Meeting Notes 2025-05-14

Sudo Room Non-Profit Organizing Meeting - 14 May 2025 7pm-9pm

Meeting Details

Jit.si Link? : https://meet.waag.org/turtlesturtlesturtles - nobody there, can't hear anything Next meeting:

Roles

• Facilitator/s: paige
• Stacktaker:
• Timekeeper:
• Notetaker/s: Paige, Chrisantha

Attendees

• Chrisantha Perera
• Iwan
• Leah
• romy
• Remote-Daniel (reading the pad, on ☎️ )
• Peter M
• Paige
• Kent
• Jake

Agenda

most important part of this meeting

• We need more people involved in keeping Sudo Room going. Now that the building is secure and we no longer need to worry about foreclosure, and that we have a new nonprofit, this is a good time for new people to get involved in a fresh start

History\why we have a new nonprofit

• Paige - In 2014, Sudo Room and some other groups bought 4799 Shattuck. It was named Omni Commons. Sudo Room donated its nonprofit status to be used by all the collectives sharing space in the building, and the nonprofit was renamed "Omni Commons."
  • See https://omnicommons.org/wiki/Omni_History
• Omni Commons was unable to secure a new loan after its original mortgage was set to expire in 2024. It looked like the building was doomed to foreclosure, until last minute, a cooperative organization called EBPREC stepped in and said their nonprofit (CALLI) could buy the building and keep us in the space as tenants. In September 2024, the building was sold, and Sudo Room received a 34 year lease for our room area.
  • See press release on https://www.thecalli.org/news for more info
• Now that we no longer own the building and are tenants, we were advised to create a brand new nonprofit, just for Sudo Room, to take on the lease with CALLI.
• Paige, William, and Ajay volunteered to be the original president, secretary, and treasurer, with the understanding we would run new elections soon after incorporating.
• Now that most of the work to create the nonprofit is done, we need to come up with some structures to ensure we stay in good nonprofit standing, good financial standing, and prepare to vote for new officers.

• Why didn’t we get the old Omni nonprofit back for sudo room?
  • Paige - lawyer recommended new nonprofit, since having the lease is valuable item, better to have a new nonprofit, than Omni’s, for liability reason
  • E - we can have stability with the lease, but disadvantage for fundraising. Nice to have a nonprofit with a history for fundraising.
  • Chrisantha - we can say that our members (of the new nonprofit) are members of longstanding organizations in the area

• Choose a date to start acting as the new nonprofit
• Ivan? - New member here. Lots of questions. Not sure if we have an anarchy vibe like noisebridge. For instance, as a nonprofit, difficulty in getting grants. In between time, could we get a fiscal sponsor
• Kent - radio museum has a board, treasurer, and executive director. I think it a good thing to have point people. I don't know if that's a hierarchy. Maybe get a board first of the core members of sudo room.
• Paige - Someone who used to run meetings, Andy, had the idea of having different work groups, like fundraising, facilities, events, etc. The leads of those could be the board members. Would require a lot more people to get involved and want to organize themselves like that. Another idea I have is that the “designated individuals” (as described by our lease) could be the board. Then those people could be voted in.
• Jake - Seems important to not have the board run the whole thing. designated individuals should be a whole separate thing from the board. Noisebridge has had a secretary, president, and treasurer, just as a requirement for the nonprofit. They were written in a way to make it controlled by members. Every member should be on the board
• E - then we would have to list every member for legal filings. Don't think that would work.
• Ivan - that is a value statement, I hear Jake saying that, but I wasn't part of that process where Sudo Room was established as such.
• Peter - I have the experience that the space is changing quickly. New members might be completely okay with a 3 person board who do everything
• E - Paige had a good point, if we are interacting with outside institutions, they need some stability/single point of contact. instead of a mutating hydra
• Jake - they've never had that issue
• Paige - yes we have, experienced when trying to fundraise during foreclosure time, and with insurance companies
• Chrisantha - we need a face for the organization.

Access

• Ivan - when can i be here? At other hackerspaces i can come any time
• Paige - My hope is we can bargain to get 24/7 access (via side door) after they close off access to event spaces
• Kent - could also have a 2 person rule for safety
• Kent - talked to Valerie about it, apparently a can of worms opened as they started renovations. So they have more construction work to do. But the trash room is now all renovated.
• Ivan - do you think we should have more access? Does 9a-9p makes sense?
• E - spirit of hacking til exhaustion is still present during events
• Chrisantha - we could make it so that the people who are designated individuals can drop on a digital board to show that other people can be here (after 9p).
• E - at a well developed hackerspace in the netherlands, their access control is done with little tokens that they click in. Tied to their own distinct ids. Board tells you how many members are in the space. Can see that on the website. (C: What is the website?)
• Remote-Daniel - nice, since omni has lots of places where folks can hide. It used to be problematic when folks refused to leave)
• Chrisantha - designated people can be highlighted separately on that system
• Peter - I've been trying to solve this another way. When CALLI bought the building, there was a problem with people sleeping. So they put down strong rules. I think we are in this time where we are still dating, but we can build trust. If they are concerned about sleeping in the building, we could install something like sensors to sense if there was a warm body. We are sudo room so we should be able to give them some solution
• Leah - Kind of big brothery
• Peter - I suggested an infrared system to track rodents, since one of Valerie's concerns is cleanliness. She said that would alleviate concerns. I know I'm triggering about surveillance state with that suggestion, but this problem is what got us in trouble in the first place. Sleeping is just not allowed in commercial places. Circuit Launch has rule about being awake at all times, but have 24/7 access. CALLI has to do that. But if that allows us to get it 24/7 access. I want spaces like Sudo Room to be the new definition of the night club.

Build the trust for CALLI Porosity? Some questions of "What do other hackerspaces do for this" - as far as access for members, badging and signing in?

• Leah - I like the building being open and not closed off
• Kent - establishing trust has been going well. I think we can do 24/7 access without doing intense surveillance.

Finance

• Paige recap:
• We have $4973.7 in bank/paypal
  • 2 Confusing withdrawals of $1,360.53 relating to AFCO (insurance)

finances jan 2025 - may 14

month	paypal donations	sudohumans donations	total donations/member fees	rent and utilities
Jan	$814.69	$1457.59	$2272.28	$2122.72
Feb	$1285.51	$1357.24	$2642.74	$2425.69
Mar	$374.31	$1558.91	$1933.22	$2485.61
Apr	$277.67	$1612.01	$1889.68	$2500.32
May (so far)	$176.71	$715.55	$892.26	$2505.74

Liability Insurance is expected to be $50-100 per month ish expense. Currently is higher because insurance situation was mis-communicated. Sq footage and operations not reported correctly after building sale.

• Debts:
  • will have bills due to our lawyer, and SL? (tax filing? Is 990N all we had to fill out?) (likely 400-500+)
  • we also owe Omni Commons for the last insurance bill (amount?)
• TLDR We are not making enough in member fees alone. No grants currently.
• sudo rent is due on the 25th of each month.

(process currently is Unify and multiple sub account hops and paypal and etc)

• • Break while people attempt to save a computer

• E - notaflof is where I am idealistically, but I think a lot of people who can afford it are not paying.
• Kent - for another organization that collected dues, we would allocate part of the membership dues for low income. That was pretty structured. When I did sign up to be a member here, figuring out how to become a member and start paying felt cumbersome. At that other organization, we also would send reminders when people didn't pay, asked people to communicate with us.
• Jake - we created a new system, got 90% there, but never completed it. If anyone wants to contribute. It's called "membermatters". Similar to sudohumans but is used by a lot of different spaces and is actively maintained. It will alert if your card gets declined. Can also use it to assign a door card. I think it's written in Python.
  • Chrisantha and Paige willing to look into membermatters
• Jake - a while ago, october, I went on stripe, the payment portal for sudohumans. Stripe saves card info and bills it. It has names and emails for everyone doing that. Difficult to login because I have to reach a former sudo room member for 2FA. Not been able to transfer the 2FA. Ubikey would be a possible way to get better 2FA (Jake)

Nonprofit organization

Bylaws and members

• New bylaws: https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Bylaws
• The bylaws are standard "member voting bylaws." That means each member can vote on who the nonprofit board is. The nonprofit board then appoints the officers.
  • While changing the bylaws to something nonstandard is costly, we can create an internal system for voting, and decide on responsibilities.
  • TODO: we need to have an easy way to check who is a member
    • Task: find out who's a member and was approved by the board(?)
    • Task: Define Board Member, Officer (and each role), and Member
    • E - if we have a subsequent meeting on governance stuff. I can gather how other hackerspaces do that. Census and proposal for structure.
      • Ivan will help with that
    • E and Chrisantha - also will look into secure membership voting thing.

Planning new officer and board vote

• What responsibilities do we expect the officers and board to take on? → tabled to next meeting

Setting goal date to act as a new nonprofit

• not determined

Task organization

• Created a board on taiga (like trello) for nonprofit tasks. Ask paige for invite to join.

What does Onboarding for new members look like?

• 9AM-9PM are the hours (aside from designated membs)
• Jake - we need a process to get a hold of members better, and approve them more quickly. We used to approve new members in a private membership meeting
• E - I am volunteering to make a census of who is a member and who is paying.
  • Chrisantha would like to help.
• Ivan - I think there should be some sort of new member process and onboarding
• E - we could build that up more. Used to be more that way.
• Jake - by getting more formal with membership, we can be formal about membership fees.
• Chrisantha - how do new members get access to contact forums such as wiki, there is a mastodon run by Romy?
• Jake - I do think we should talk about member applicants one at a time. I think you shouldn't endorse someone unless you know them. I think we should go through the list of those who applied for membership, and see if we should endorse or anti-endorse them. Process I have been following is that people need 3 endorsements, no blocks, and filled out the questionnaire
• Kent - A problem I have with the current system, is that when the application comes to the sudo-members email list, I have no clue who the person applying is
• Ivan -At Noisebridge, the person has to show up in person at a onboarding meeting.
• jake - once the applied member is endorsed, still need to:
  • respond to them
  • ask if they are paying
  • set up the card key access to get into the building
• jake - i am okay still doing this work, but not if I'm the only one
• paige - would be nice to have onboarding after that - i.e. here's an email with the hours, and a link to the wiki, and the code of conduct
• leah - yea, basic information right off the bat to share.
• jake - can we have everyone check if they are on the sudo-members email list?

what is sudo room?

• Peter - there have been moments when we thought we would lose the space. I would think about, if we had lost the space, would we lose our human connection to each other? Something I've been trying to do for last 3 years, is create an intentional community. If we didn't have this lease, would there just be nothing?
• Kent - I would say we need the physical space, we need flesh and blood.
• Peter - I'm not a sudoroom member, because I don't know what this space will be like growing up. Also, I am a proud member of the cal sailing club. It is the best volunteer org I have been in. Invite you on Sunday, to join and open sail. Take people out on a high liability exercise, and then you can join the meeting. Lot they have to maintain, moving parts, equipment. Somehow they make it work. Membership is $150/quarter. And a volunteer requirement, 3hr per month.
• Romy - such a different thing than what we are doing
• E - chicken and egg problem
• Peter - not saying it maps one to one. But I'm saying why I've been reluctant to commit to this organization. But not for cal sailing. Tell people we rather have your time than your money.
• Ivan - to your initial question. I'm a seasonal member of cal sailing, I know what I get from there. The question remains, what do I get from here?
• E - maybe a value proposition has to be made. Make it known what people get by becoming a member
• Jake - if you're not a member you can show up for an open house or meeting, and if you're a member you can come here anytime from 9am-9pm.
  • Ivan - I didn't know that until today. And I'm a member
• Peter - I want this to be the definition of the new social club of the 21st century. I'm thinking about how does Omni Commons become a jewel of temescal.
• E - I dont think we are for everyone. Not everyone has the inclination and the interest. We already are a safe space and social space for people who don't feel like they belong in other spaces. Part of fighting fascism is how do you make a space for people who are marginalized. Not everyone shares your great passion for fixing things. But when people who find they like this place, they know it really is for them.
• Peter - I don't disagree. We all here share something human, capitalism, politics, the police - forces to try and keep us separate. To the extent we can cut through that - what are the things that we all share that make us fundamentally human.
• Kent - for me, it's a space for creative practical intelligence gathering.
• Chrisantha: An opening question for next time might be: What is Sudo Room to you, and what would it be in your best ideal?