Mesh/06 Feb 2018

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Peoples Open Meeting: Feb 6, 2018 19:30 - 21:30

  • facilitator - blake
  • stack taker: grant
  • note taker: benny, juul + others

previous action items

  • nycmesha meet-up summary / possible inspiration for community support - jehan in absentia
  • proposal for reorganize meetings
  • node mount teaching session Sunday at 1pm - grant, jorrit
  • byoi debrief

agenda items

(add your item below, with a time limit)

intros: (5 min)

  • how you'd like to be addressed and favorite sport, n why we're here
  • blake - skateboarding
  • sierk - working on web app for disaster.radio and make it work with firmware, puppy bowl
  • jorrit - any sport that people actively do, here today to be here, learn about what other people did and share
  • grant - table tennis, ping pong, here to take notes
  • benny - non competitive touch footbal, here to see what the meetings are like, listen
  • carl - drunken chess, here to see what's going on
  • marc/juul - sportsball
  • jenny, basketball, not actually there
  • Tommy - likes to sleep
  • jeff - ultimate
  • lesley - I've never understood how people feel watching sports, except for maybe the lee sedol vs. alpha go tournament.


updates & reportbacks

  • (brief announce) - Jenny scheduled a CORE I training @ Omni for March 8th, 6-8pm: http://www2.oaklandnet.com/government/o/OFD/s/CORE/index.htm
    • City of Oakland provides free trainings to neighborhood groups for how to organize disaster recovery community response. good learnings for mesh & disaster radio and opportunity for local outreach
  • node mount (10 min)
    • outreach email template (please hack) - https://peoplesopen.net/pad/p/outreach_email
    • jnny: AJ+ (see below) wants to film a mount in the next 2 weeks. suggest richmond tower if we can get equipment in time? also repinging lolspace (they'd ask me to circle back in march but may be interested in participating in the docu short. for feb 18?
  • jorrit: thought folks were very engaged. started making a mounting guide. took photos of the things you need. created a signal group specifically for people to get familiar with how to prepare for a node mount.

https://github.com/sudomesh/mounting

    • blake: do you think we should continue to do these things
    • grant: yeah it's good to formalize and make the sundays open to the public. i'd like to see people sign up to volunteer to be there and talk to people. Would be nice to be able to coordinate node mounts there and to teach people how to mount nodes.
    • jorrit: we should make sure people get there early to set up.
    • grant: it's a good idea to have someone to talk to for new people.
    • jorrit: needs a big group of volunteers to do because otherwise people are going to burn out.
    • mai: does it make sense to have it every week? or alternate node mount with office hours
    • jorrit: we should decouple office hours and node mounts.
    • mai: i feel like the peple who are able to do node mounts and the people who can run office hours, there's a lot of overlap. we should be aware of our bandwidth. this sunday i plan to be there and i don't know how to do a node mount.
    • jorrit: we need more people to get familiar with node mounts.
    • grant: the person who's the volunteer dosn't need to know how to mount nodes. very minimal requirements.
    • jorrit: i'd be ok volunteering for office hours but not organizing a node mount
    • mai: i can be there. what does organizing office hours entail?
    • jorrit: announcing it.
https://ethercalc.org/byoi_office_hours
 https://gist.github.com/otakup0pe/b960646d3f6b41927dbab2f00a6bb24a


  • meeting re-org (5 min)
    • blake: we're trying to make the meetings go a bit more smoothly but having an agenda and specified times for different sections. I will send out the notes from the meeting re-org discussion
    • grant: one of the things we discussed was putting safer space policy or similar at the top of the meeting notes to make it explicit.
    • blake: want to give the meetings better structure to make them go more smoothly.
  • bug/help wanted review (2 mins) - https://peoplesopen.net/helpwanted
    • jorrit: i created a redirect for /helpwanted. first one is tunnelbroker. the exit node has been down for ~5 days. three people complained. been trying to build this thing called tunneldigger-lab. marc has been troubleshooting. yar has been troubleshooting. i'll briefly touch on the others. daniel reported that we should disable remote logging. there's the can't watch netflix movie issue. one is a featur request to decide how to allocate bandwidth. last one is a bug that has been fixed but not rolled out.
  • discuss why donation and sunday mount documents were open for anyone to edit (https://peoplesopen.net/donation / https://peoplesopen.net/sundays ) and how to avoid this in the future (5 mins)
    • jenny: don't see a problem with having transparent finances. not sure about the sundays spreadsheet but i probably am to blame. it's invite-only now. apologies!!
    • grant: lol, fianances sure, but people's personal addresses? i said sorry! ;P
    • jorrit: finances ok read-only, but editing should be restricted in my opinion - its bookkeeping
    • grant: second the read-only part
    • looks like marc already made it invite-only
    • not marc, but someone else did
  • PON outages (a) DMCA take down, followed by (b) tunneldigger broker failure, exit node status (see issue https://github.com/sudomesh/bugs/issues/8 ), troubleshooting (10 min)
    • proposal: investigate/share root cause of DMCA take down and come up with ways to avoid in the future
      • jenny: finish setting up server @ hurricane electric and switch exit node to that
    • proposal: "who are admins of what" list
    • proposal: train 3-4 people on how to operate , monitor and administer the exit node using https://github.com/sudmesh/tunneldigger-lab or similar doc

Communications (10 mins) grant:, yeah, just notes for discussion

    • alternatives to signal/IRC/mailing-list for troubleshooting and support
      • rough sketch of ideas (expand in a breakout group?)
      • signal etiquette - for privacy/encryption/timeout messages, day-of comms (synchronous only)
      • IRC - create setup instructions or agree on alternative support channel (semi-synchronous)
      • mailing list - larger updates, schedule meetings (assume async)
      • who moderates / monitors / replies to public email addresses info@peoplesopen.net / nodemount@peoplesopen.net / info@sudomesh.org ? (jorrit - unclear to me which email has been replied to and which one needs attention, cc-to-self when replying would clarify this situation; many possible unanswered info emails remain)
      • grant - i'll check migadu server to see if there are any settings like "force cc-to-self"?
      • grant - couldn't find any options for info or nodemounts aliases, not sure if jenny or any one else might have an idea how to deal with with this?
        • jenny - info@peoplesopen is in the migadu acct -> domains -> peoplesopen.net -> aliases -> info. currently sends to jorrit, jehan, will, juul, mai, grant, me, and scott
          • nodemount goes to grant, jehan, mai, juul, scott, and me
          • info@sudomesh and all other emails @sudomesh are defined in the etc/postfix/virtual file on the peoplesopen server. can move that over to migadu as well
      • proposal - send out meeting notes to mesh list after meeting to inform + archive
    • see also Comms Trello: https://trello.com/b/f3ugMPNU/sudo-mesh-communications ("emails" list is automated, all emails i label "mesh inquiry" in my gmail are forwarded to here. been playing with zapier)
    • sierk - we're using IRC/Signal for conversations, and mailing lists/github for bugs and issues. what we're currently doing doesn't scale however, should we deal with it when it's an issue or figure something out now?
    • juul - mailing lists work. Signal is terrible and it's giving us more problems then its solving.
    • grant - when we get something on the mailing list we just need to make sure to reply-all so it's more like a chat-like support channel
    • sierk - there's still an issue of scaling. It sorta works now but it won't work in the future. I'll send this issue to the mailing list — there are solutions to this.
    • jenny: i liked jehan's suggestion to use matrix: https://matrix.org/ - persistant chat history, web-based and mobile clients
    • mai - I'm also interested in trying matrix. It's important to have a systematic way to deal with bugs and community issues and to have ways for people involved to have casual conversations and share news — these interactions build trust and community
    • juul: rocket chat is also an option -- ooh, videoconferencing, screen & filesharing??
  • (maybe) byoi as more focused do-athon with a specific and well-defined goal (judy talking to mai)
  • zines (judy)


  • discuss need for dedicated meeting re: SudoMesh strategic plan and budget — will be more necessary *if* we get the Mozilla/NSF Grant (10 min)
    • mai - we should have a meeting about funding and what our plans are for the next several months, especially if we get the Mozilla/NSF grant
    • leslie - Mozilla/NSF grant outline of "prototype" is something we've already built. Providing more coverage and used connection is what we need to build. Getting more nodes out there should be our #1 goal. +1
    • mai - regardless of whether we get the Mozilla/NSF funding, we should have a discussion about our budget and our strategic plan for the next few months to few years. Discussing how we spend $ and how much we raise is one point of entry to this discussion, but the larger conversation should be what our goals/objectives are.
    • jorrit: i want to second mai's comment that it should be disconnected from nsf grant. i also want to applaud jenny's efforts with regards to 5 year plan and think we can lern a lot from her efforst toward getting 501c3 status.
      • jnny- aw tx. and good reminder i need to make those more sharable, wiki prolly?
    • sierk - i see this money and money in june to accelerate what we would already be doing, under the imopression that the money now would speed us up and get us ready for june, what's the plan for the next six months, before allocate any money
    • blake - this discussion is whether we should have a meeting about budgetting and strategic plan and when
    • grant: i think mai volunteered to draft a doodle. who should be invited?
    • mai: i think anyone shold be invited but there should be an expectation that you help.


  • AJ+ (Al Jazeera) wants to do a feature on People's Open! (10 mins)
    • Welcoming suggestions from the hivemind, this is the gist:
    • They'd like to film a Sunday node mount, sometime in the next two weeks. Jenny suggested the following possibilities: Richmond Tower to Diane's, LOLspace/EastSide Arts Alliance to the Village, Laney College where Village is building site #2 for unhoused students
    • They also want to talk with someone directly impacted by the network. Jenny suggested possibly one of our nodes in Richmond, hooking up Omni's neighbor Araya (elderly disabled Eritrean man who asks me every time I see him tho I haven't seen him in recent months), or yar's neighbors who rely on yar's house's node for access
    • "The story would be filmed for AJ+'s series with Dena Takruri. (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZd3QRtSy5LOWaQBH1fLN2etOO9pCAxaJ ) The idea is to be able to get an inside look to a story, with Dena leading the experience. As you can see from her past stories, she has lots of experience interviewing people in complicated and often intense environments. Throughout the day, we would film the events taking place, aka you and the team setting up the node, as well as hear from you and others what inspired you to create and/or take part of the project. Our hope is to get to the sociopolitical importance of the story. We would also like to interview some residents that are affected by/benefit from the nodes/internet in order to get a full scope of the benefits and potential of the project. "
    • mai - We should maybe hold off on putting ourselves in the spotlight. It seems like we don't have many strong examples of people who rely on the mesh network. We don't really have a way to scale right now, let alone a strategic plan to figure out how we want to build and grow more intentionally. It's not that we're not a success, we're just still growing and personally feels uncomfortable putting ourselves out there until we can deal with attracting so much attention.
    • jorrit - I second Mai--if I'm not comfortable selling peoples open to my neighbor, I'm not going to be comfortable selling to AJ. It's not stable yet. I wouldn't want to be the person in front of the camera.
    • juul - i have no problem lying to the media, they are mostly care about the technology and not about what we are actually doing, but thinks we can share what we are doing without misrepresenting
    • blake - they will spin the story however they want.
    • jorrit - I have a problem with lying. I don't want to deploy the same techniques, "fake it until you make it". That's not why I joined this group.
    • mai - I agree. That's the aspect of silicon valley that I hate. Talking up their potential before they've even talked to a potential customer base. It's exactly the kind of lack of reflective growth that I feel like is really necessary if we want to build this really intentionally. I think if we just let them film us and run the story--I don't even know if I'm fine with that. One scenario--they film us, it looks like a huge success, then 30 people come to the tuesday meeting, and we don't have a plan to deal with them. Then people have a negative reaction to how unprepare we are. Alternative scenario, we do it when we're ready to deal with all the inbound attention. Would rather not create impression that we're way more put together than we are.
    • blake - Steer discussion to how to communicate with Al Jazeera.
    • leslie - I think they're comfortable with where we're at
    • jorrit - what's the story we're giving to AJ? If the story is that we're building this community network from the grassroots that's still very much in experimentation, that's fine and I would happily share that story. But if the story is that we're trying to build an alternative to AT&T then I'm not comfortable with that.
    • sierk - if we do it, we would be talking about community mesh networks. we're a work in progress. if we tell the story that way, I'm totally fine with talking to them about community mesh networks. but I don't we're ready to talk about Peoples' Open, canceling comcast, etc. If we're clear about that, I'm all in favor of helping spread the word about community mesh networks.
    • blake - Jenny wanted suggestions about how to talk to AJ. This is all good feedback. People should continue to talk to AJ and the people coordinating with AJ with their concerns.
    • jenny - i was honest about where we're at w/ julia, and i'm guessing marc was too. i told her i'd send a summary of peoples' concerns / ideas after this meeting, appreciate all these points <3
    • juul - Marvin Minsky quote, "Get people excited, and they'll teach themselves." Been dealing w/ similar media things on real vegan cheese . People who are interested will come, most people won't. People who like us will stay. Even if you undersell yourself to the media, they will make you look incredible. The job of the media tis to generate excitement (which is what we want).
    • mai - thumbs up to jenny and marc. We should think about how to let people can get involved in various ways if it does lead to a lot of attention and a large influx of interested people in the bay area.
  • equipment budget requests (3 mins)
    • what do we need? add to notes & jenny will purchase.
    • usb to ethernet adapters
    • second pair of EZ ethernet crimpers
    • cow & chicken reimbursement - jorrit - 2x old raspberry pi (model b), 1x 8GB SDcard, 2x n600 nodes, 2x usb power cables
      • jenny: jorrit, send me receipts (if you didn't yet) & i can cut a check from our online banking backend.
  • proposal: table & workshop at Allied Media Conference, June 14-17 (3 mins)
    • jenny is definitely going, proposing a table for omni as well
    • tables are $100: https://www.alliedmedia.org/amc/table
    • call for sessions is now open. we're probably a good fit for the "digital futures of consent" track: https://www.alliedmedia.org/amc2018/digital-futures-of-consent-track - DUE DATE: March 16
    • mai - an awesome conference multicultural, multigenerational conference that goes on in Detroit, has been going on for ten years, not sure if it is connected to DDJC, talks a lot about making media more accesible and empowering marginalized voices. I'm interested to go.
    • blake - interested to go.
  • node scouting
    • jeff - talked to ben (elam), we've been talking about connecting to internet archive, is it a omni-directional link, or do we need a directional poin-to-point link,
    • marc - not sure, have to go there and check
    • jeff - we can't see it from where I am in Berkeley,
    • jenny: their 2.4GHZ link is open, but the 5.3GHz has a password
    • marc - we are allowed to mount our gear on their tower
    • jeff - a radio station at Ashby and I-80, got bought by someone, maybe we could mount some gear on it
      • marc - what radio station
        • jeff - the one in American Graffiti?


breakout groups

  • BYOI debrief (20 min)

action items

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