Meeting Notes 2015-07-22

Sudoroom Meeting July 22, 2015

last week: https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Meeting_Notes_2015-07-15

intros

q: what do you miss? alt q: where's your hemp?

• yar: a lot of words because i'm bad at speech processing
• matt: the good old days, that bygone era when everything was perfect
• tom: having a memory of peoples' names. also, the era of philosopher kings. willfully ignoring the actual brutality.
• scott e: seeing everyone in person and sudoKids. Alt Q: my hemp is on my tennis shoes.
• yar again: I ALSO MISS SUDO KIDS OMG
• leon: i don't wear hemp. i miss sudoroom!
• max: no hemp. i miss this. there's nothing like this in cinncinnatti. crickets & birds. and square dancing
• yar: i miss crickets
• marc: my hemp is growing free out in the forest. i miss the one month of danish summer happening right now. it's light out til 11pm, then 4am. nobody sleeps. everybody's partying and happy.
  • something about wooden eggs
• james: i don't miss anything. my hemp is with someone else.
• romy: i'm moving forward so fast i don't miss anything in the past 5 years. my hemp is in my tummy.

announcements

• marc installed an illegal mesh node. don't tell anyone.
• omni updates
  • tomorrow at 5 pm we're electrifying the ballroom mezzanine
  • tomorrow at 7 pm we're having a community-wide infosessiona and meeting about our options to buy the building
  • on sunday august 9th there's going to be a four-hour meeting open to everyone to plan the next weeks of meetings for rebooting the omni power structures
  • reboot, renew, reform, revolve, revolt!
• leon: i haven't played any music for 3 years, but this past sunday i DJ'd at a party called "afternoon delight" at the new parish (17th & san pablo). very successful. happens once a month 3-8pm. go next time! thanks for letting us practice upstairs
• cryptoparty at internet archive this friday. help you install gpg, TAILS, etc
• romy's been going to noisebridge. college roommate doing heavy breathing dance show at omni. trying to mix people up and make connections. making a comic about NB & Rock Paper Scissors.
  • Heavy Breathing Sunday 12-1pm in the disco room: https://omnicommons.org/occupy/events/innovating-ether/ and https://www.facebook.com/events/1606507732938924/
• scott's met a few folks who are interested in a Bmore-style cyberwizard institute. go figure.
• sudoroom and omni don't have wikipedia articles. why???
• cyber.wizard.institute august 1-15!
  • marc needs help doing A/V, livestreaming
• romy's doing more sudoroom blog posts & marketing. thinking of similar to this: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/07/22/is-silicon-valley-saving-the-world-or-just-making-money
  • james: hackerspaces are something totally different from SV
  • matt: will this be sardonic? making fun of SV?
    • marc: http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/steven-universe/images/0/06/Sardonyx_PNG_EDIT.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/250?cb=20150718032603
    • romy: no, just about our nuanced view of tech. we're not social workers.
  • leon: it's political, about freedoms being taken away. story about that tour of surveillance cameras back at 2141
  • romy: just wanna get our face out
  • marc: yay thanks!

money

• No financial updates. we're broke.
• will they kick us out? no. maybe.
• marc: sudo being broke is more immediate than omni being broke.
• losing $300/mo at this rate. not saving. not able to build infra or anything.
• apply for grants! SUPER EASY
• jnny:20:12 Sudo is able to afford august thanks to Charley sheets paying our utility bill this month and last (~$700)

(remote_daniel-a: thank you Charley Sheets)

rent party

• matt wants to throw a rent party
• marc: didn't work out last time. why is it worth our time?
• matt: it'll get more members. remember what that person last week said.
• marc: did that happen at any of our previous parties? no. maybe 1. total waste of lots of energy.
• leon: wait what happened last time...
• yar: there's lots of things we can do that will save omni thousands
• marc lists a bunch of grants. pollination, awesome... reach out to tech job people. like that rackspace person.
• marc: throw all the parties you want but i'm not gonna fucking help
• james: i raised 6k for noisebridge with no budget. was an extreme amount of energy. this exchange isn't helpful. someone wants to help, shooting him down. you need him. give people reasons to give more, such as "we need 300 more to be stable". give realtime email updates.
• marc: it wasn't planned well last time. didn't work. very stressful. don't wanna do it again.
• yar: it's 8:03. can we put a 5 minute limit on this topic?
• rob: i think we could throw a really good party. dynamics are different now. we have 2 experienced party throwers here. wasn't even cleaned.
• leon: needs committed point people.
• rob: thanks for volunteering!
• they're in town until aug 5 or 6
• matt: i'm down about a lot of things. it could go better this time. that was in sudoroom, it was mayday, we learned a lot from it. true i can't point person this, i'm overcommitted.
• yar: it's an interative process. party early, party often
• leon: in the next 2-3 weeks? maybe timeframe's not realistic. i'd commit if you planned a little more in advance. don't believe in spinning wheels. people need time to plan their lives to come to this party. this isn't a fast no, it's a slow yes
• matt: or a sorry but
• leon spun here in the 80s. we should do the same set. have an 80s party.
• james: need more time. give us all time.
• first week of september works for them
• yar: who knows what omni will look like by them

jenny's leaving

• marc can take over finances. does anyone else want to? he is officially the treasurer.
• do we still have an exchequer? has that role gone to the dustbin of history?
  • marc: yes
  • jenny: Exchequer is marc on paper, but roles can always be rotated as per our policies

new members

https://sudoroom.org/wiki/New_Member_Script

Leon

• why? beautiful flowers. i love trees & computers. no seriously i felt comfortable here back in 2141. people made me feel very at ease about asking something totally stupid. spent a lot of time teaching me why something was that way. can't just get that kind of knowledge and support easily. i wanna be one of those people!
• doesn't want to introduce himself. likes hot dogs.
• how find? faust
• what hack or learn? making THE ULTIMATE DJ PROGRAM BECAUSE ALL OF THEM ARE CRAP. fuck site licenses forever.
  • marc: what's hard? beat matching?
  • leon: no... it's interface bw sw & hw.
  • apparently Mix became open source 2 months ago. wants to make an open source DJ thing that works on every device and is crystal clear
  • yar: having something sound hte same on every device is beyond DJing ... that alone sounds engineering intensive
  • serano cornered market on some other audio codec. shit expensive
• what share? knowledge!
• What's your plan to abolish sexual violence, police brutality and white supremacy? in 10 words or less?
  • gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay
• What's your plan to end the anthropocene extinction, world hunger, global warming and global inequality? in 10 words or less?
  • live aid
    • only concert i know that wasn't corrupt. every dollar went to the cause. wants to do an event like that.
• What's your plan to ensure freedom and privacy of communication for all? in 10 words or less?
  • my own radio station
• what do you know about sudo room's values?
  • everybody's welcome, has a right to voice their opinion, even if it's not the same. really important.
• what do you know about the history of sudo room?
  • started with like 5 people, very small. had no $$, broke off from s/noisegate/noisebridge/ or something.
• What do you know about the Omni Commons' statement of solidarity?
  • don't know but would love to!
• What do you know about the Omni Commons' safer space policy?
  • don't know
• Have you ever been banned from a hackerspace or any other collective?
  • never banned
• Are you a cop? A federal agent? An undercover cop? An undercover cat?
  • i'm a neon cop and an undercover dog. jkjk no
• music makes me happy
• grew up at 25th & telegraph, when it was quickways, etc. first came to old sudo to explain how to not get robbed.
• aware of rule about no personal storage or unapproved donations
  • yar said they could put power strips and stuff in the milk crates...
  • matt stewart explained all the rules earlier
• leon: the endup or sudoroom? choose one you like more.
• plans to move back from ohio to san francisco
  • matt: we have a member in colorado

romy

• she applied for membership on august 25, 2014. someone forgot to add her to seltzer.

4 weeks instead of 30 days?

• yar: it'd be nicer if people could become members right at a meeting, so maybe change extended pondering to exactly 28 days?
• straw poll: 6/6 members think this sounds good
• leon: is there a process for just POOF BING becoming a member on the spot?
• matt explains why we have this process
• leon understands why we have to screen people "because it's oakland" and omni is more exposed than 2141 was
• matt: sudoroom gets flak from other omni groups fro being so open & late hours

pending members

6/24: karissa - becomes a member today! yay! 7/8: james moon - being blocked. in very bad standing. violated really basic shit. will not become a sudoroom member. made problems at SPAZ in 2001 and was banned, but stated that he was affiliated with SPAZ when he came to a meeting a few weeks ago. red flag! 7/15: max schwartz

apolitical tech dudes

• how do we feel about people becoming members whose answer to questions about values is "idk" but really "i don't give a shit"?
• marc thinks those people should just go to AMT or something
• matt: people could still do really important support work based on values we do share. i miss the old sudo days when things were more open. i don't think it's a danger of being taken over. need more socialization though.
• marc: i hate when it's only white dudes in here working on their projects and saying anti-social justice shit.
• yar: do you think they don't share the values or just don't want to focus their work?
  • marc: i don't care what people believe, just what they do
• leon: there's lines drawn. say a guy wants to join with a confederate flag.this happened (doc)
  • yar: we've banned people for way less
  • marc: if you're not gonna take personal responsibility for all the problems in the world you don't belong here
• julio: don't want to create a space that's not welcoming. is there an initiation process?
• yar: we'd love one. we just all wear too many hats. there's a hat sitting there all dusty and tattered. wanna put it on?
• leon: i'm trying to picture leading that. i'd feel like an elitist fool
• julio: can be an exercise or something
• marc: we used to have newbie night. radical newbie night
• rob: worried about waking up in silicon valley
• marc: this happened at my old space in copenhagen. was started by radicals, was supposed to be a support system for grassroots stuff. i got worried about it being too extremist. people were planning elitist actions defacing websites. problem was we never got the culture established, we alienated people even before we got a physical space. not sure if we have enough of a culture here to prevent that from happening.
• leon: you do! enough strong people to get these people to think about what they're saying
• marc: yeah core members will come to meetings but noon on weekdays it's a totally different set of people. they don't represent or embody us to visitors, gives a bad impression.
• rob: perhaps we could just declare our values. have it unmistakable in the space. [on the walls etc]
• leon: when i first got here there was a book on the wall. i took it home. it dawned on me - that's why i was here. this is an open space, all genders and classes, people are free ... being in the middle of oakland that fit. maybe you should get a handbook your first meeting. what's our plan? who do we want here?
• marc: sounds like we want to take people in and radicalize them rather than excluding people if they don't already have our values. i think that's great... [but? interrupted by rob]
• rob: until we have a way of communicating & transmitting, we should focus more on projecting what that is rather than denying new people. once we get that up & running, then if people aren't getting it, it's time to start saying wait no
• leon: don't wanna turn into what we hate. being what we're fighting against. ppl should choose what they are. if you're not, it's not gonna work out.
• marc: BUT ... not a but, maybe an addendum ... i'd like if when people answering questions about fixing the world, if they don't have answers, we should have an automated response built into the script that prompts people to say: if you're not willing to put in work at some level, personal time effort or money, then probably sudoroom's not the right hackerspace for you. don't have to have all the answers but idk.
• this person said they're NOT interested in working on these issues
• yar: from all i heard about this particular person i'm not convinced that they DON'T share our values, just that they're not interested in working on something. would like to know more.
• yar: i'll just leave this here http://www.huffingtonpost.com/spectra/dear-white-allies-stop-un_b_6249902.html
• marc: here's what we do. buy omni, end all money problems, lock up all things, refinish the floor, get nice tables, everybody will think it's nice & clean.
• matt: but also people have come and left because of the meeting. sudo needs a lot of love, not just physical. people feel gui solve that because we're open to the public, people will use the space ...
• julio: are we actually open to the public? no ...

daniel: (sorry, i got to disconnect i thought it was me the one erasing this text (stuck kbrd) anyhow, good point matt.

fire

last time we talked about this: https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Meeting_Notes_2015-07-08#Fire

• marc: let's just get rid of all the oxygen
• hallway door ready to rehang. need to chizl hinge holes.
• free fire extinguishers
• still need more conduit. still piles of wood & shit. still a mess.
• to clarify: piles of wood are fine as long as they're clean
• tomorrow after whitney works on ballroom electrical, we can look at the 3d printer platform, ceiling & stuff

video portal

• potential donation of 32" LCD. could put it in CCL so it doesn't point into sudoroom. but do we have a problem with being monitored?
• hackerspace-to-hackerspace video portal. permanent link to noisebridge, biocurious, etc.
• remote jake: let's make a permanent IRC terminal right away. if you don't type anything no one will know you're there
  • thank you jake for volunteering to set it up :)