Meeting Notes 2026-08-30

Sudo Room Meeting - Day Month 2026 4pm-6pm

Meeting Details

Roles

• Facilitator/s:
• Stacktaker:
• Timekeeper:
• Notetaker/s: Mn, Mk, R

Attendees

A (virtual) Mn Mk E Mz R D

Agenda

Funding

Is membership the only source of income? M: Grants? (we have one currently, 2027 Spring (April deadline?)

up to $50,000 "art" project, community infrastructure

"The Creative Capital Award provides individual artists with unrestricted project grants and professional development services for the creation of innovative, original, groundbreaking new artistic works."

https://creative-capital.org/creative-capital-award/

mk: has there been annual fundraizers?

a: not sure what has been happening in the past, but there has been some reach out to the community. dont think there has been coordination to get org visibility on the radio, i dont know how people find out about sudoroom

a: i'd suggest doing some basic classes, i think people would pay to attend some basic classes about electronics or multimeters - also she talks bout calendar/event visiblity, event organizing/community outreach -

e: is this an idea for a fundraiser for sudoroom? or were you taklking about a different thing?

a: has to do with creating community/expanding community, you'd have more members, providing services/classes that the community could partake in, a lot of like the seniors struggle with basic (tech?) things, could do a flat $20 rate etc for classes or help

mk: i saw a professor setup a structure he does in south america, he created a format for what you're describing in a more..professional structure that's a subscritption based thing, if elderly people want tech support, they'd pay for a chunk of hours, and the student could help (list of services that they'd support)

(a cuts out but was talking about...something streaming/tv/radio show type thing? unsure)

mz: talkingg about tv reception etc

a: good idea to offer really basic classes on multimeters, using phones, some sort of structured classes for basic things, could go to senior center on behalf of sudoroom, half to the person half to the sudoroom

mz: we could offer printing/laser services to the community also

a: not so much a class vs a one time lecture, also we could see about using the ballroom to do lectures, that's an opportunity we could try to use since we're just in the building

mk: surprised there's no annual fundraising, it'd be awesome if there was a community outreach from seniors/students etc, mini conferences/workshops. I likek the bigger structures of multiple, but that's need to be planned out nd oranized, make sure it fits with bylaws and nonprofit stuff etc.

r note: commission based vs hourly

R: Generate events besides regular meetings for fundraising, promotion, community building, and social networking

• create volunteer lead group meetings, classes

• social events at a park, raffles, grab bags, donations

• consider sponsorships (grants)

• volunteers do odd jobs, maybe a kind of fundraiser to see how many people can be helped

• grant writing night

• outreach at senior centers

• etsy: making things for seniors

• grant writing

• networking

• sponsorships

Anti Data Center Petition

• sign as an org?

• be in social media post and why

• offer support/meeting location etc?

https://www.nodatacenteroakland.com/nodatacenterincoakland/#endorse

(various chatter about sudoroom.org history)

Mz: is there any specifics about type of data centers?

Mk: thats a good question, companies are trying to skirt it with legal

overall thoughts are should figure out more about the org and what they're doing and what actions they want and what we'd be committing to etc

Mz: Depending on what kind of data center. Edge data centers close to the users offer lower latency and make it convient for people who want to host stuff locally. But yes for LLM there's no need to be in oakland.

workshops?

intro to linux (with chromebooks?)

discord - notification settings, nuance

potential subscription or fundraiser potential? for seniors, students, public events

Sudoroom.org server

More info about this?

mz: I think we are using digital ocean now There's one for sudohumans and one for main sudoroom.org (wiki and listserv), maybe another VPS for member matters.

mz: we're looking at doing some selfhosting. The concerns are internet bandwidth and DDoS attack

mn: yeah i was just curious what the sudoroom.org new server would be/what we'd host vs have still on digital ocean, just curious more about what the project is

(A rejoins, catching up on what missed during the drop)

E: "as usual if you know other ways we can make more money, that'd be great"

Signal Groupchat for members

mz: sudoroom communicates via discord/mailing list, we have a bunch of signal gropou chats, seems like signal is the most mature for group stuff, when applying can put in their signal groupchat, we could have a thing go ou on the mailin list. what do yall think?

mk: i think doesn't seem totally neessary to have it in the form.

a: my input is i dont understand how that'd be different than discord

mz: encrypted end to end

r: discord rolled out a new thing about tracking/security thing

mz: no guarentee discord wont use chats to train AI

e: the one i'm concerned about wiht discord is age verification, has that started yet?

mk: hasvent started yet but its' coming

e: also there's ads etc,

mk: signal would be simpler and private

e: i like signal because it's simple and allows you to do enough for most things

mz: members list is supposed to be private, but it isn't

s: in general i'm in support of using signal, the fragmentation is my concern though, discord/signal/mailing list etc -

mz: could do an api etc

mz: group for people interestd in organizing/managing sudoroom etc

s: same point about it's not clear to outsider

mz: a lot of people do just use diiscord, dont' have other conversations on signal etc, so do you

s: i think it'd go a long way to solvle the issue, providing clarity about what things are for what - general purpose chitchat for all members vs something else/managing

mk: chat gets difficult to catch up on as it scales

s: the issue with discord is how it's organized, server will send notifs even though the various groups are/aren't...organized by like volume of messages etc

s: overall i'd like to nudge people away from discord

mz: sudo discuss vs sudo members

mk: big fan of forum style

mz: pyramid form of wiki>forum>chat

r: website structured as projects vs weekly meetings, it'd be good to setup something in like bbcode around that, and then weekly meetings could be structured around those projects

mk: on the wiki?

r: on the phone its hard to tell meetings vs projects etc

mk: i dont think we have weekly things

mk: is it a question of where do projects set with the meetings?

r: for any normal projects looking at weekly things vs where to get involved in things - also graphic things, hard to read white text etc (website text is hard to read)

r: can we also shift topics to fundraising again, what events we have and what planned fo rht erest f the year, looking at FNB and other coallitions? Could we have a grant writing night,

mn: do you have experience doing that? would be great to put that on

r: if we have a monthly grant writing night, it'd be an enteratining way to keep it going

mk: even if there's not an existing one, having a night to develop/practice grant writing that'd be good

r: the way my non profit would do things is a flat rate etc

mz: we dont have a agreed upon way to compensate members about their time vs tothe org etc

mk: look at other orgs, horizontal structure vs ......... common pool resources, basicaly the structure of this problem, the shared resources, theres always the issues of that

r: we should put out a survey of "howd you hear about sudo, what do ou see, what things are you apart of?" (fixit clinic, radio night, etc)

r: have a laptop read with survey

mz: cryptpad? i have done stuff before i can help set it up

mz: outreach is good - community stuff isn't realy known like this, hackerspaces vs tech spaces not really known to the people

mz: back to the basics type - excellence, do-acray, consensus - trifecta of anarchy

Recap

communication methods:

discord/signal/wiki/forum/email/Matrix

fundraising:

• workshops (basics/one-off lectures + people arrive with questions)

• fundraisers, raffles, video screenings, social networking

• outreach, survey, social networking events

• offer serices to senior home centers, have individuals go to senior homes to offer classes ask Alice

• grant writing night

events: r: brainstorm past events, to come up with past events to see what we could do again in the future

mz: just started some opensource events meetup

(mk and mz chat about FOSS and CoreBoot stuff)

(chatter about grant writing night, process of grant writing)

D: have we connected with berkley law? they have a small business type night and help with nonprofits, ucberkeleylaw www.law.berkeley.edu, I can look into that before I leave

D: sounds like it's not great for learning to do grant writing, they have clinics that are profit based sort of

mk: on that note, do we have sort of "normal" social media for public outreach?

• weekly instagram, or stories work like flyers that other people can repost

• streaming events (twitch, youtube, tiktok)

Process membership applications

Mz added some new members, did some kanban stuff, sent some emails to people