Meeting Notes 2018-04-11

Sudo Room Meeting-Flavored Party - April 11, 2018

Attendees

icebreaker question: what's your favorite fish?

• marc/juul - sunfish/molamola
• noah - seabass
• sierk - tiny hammerhead
• silver - jellyfish
• steve - blue tilapia
• corey - catfish
• gabby - anglerfish
• paul - pez
• jake - sardines, no salmon
• matthew - i don't eat fish
• rayc - cuddlefish
• rich - magicarp
• lesley (remote) - does fried unagi count? else fried cod
• Max (remote) - Hermit Crab

Agenda

Finances

• gabby: I've heard that every month we have our expense of rent, and we have some amount in the bank that we got from bitcoin and we currently don't cover cost
• corey: rcsheets put some stuff in an email recently: https://sudoroom.org/pipermail/sudo-discuss/2018-March/014190.html
• gabby: i'd be down to collaborate to make little merchandise to sell

should we create an opportunity for Egon to become unbanned?

We received the following email from Egon:

I would like to resolve the situation that has resulted in me being banned from the Omni and I am therefore reaching out to request your assistance in navigating the mediation process.

decision (not consensus): If someone is interested in reaching out to him and get a response from him that likely to get people to give him a chance then they can do that, otherwise it's on him to write something like what rayc did.

Relevant meeting: https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Meeting_Notes_2015-06-10#Egon

How is our new member process working?

A bit confusing, should be clarified

The wiki has not been updated. Does anyone want to take that on?

 https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Meeting_Notes_2018-03-14
 

Corey will update the wiki to reflect current membership process

Is everyone who is a member not on the list?

sudo humans needs work or replacement

• corey: i wish rcsheets was here because he's worked on it. there was a post on the mailing list where i expressed my opinion on the lack of knowledge on the way it's written. hard to hack on even if you use javascript. i suggest replacing it. we need to find people who are really familiar with that code or are motivated.

• noah: i wouldn't mind taking a stab at it.
• juul: minimal viable functionality for replacing it:
  • sign up
  • log in
  • reset password
  • set up recurring stripe (or similar) payment for arbitrary amount (or select from options)
  • let admins see who's paying what (this could be optional, sice you can see via stripe)
  • open source

• noah: i'm willing to take on adding the email-notification for failed payments for sudo humans in the short run.
• corey: i can talk more to people who care about the stack of sudo humans

Discussion of Steve:

• Jake: At the last formal meeting the meeting was dissolved before we could come to any decisions about addressing Steve's behavior in Sudoroom. Since then i've heard that there have been other people besides Robert and Jake who have had problems with Steve, and I'm not comfortable just pretending that everything is OK just because this is annoying to talk about. We banned Robert for a couple of years (except when accompanied by a chaperone) for a lot less than what Steve has been doing, and we really don't know yet how many people are avoiding sudoroom because of his actions. I'm asking people to come forward to talk about their experiences and see if we collectively think we need to be more demanding of a higher standard of behavior, and more specific commitments from Steve.
• jake: I want to point out that a few years ago we banned Robert except for when being accompanied by a chaperone for stuff that wasn't anywhere near as bad as what happened. Later he came back and things are great. To see the contrast between how we treated robert and steve is... Now we're doing nothing because we don't hve the will or quorum or whatever to do something about it. There was some really strong acrimony and disagreement at last meeting and the meeting dissolved into real nastiness and people just walking off. It's been a while and I haven't heard about steve doing anything problematic since then but I also know that peple have had problem with steve but they didn't bring it up until other people started bringing up their issues. Dante volunteered to be a conflict steward to mediate between steve, myself and robert (rayc) and robb agreed to be a mediator. I appreciate the fact that i haven't heard any problems since then.
• jake: I want to separately address that I deactivated the card that was in steve's name on the system and i haven't mentioned it to him. I don't feel like steve is contributing to the space. The only specific obligation i can think of is if he's paying his membership dues. I don't like the idea of just pretending that everything is ok. I have an email from Dante march 27th: I am currently speeking with steve and we've been trying to talk to him about his behaviour and I feel like there's definitely been progress but it's not all the way there. Robb has informed that he is the mediator and will continue according to our process.
• alan: Problem with smell of body ordor (and smoke), even when sitting over in CCL.
• rayc: i have a couple of things to say: i'm kinda a mixed bag right now: there's a level of forgiveness, tolerance and a level of responsibility. there's being an a-hole and then later realizing you were doing somethng wrong. there is a dynamic around not being good at understanding/acting according to social normals. it's definitely a net negative effect on the community. if there are dynamics that are building up and no-one's speaking up about them then it's not good for the community and if we don't deal with them it can block the growth of the community. there need to be more clear guidelines on what's acceptable and what's not acceptable and not having that has opened us up to people coming here for the wrong reasons.
• juul: he uses the space but doesn't
• matthew: we had an issue where the toaster oven (that he uses on a regula basis) was getting so dirty that it was putting off smoke and people from CCL were asking about it
• anonymous: when i first was hanging out at sudo i had a string of consistently negative interactions and as a result i almost left the community and didn't come back. i made the decision to join because he didn't sit at the main table. if he had then i wouldn't have joined.
• alan: he probably keeps a lot of people away
• juul: should
• alan: maybe limit him to one day a week
• matthew: his intention is to move to madison soon. he's planning to leave the space. maybe clarifying those terms. i believe the schedule is in one month or so.
• juul:
• rayc: his blow offs continuously are energy draining. he went on for hours about an issue lately and totally disrupted the space and this keeps happening.
• alan: it's kinda like these really lazy people who will take advantage of... (note take couldnt keep up)
• rayc: I feel like this behaviour has persisted and no one has dealt with it for a long time
• corey: regardless of what we decide we should set some guidelines for his behavior.
• rayc: i sent an email with some parameters. no one discussed them: https://sudoroom.org/pipermail/sudo-discuss/2018-March/014158.html
• lesley: while I think it is concerning that steve is an adult and didn't communicate without confrontation/obscenities, I personally have had a completely different experience with steve in the space. While he is not always social, and is definitely not neurotypical and good at small talk, he has been consistently respectful and trustworthy toward me and, with some neglectful/forgetful/slothful behaviors, has nevertheless never damaged or stolen anything from the space that I know of. He is there at night often, and is willing to deal with problems that may arise in the space. While we don't have a door, his presence may have prevented things from disappearing, and I don't often come to the space or stay there super late at night, but if I were to do so, the knowledge that he is there would make me feel much safer in the space instead of less so. He allowed those in the space (or certain people interested) to use his external GPU for their own projects. When I was in a place of housing stress, he offered to let me stay in his van when he was not there, which was incredibly touching and emotionally supportive to me at the time. While there have been some very valid concerns, I don't think his behavior has been bad enough to warrant immediate consequences, and while he certainly needs to change how he communicates when under stress and maybe needs to clean specific things he uses more often, I think this is due to unawareness on his part rather than intentional disrespect, and I believe it is more likley than not that he will change those problematic behaviors once he is made aware of how much they disturb people, and does not need to be made to feel like no one wants him in the space. Maybe he behaves differently toward me than toward others, but he has always been very trustworthy, respectful, and kind toward me, and I feel that his presence contributes to the space more than it detracts.

• rayc: (explains safe space violation)
• juul: i'm intituting a safe space ban
• lesley: for telling someone to "go fuck" themselves on one occasion? Or are there other things here that are specific, concerning, and not in the meeting notes? (not making excuses for that, just...I have always felt that steve makes me feel safer in the space than if he were not there.)
• juul: summarizing for online: rayc explained how he borrowed one of the tables for use out in front of omni and steve came out yelling at him "fuck you you took my table" and continued to yell at rayc even after both rayc and others asked him to stop. there was a meeting happening and someone from the meeting asked him to calm down. then throughout the day rayc was working on a time-sensitive project at sudo room and steve continued to angrily interact with rayc and be verbally abuse. this happened multiple times with hours in between and each time rayc calmly asked steve to please not interact with him. continuing to interact with people (especially in this manner) is a safe space violation. a conflict steward and mediator have been assigned and they will.

• lesley: yep, that's shitty. one thing about this that gets misrepresented is that steve was mad about "his" table while in the email thread steve says he was mad because moving the table endangered his bag and he had specifically asked rayc not to do it in the past. just clarifying that point, that one occasion sounds like a totally unacceptable thing on steve's behalf as far as not disengaging.
• juul: the "fuck you you took my table" was according to rayc a quote. the email seemed to change the narrative. also the bag was simply moved from one place inside of sudo to another and there is no personal storage in sudo room outside of closets.
• lesley: yeah, just wanted to clarify that, not sure what the real narrative was. but I have been hearing it from rayc's side primarily when it is repeated.
• juul: yep ok.
• max: how does Jake's stupid robot arm nout count as personal storage?
• max: Well, no matter how this turns out it seems Rayc is going to get his way. Steve is planning to leave the space, most likely in no small part because of the communitys actions.
• juul: the arm was consented upon. both its presence in the space and the location where it was mounted.

omni decisions

sierk will be back ~8:30 pm

Two decisions:

• the cafe

- rent went from $800 to $1500 per month - lease will be two years, twice extended by 4 years (by them, not us?) - tenant not collective (no voting power)

• corey: juul says they will be investing in the Omni and the trade-off is giving them security
• jake: Can we get latest proposal for this and put it on sudo-discuss?
• sierk: every collective seems in favor except CCL [??]
• rayc: does them being in the front mean we have to lock the front door at night even when there events
• sierk: (seems to disagree this is the case)
• jake: let's look at the whole matter and discuss it
• sierk: no vote until next thursday
• sierk: can ask for a postponment if we have not discussed/consensed upon
• jake: knows someone who can discuss the business concerns of the deal
• rayc: what is the market rate value of this space?
• steve: may be $10k for this space

... let's discuss on a different occassion

• officer's in training proposal

-> Sierk will summarize proposal and put on [sudo-discuss] for discussion

sierk requests there be additional delegates to share the load of attending delegate meetings