests of improving the process of putting on events. It's an important moneymaking group at Omni and I trust them to do a good job with it. If nobody objects then i'll say Sudoroom is in favor of this proposal. -jake sudoroom's delegate to the omni commons ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 31 May 2022 15:21:57 -0700 From: Yardena Cohen <yardenack(a)gmail.com> To: Jake <jake(a)spaz.org> Cc: consensus <consensus(a)lists.omnicommons.org> Subject: Re: [omni-consensus] Fwd: Proposed budget process for the events team Yes, ideally all collective members would take an active interest in every detail of Omni's operations. In practice, the delegates often have to use their own judgement to figure out which things need to be escalated to the status of a "full community-wide proposal" and which things are just minor operational changes which fall reasonably within the parameters of prior consensus decisions. That's the balance we've struck in our own pragmatic mix of direct vs representative democracy. I would welcome proposals to add more clear structure around this. Tbh this proposal is my attempt at creating some structure which solves some of that problem. I am not a delegate and I don't really care either way. I just want other folks to consider it, and the consensus list is the place to start those conversations. On Tue, May 31, 2022 at 3:07 PM Jake <jake(a)spaz.org> wrote: > > Is this not a proposal that delegates need to put before their collectives? Or > do the delegates have the ability to decide on their own? I don't understand. > > -jake > > On Tue, 31 May 2022, Yardena Cohen wrote: > >> I would like the delegates to consider this proposal. Instead of event >> income going directly to omni's general funds, the events team would >> get its own bank account, make regular transfers of $6k/mo (when >> available) to omni checking, and keep any surplus as an independent >> operating budget. The events team would decide what to do with this >> budget. What do you all think? >> >> ---------- Forwarded message --------- >> From: Yardena Cohen <yardenack(a)gmail.com> >> Date: Thu, May 26, 2022 at 8:15 AM >> Subject: Proposed budget process for the events team >> To: events at omni <events(a)lists.omnicommons.org>, finance >> <finance(a)lists.omnicommons.org> >> >> >> Hey all, I'd like to float an idea for you all. What if the events >> team had its own money and could set its own budget? My idea is that: >> >> * events wg gets its own bank account >> * all event income goes into that account >> * all event expenses come from that account >> * events wg can make its own internal/autonomous decisions about who >> gets access to that account and how money comes/goes (as long as >> decisions are transparent and standard 501c3 rules are followed) >> * events wg makes a regular transfer of $6k each month to omni's general funds >> * beyond that, all funds are kept by the event wg >> >> I think that, over time, this bank account would grow, and the events >> group would be able to do great things with it. This would hopefully >> lead to less micromanaging from the delegates / the rest of the omni >> community and remove some pressure by setting clear and finite >> expectations. Decisions about work should be made by the people doing >> the work. Leftover money could also be used to pay stipends to enable >> more people to do work who aren't independently wealthy. >> >> What do you all think of this idea? >> _______________________________________________ >> consensus mailing list >> consensus(a)lists.omnicommons.org >> https://omnicommons.org/lists/listinfo/consensus >>

1 year, 10 months

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sudo-discuss June 2022