Meeting Notes 2024-06-12

Attendees

• william
• aaron
• interrupt
• jake
• paige
• peter
• telli
• alex

Agenda

original email: https://sudoroom.org/lists/hyperkitty/list/sudo-discuss@sudoroom.org/thread/UOOBKT3NH3PTJDOFCHIGOKVMOLERXGPR/

dreams for the space

• william - does anyone have comments on email sent out, list i have presented here?
• paige - i like "direct support for oakland communities/families". Right now we get a lot of people in the door during free store. a lot of them interested in computers or repair, but no flyers or anything to give them. or people there in SR to show around. Its good because its during day, so its comfortable to walk in
• telli - working off free store. like paige said, during day, something people need and want. directly impacting community. good to have something consistent during day. benefits community and easy to get to
• william - I want everyone to imagine no cost restraints, no legal or financial constraints. what would be your ideal hackerspace?
  • jake - more hosts. more people opening the space, welcoming people in.
  • aaron - more money would be nice. everyone worry about. wish meetings werent about finances, and more about hardware topics
  • peter - not about space , but what space eng? in people. what are the things we want to do that both align with our existing capabilities and aspirational. seems like a lot of potential . wood behind the arrow. obviously potential, but its about marshalling that potential.
  • paige - emotional drama zaps most energy out of me. so no conflict, lots of people in the space during whole day, more projects that have lots of member involvement, i.e. sudo mesh, active membership, involvement from community, keep it anti-capitalist and anti-racist which we say we are committed to now
  • telli - more organized and clean and cozy. i dont know how dedicated desktops are able to walk off, cool if. drinks stocked in vending machines.
  • william - a level of comfort, VR/3D modeling headset, ability to build things that could be produced and given away in quick order, people able to come in and easily put together something they can walk away with. fill a need, displace something like Target. things you could take part in designing yourself.
  • interrupt - sometimes good to have more people and sometimes less. level of commitment and responsibility from peoples is what makes a hackerspace awesome. each person has different ways that are committed and responsible, accountable to each other. social bonds really important. when people can commit to their own type of responsibility, that makes the place awesome.

new projects we could work on

• william - projects to work towards improving people's lives around oakland. we can imagine what we feel like that looks like, and iterate on those concepts. if we have a couple or one initiative that is active, we can iterate on or move onto new projects and figure out what works. beneficial for us to begin these projects that are directly helpful. i think already a lot of people interested in this, do this in their projects and in their lives. how many projects can we work on at once, and what projects can pull people in and not just expend their energy. basically right now we have the laptop project, and fixit clinic. two distinct things. are there enough volunteers for more projects? or those refocused? are we at capacity?
• interrupt - best way to help communities is to provide jobs. most businesses run for profit, nice to see people aid and support.
• william - simply cant do that with our money
• interrupt - creating sustainable or (simply needed) b corps with the goal of providing jobs. possibly funded by grants. creation of structures that benefit communities within law, commerce, and or industry
• peter - i understand i always look at things at repair lens, but at this point i see it primarily as workforce development. if we are ever to come to circular economy, must be designed and created on local, hyper local. mass manufactured must be mass customized locally, using some of early age tools already here at SR, but if we are ever going to make this we have to do this. pre-workforce development. must provide this ability for people to tinker with the built world now. long way of saying yes we can do job stuff
• william - on educational front, cybersecurity training for novices who want to make sure they are safe and are doing everything correctly. technical course for basic cybersecurity that your grandparents would want. password managers, encrypted messaging, basic knowledge about how to avoid getting scammed. theres a lot we can do within education thats within our wheelhouse, and very helpful for regular people. separate cyber security for activists, phones locked down and encrypted. for in person, can maybe find someone who is expert in these topics, and we can potentially charge money for activists. can bring in those who are not already involved. also like providing things for regular people of street to come in and make sure they are following security guidelines
• telli - i wrote something that might be helpful to put on the table of basic security stuff.
• jake - i have set up a lot of computers at omni, one at TV, one at laser, one for 3d printers, and one under table. i made a pair programming setup once. really do believe in that and look forward to doing more infrastructure like that
• jake - not expert on cyber security, but thing that we will encounter is that everyone will be running windows and not wanting to change that. only a matter of time til microsoft willl take everything over
• interrupt - i consider myself a professional in that realm, and a mix of what everybody has said here is really valuable, giving people most basic ways to protect themselves and digital work. so many resources out there, great place for that kind of thing. piece of hardware failing can help with repeatability. can be taught and documented. for an activist if you have a computer at your info tent, and its stolen, how can you get back to where you were before quickly. great methodology to present. what to and not to do with your browser, to things that are targetted. just takes will and interest to put that stuff together. fantastic idea, William
• telli - Im in school for cybersecurity, not trained to teach that. But awareness training, basic stuff you mentioned, can give people a little bit of a chance. I think that would be a good idea and setup.
• peter - did we inventory all of current projects going on at Omni? i here all people saying we want it activated, but dont see it. i do see issue if primary issue is member dues, then initiative to go for grant, or if for users, from anything from raising dues or member campaign. but I think William you are asking of what projects to attract people. product / market fit, who are you trying to attract?
• william - thinking of noisebridges' key party, thats ok if nerd hacker person, but that doesnt appeal to everyday people on the street. i specifically want to appeal to local working class people in area. so educational program gives them beneficial and also helpful. once we do that, then we can look at, how did it work, and what other needs can we do
• peter - all for quick and dirty experiments, but dont have an understanding now of grand thesis.
• peter - ask for list of current projects
• paige - hw hacking, fixit clinic + chromebook/laptops, wnb night is both meetup/coworking/discussions + career prep, sudo mesh, was a saturday synth during day
• peter - also Tom's LUG on sundays.
• peter - if appearing to neighbors. what paige said, when free store comes, people just wander in. could we put in some effort to welcome those people into sudo room. very us vs them thing with the neighbors, would really like them to feel like this is their space too.
• william - mutual aid projects, not just connected to want to repair. we arent set up for this, but delivering foods to people in community. but starting this. FNB.
• interrupt - sounds like something... FNB is right there and doing it.
• william - FNB gives food on street to particular places. different models. but doesnt matter if they are doing it, we can still do it.
• interrupt - providence and org fit.. makes sense for orgs already to access to food and kitchens
• william - another thing, providing school supply kits. theres also providing clothing and reaching out to people who need clothing. we are able to accept donations, so we can source materials ourselves as we see fit. i think programs not necessarily related to tech would be great. and part of the reason ive done that, is when i was in undergrad. used to work for this program where i would do community service with nonprofit. would write up proposal. as you go through program supposed to take more of leadership role, have more ambitious projects. would like an ambitious project that delivers. for example i wanted to produce a show for local TV. students nearby, helped them produce something to show. someone stole my bike so it all fell apart. but had a school tutor program. so i just worked there instead. reason this story is relevant is we can have ways we can directly work for community that we can fall back on if we try and project and it doesnt work. like that there is always a project to be worked on.
• interrupter - makes sense what youre saying. but maybe that already happens. just mentioning earlier, this space it provides so many different things for different people. what i see, whenever im there, its kind of similar to a tool lending library, but there is an interesting social aspect. social thing not just around tools, but information as tools, things people do as hackers or engaging in some level or spirit of hacking. informational lending library. relationship to information, technology, potentially politics or philosophy.
• peter - i have gotten feedback that people show up here, get to corner by lockers, and they freak out and turn around. something about this space... fixit clinic is working hard to appeal to as broad as group as possible. at some point we might need to narrow, or we change internally to figure out how to be more inclusive. intimidating to a lot of people at first blush. not just space itself, but people in the space. we need to decide, if over time we want more people in here that are not like us, how do we incorporate them into space
• william - people who run events, just thinking about yar who does system admin work and has access to a lot of infrastructure, one of things for outreach is we can set up specifically mentorship programs with people with those who informally are leaders. thats on formal level, but yea addressing why people dont feel comfortable
• jake - regarding yar, yar has quit SR and is really upset with Omni. I want to talk about thing you were talking about earlier. spitballing about things to help community, but to our original scope, if we would open door to people under 18, which in past we figured couldnt be done, but if we did have the resources and motivation, show up at same time every week, if we could post something under 18 could come to, we could offer computer skills and computer safety, best practices for young people is an important thing. that would fit well into our existing mission.
• peter - or remotely vs discord, or outreach to school. im teaching a bunch of students at mc clymonds to convert chromebooks right now. other way to serve communities, other ways SR can do that
• jake - i tried in past, connecting at boys and girls club at oakland, were not responding. i think that jonathan tried to work on that but he quit of SR.
• peter - if its about handing people a computer, lots of orgs do that. in our hackerspace, we should be more rigorous about education. digital literacy digital equity digital inclusion. every library has a computer, but library says people go in to fill out forms. imagine what we are providing people is ability to be savvy, not just something to search the web.
• william - with non technical ideas i had. repair clinic, july told me last night that they would like to expand into east oakland, and i know peter you have been moving fixit clinics around, and july said expanding into east oakland would be a logical step.
• peter - we cant do it with membership we have now. we are not set up to do it yet. i think we need to be clear, there is a lot of stuff inside our house that needs to be addressed. awesome that july wants to do that outreach
• paige - i think we should just play to our strengths. if lots of people here interested in cybersecurity, they should run those programs here. there were lots of reminders about wood st resource party to omni, but no one responded from SR.
• william - would like to help with more cell phone access. repairing screens could be something we provide
• paige - screens expensive, and specific to device, not universal. hard to support here unless the person coming in orders the parts.
• peter - people who really depend on that phone to work cant depend on sudo room. those things are becoming hard to fix. apple parts are now cryptographically serialized to particular device. i will say that revel toaster oven, costs $400. but appliances, can provide that. we dont have space for that. i want to launch that at some middle school. ben and kimberly starting paid repair company, so thats a workforce development happening right now. right to repair goes into effect july 1.
• interrupter - that gets to core of SR. empowering people in a certain way. not giving a laptop. i think theres a role for the host, theres this amount of accountability. up for us to fill those roles. could be feng she issue. like how you focus. how to unlock seemingly closed doors.
• paige - questions about cleaning. needs to be culture change, please everyone try to encourage others to be proactive and clean + organize
• peter - beauty and order committee. how do we support that group who try to keep space clean, counteract the entropy. on other hand concerned that some level of entropy is a core value of this space. or if building management will support us going forward. how will the changes in the space necessitated by professional management. all of us who have aspirations to have neat and tidy house, but its a mess. is that a reflection of ourselves or could we change that
• william - ive been to noisebridge, but feels much more warm and comfortable than ive ever felt here
• telli - cleaner tables with power strips, that people can hang out.
• peter - might be useful to do a swat analysis. what are qualities you find appealing, help us to be more precise. more rigorous about contrasting. i can add im a member of circuit launch, maker nexus, and human made. what do those places offer and sacrifice? circuit launch expensive, but everything is taken care of, something goes down, we have staff to take care of it.
• interrupter - when we think about defining roles, theres energy towards cleaning the space. i spent some time cleaning the modular synth. because felt like something needed to be done.
• paige - this culture of cleaning keeping clear for next person, encouraging others to put things away
• peter - begs a bigger question, what is the implicit social contract that we have with one another in this space? i had an idea that maybe contigent with membership, is required volunteer hours. member of cal sailing club
• paige - something philip bell has said, having lots of people involved is really important, because yea some people dont do anything but if you got a lot of people who do help, its not so much work
• peter - people know this, if more people in, defintely will be free loaders, but people will also do work for respect and admiration for their friend group
• jake - some of biggest funders are older people who dont come into the space at all.
• peter - no, rethinking what it means to be a member of the space.
• interrupter - how do we get some sort of commitment, could be money, maintenance. feels like there is room for improvement.
• peter - right now scarity mindset in money and time.
• interrupter - some people cant do some of the tasks and thats ok
• paige - people see space and think people dont care. past WNB host would be frustrated with table clutter and do weekly clean of it. another thing is in winter it gets cold, so that plus clutter/lack of cleaning make it not a place a lot of people feel welcome to just sit around as 3rd space.
• peter - another example, someone came from grant group, nobody welcomed them. i gave heads up they were coming to the mailing lest
  • alex - did this person come on a tuesday?
  • peter - older woman, entered, hope someone wouldve welcomed in
  • alex - agree, for any event, host job to welcome people in the space
  • jake - could we have sign up sheet for people to be present?
  • peter - could we make membership waived for people who post their open hours/host space?
  • jake - i dont think that is needed, because right now membership minimum is $10, and if seems to be burden for someone, i just give them access. but maybe if making commitment was only one day out you would get volunteers to do this

• jake - in 2016 sent out email, maybe wasnt me, did thread on warm place to hack. myself and lot of people have advanced in wisdom since then. could make use of upstairs space, of trading mesh group, space under stairs. would love to help make nice cozy spaces. but also cleanliness things, like paige said discouraging for people needing to clean up space when not making mess, maybe do some sign up. if people dont feel like lifting a finger, they could just write up things needed to be done
• peter - but also could just make into social contract, like what kent does, asking people to clean up
• interrupter - space pad
• telli - do we already have a chore chart? noisebridge had something like that, maybe a decade ago they had "trash night" or "cleaning". maybe youre talking of a chore chart.
• paige - have you attended those? low attendance from similar cleaning focused scheduled days here.
• william - want projects to feel good for how im contributing. like robotic arm, unless its presentational or active project, we should get rid of it. make space for more of a computer lab.
• telli - need for efforts to make the space more inviting.
• jake - 3 Jan 2016

** https://sudoroom.org/lists/hyperkitty/list/sudo-discuss@sudoroom.org/message/ECINHMNZWVPXT47NZMUPLZFZW7IGXY2D/

• • "we are all starving for a warm place to hack, and sudoroom attendance is reduced for obvious reasons. what we need is a warm room to hack, and i propose the following:..."
• william - i am not very good at leading meetings. if somebody is really interested in starting a project with sudo room, then we could follow a process and explicit document on how you should write proposals. then write proposals and have people vote on them, specifically can put past grant writers. try to think about certain things in this proposal. timeline for project, and then evaluate at the end. what im presenting here, first part should be research. if youre trying to serve certain peoples needs, you should try to research those peoples needs and how served in past. think how you can involve those you want to serve in your solution. put how often you will work on that, track those goals. then ensure those helped become more independent. great if more interactive, when youre proposing something, have a democratic process, to have people get involved.
• interrupter - your proposing a process. what i think is more important honestly, than creating rule, is have simple thing. just create a template for a proposal and social thing. rule thing has always been a contentious thing at sudo. if you create template, people can use it.
• william - im not saying that this should be rigorously enforced, if people think its a good idea, systemized way of doing this will help for tracking success of projects and getting funding for future idea. if we are looking at the projects in past, no info to see if it was a success, what was ultimate goal and impact.
• interrupter - i really think that sounds reasonable and people will get behind
• william - last thing, i want us to come up with cool ideas, and i want us to go at them in a particular way that we all agree on. also would like more ways of interacting that are outside ways we currently interact. im a member of a bunch of discords, when people post things, people dont immediately react, but just leave an emoji, or allow creating polls. i think thats very user friendly to have social community organizing. kinda scary to post to a big email list
• interrupt - have you considered matrix?
• william - would like some help, running containerized version
• interrupt - yes I can help out
• william - natural conclusion, how do we go forwards? like first email, received rude response.
• interrupt - whatever helps people to socialize. misterinterrupt@gmail.com please get my email to William! sure will do