Mesh/06 November 2018

People's Open Network Weekly Meeting - 6 November 2018 7:30pm-9pm

• https://omnicommons.org/wiki/Safer_Space_Policy

Agenda

• Introductions and Meeting Roles (10 mins)
• Check in on previous action items (5 mins)
• Updates & Reportbacks (20 mins)
• Next Sunday (5 mins)
• Proposal: Mobile Calyx Node for The Village (15 mins)
• Discussion: BYOI / Office Hours (15 mins)
• Action Items (5 mins)
• Breakout Groups

Introductions

Introduce yourself: Name; Preferred Pronoun; Icebreaker Response; BRIEF Announcements

• Icebreaker question: Favorite artist? Visual, musical, otherwise
• null - him/her - I like Infected Mushroom
  • have u heard of Unwashed Tomato? ;D https://www.discogs.com/artist/1329175-Unwashed-Tomato
• marc - he/him - the author of The Gods Are Bastards
• lesley - pretty much anything or she/they - I really like artists whose work you can identify from across the room. Odilon Redon, Egon Schiele, Davinci
• ben - he/they - Restricting scope to favorite webcomic. Zach Morrison - paranatural.net Middle-school kids go on adventures with goofy spirits and stuff
• felix - he/him - Thomas Kling; German poet who does language installations
• scott - any are fine - Minna Sundberg http://www.minnasundberg.fi/
• seth - he/they - julian oliver
• Mai- she/they - Doesn't like rockstar artists and having to know the personality behind art but like internet mash-ups and general memery art that emerges on the internet. Also would say Aphex Twin.
• jehan - he/him - Niac (niac.org), which I'll be going over with you today!
  • ballot Benny - greetings from the polls! 4 minutes left to vote go go go go go go

Meeting Roles

• Facilitator/s: ben
• Stacktaker:
• Notetaker/s: lesley, ben
  • URL of this pad: https://peoplesopen.net/notes

Proposal: Mobile Calyx Node for The Village

Proposal to spend ~$900~1000 on a mobile Calyx node to be first deployed at the new Village site near Coliseum for one year. Will be returned once we establish line of sight to a neighbor open to sharing their bandwidth (or reach it via Paxio link to the hills) and thus reusable for future actions / temp locations.

• https://github.com/sudomesh/projects/blob/master/proposals/mobilenode.md
• https://peoplesopen.net/pad/p/villagewifi

Idea: get a box, put a thing in it with WiFi, 4G, a battery, and a solar panel.

• 4G via Calyx membership - 400/year + 100 initial equipment fee
  • scott - will they waive equipment fee if we're providing our own?
• Put it up at the village. If it works well, then we start raising funds. Every time we get enough, we throw together another one and deploy it where there's high need.
  • Spread with mesh routers once one is up.
  • marc - during december, not that much sun - so running solar power might not work during this time - peak power usage is above 12 watts, average might be less than 8 watts. Would need 100 watt solar power to run it 24/7. Hard to mount on tall pole with 100 watt panel. Maybe have smaller panel lower. Issue is that it might get stolen.
• Total cost would be around - 400
  • modem - 125
  • altogether - 1000 for up front equipment and first year
  • Jehan - Mesh ++ makes something like this, but for 3000 - maybe they would sponsor us with one of their units.
  • Ben - 4G?
  • Jehan - not sure.
  • Mai - we should work out the logistics before we pay the 400 and start the membership. Concerns with how to secure it
  • Jehan - we could put up decoys
  • Marc - how long before we can move forward?
  • Lesley - if it's not past the 2000 limit, then we don't have to do that
  • Jehan - we have consensus, don't we
  • null - can we use a streetlight?
  • juul - no that won't work.
  • Ben - pole mounted to fence?
  • Jehan - drill, put in pilings, 30 ft
  • Marc - if someone can find a way to mount it so it won't get stolen, let's just go ahead and do it. And even if it doesn't work, we'll have a 4g access point we can use for something else
    • jenny: harbor freight flagpole w/ guy wires? there are also several structures we could mount to
      • also, village folks lock the gate when not open (currently open mon/wed/fri 10-5) and have 24/7 security

Check in on previous action items

Check previous meeting minutes at https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Mesh/Minutes and past action items below:

• Get in touch with MonkeyBrains about donated bandwidth (ben)
  • ben - I messaged them back again during last meeting; no response
• Working group to meet and plan out routing config for Archive mount on thursday 5-7
  • juul, benny, null, mai, jenny, eenblam, lesley
  • Archive Tower Meeting Notes - https://peoplesopen.net/pad/p/richmond-tower-hardware
  • ben: We talked about what we wanted and also what a minimum viable product would be for what we want to install and they're willing to just give us rackspace. We talked about bringing in a router and a switch for multiple radios on the roof. We have a 12-harddrive storage server. We just need to buy hard drives for it.
    • Mai: somebody was gonna follow up, who? (benny) the last thing Jonah asked us is what routing configuration we would use that is connected to our equipment on the tower
    • null: I think benny?
  • send e-mail about richmond tower working group meeting (mai) - done
  • marc - we agreed to meet this past Sunday. I set up the rackmount server with latest debian. Need to add babel and tunneldigger, set up cron backup, etc.
    • we're meeting again tomorrow at 3pm to finalize that.
    • When done we should be ready to just go shove it into the rack.
    • Meeting tomorrow at 3 PM to finalize.
• create text for byoi eventbrite (benny)
  • not done yet. Will do tomorrow. take a look at https://www.loomio.org/d/0h914dO3/byoi-fall-2018/5 would be awesome to decide on a simple event timeline tonite! 12-5? 3-8?
  • what do we want to do besides hang out at activity booths?
• create poster for byoi event (benny)
  • Not yet. Planning to do this week / weekend
• combine "node mount" and "office hours" sections in notes template (benny)
  • Didn't do it yet.
  • jenny did this today
    • Sick!

Updates & Reportbacks

Bugs/Technical

Priority bugs we need help with are located at: http://peoplesopen.net/helpwanted - For a high-level overview of recent Github activity, see the Trello: https://trello.com/invite/b/r9l5ouQ4/3b2eecd83bb9e7a57a339cf1ee038288/sudo-mesh-github-repos

Node Mounts & Outreach

Node Mounts Trello: https://trello.com/invite/b/DtzngKaM/49e1c21fc9da199fcdeceb8623b5117a/node-mounts

• grant - Matt from Paxio got back to us, said there is no LOS between Omni Commons and downtown Oakland? Suggested looking for places in Emeryville or Golden Gate neighborhood.
  • Ben, Marc, Jehan - ... But we do have line of sight
    • Is it possible we have wrong building?
      • -Seth i'm gonna make a googleearth map tomorrow night.
  • I'm not sure how to respond to Matt's last email, Marc or Mai wanna pick up on this thread?
  • Also benny was looking at places for Internet Archive mount in West Berkeley, maybe one those that could also see Paxio?
  • Paxio's presumed location in 436 14th St, Oakland.

• Jason's install - decide equipment - he will get sonic gigabit fiber soon. Lesley dropped off rocket + N600 with him and can see the signal from her place, but it only has a ~300 mbps throughput maximum.
• Ben - power constraints at Jeff's place. Ideally would have omnidirectional. But for his proposed setup, we might need to store equipment at Jeff's/John's and run another wire.
  • i.e. if we're going to have a rocket at each site, we'll want a directional point-to-point link as well. This means we need a switch, etc.
  • bonus issue - we're under the radar at Jeff's place
• Ben - rigth now we just have a nanobridge at Jeff's place, running sudowrt, so we would need to swap it out with one running airos. We should have either omni or sector attached to a rocket. If we're also going to put a rocket at Jeff's and a rocket at Jasons, we could just put rockets on both, or we could get a couple of Microtic wireless routers, but that would require plugging into both extender node ports on n600, which would be slow, or throwing in a switch. If we did microtics we'd need switches on both ends, which might be difficult due to landlord/power constraints at Jeff's place. I'd like to keep that simple on that side.

• scott - Should I reach out to All Power labs about getting a tower on their place as an Internet Archive connection?
  • They're like two buildings down from Pief's.
  • What can we offer them?
    • marc - expect half a gigabit.

Communications & Events

Comms Trello: https://trello.com/invite/b/f3ugMPNU/94033ee6c2cef93fc1b1637b727c902a/sudo-mesh-communications Events Trello: https://trello.com/invite/b/Y3XfDK85/2b6fcb4fa92788609692a53a96fb4614/peoples-open-events

• See BYOI discussion item

Internal Logistics / Finance

Internal Logistics & Bureaucracy Trello: https://trello.com/invite/b/LzVQlW3X/1bb8bd543c8633688175365d2554c2c2/internal-logistics-bureaucracy-brainstorms

• jehan - I need answers for insurance stuff
  • said 20 volunteers
  • put sources of funding as private foundations - what would you say are other sources of funding?
    • plz share questions and i can answer them --jenny (no, not private foundations. big diff btw private foundations & public charities...) - jenny
      • small recurring and one-time charitable contributions and grants; in-kind donations
  • also officer's insurance is supplementary doc
    • we want general liability as well as D&O
  • Marc - suggests putting questions in google docs

Next Sunday

We host office hours every Sunday from 1-3pm in Sudo Room, and often arrange a rooftop node mount.

• To sign up to bottomline, fill in your name here: https://ethercalc.org/byoi_office_hours
• Ongoing node mounting spreadsheet is located at: https://peoplesopen.net/sundays
• Notes from this past Sunday's session:
• seth - me and null inventoried cage last sunday. Antoinette and Cassidy box inventoried in cage - anybody know if these projects are ongoing or defunct?
  • jenny - antoinette bin is my bad. will recoup

Discussion: November BYOI Event

• Let's look at Benny's Loomio! https://www.loomio.org/d/0h914dO3/byoi-fall-2018/5
  • food
    • scott - I'm willing to do food again. Anyone have requests for types of food?
      • Thinking southeast asian - spring rolls with peanut sauce, pad thai, etc.
      • ben - we should have non-peanut options
  • swag
    • Seth-im bringing t-shirts.
    • jenny can make buttons & stickers - mebbe an upcoming sunday aft activity?
  • activities
    • juul - thinking about playing around with pogo plugs, which I've got a bunch of. You can pull them apart without tools, have root access, and bootload them easily. They're $15 each. We can play with these, and use some hard drives, and play around with them at the event.
    • marc - not much has been happening with disaster radio but maybe Grant would be interested in showing off the simulator
      • ben - could be cool to set up a monitor up for the simulator's visualization
    • TCP Roller disco
  • outreach
    • print flyers for null, nanomonkey, jnny, anyone else attending nonprofit dev summit
    • marc - we were talking about having more of a party atmosphere. Maybe start roller disco earlyish?
      • mai - maybe have a movie showing?
      • ben - maybe the suggested 3-8 timeslot instead of 12-5? Closer to party time.
        • several people thought this was a good idea

Action Items

• Email Jonah re: what kind of routing configuration we plan to have for our Archive mount (benny?)
• Meeting to configure servers for Archive mount 3pm Wed Nov 7 (juul, et al)
• Add BYOI to Omni Calendar (jenny?)
  • jenny: submitted some weeks ago & contract signed - event will be published following payment of invoice (offered $300 which is nonprofit rate)
    • should also make event posts on indybay, fb, SSB... did i just volunteer? :D
• Insurance details - jehan, ben, jenny
• Purchase gear for Jason's install - lesley, ben