Meeting Notes 2016-10-12

Sudo room meeting 10/12/2016

intros

• Enough for quorum!

proposal: buy the building

• Full proposal & FAQ: https://docs.google.com/document/d/12412blyXCVLkjJHrKXIipJTRaOzpNbQcB8SddSqnIsk/edit?usp=drive_web

Discussion

• Due to IRS requirements for a tax-deductible donation, it is looking like we will have to restructure the organization of the Omni. Sudo Room would have to be the official recipient of the donation.
• Rob - create other audio-visual/building maintenance organization?
• Matt: Can we say we change sudo's name?
• Marc: We should definitely change sudo's name as part of this process, pending hearing from IRS to see what's allowed
• Robb: We should talk to Kyle
• Loads of disuccsion not included in notes
• Lesley: Important to be explicit in split between legality and culture. Many of the distinctions can be artificial.
• Marc: Should be fine for how the board is structues.
• Matt: One direction is a logical function, or the opposite is it's completely abstract and only for the accountants
• Marc: Needs to be based on income, so many limitations. Need to make sure there isn't one culture that dominates.
• Dante: Things could change, like sudo has stopped growing but CCL still is
• Robb: What if some group had shared responsibilites but started losing money, just one half, and then the other could buy the remaining interest
• Marc: Tied to the building so not as likely.
• Marc: Also could have an issue with market value vs purchased value. There are also caps with regards to how much something can change per year and it might be based on the market value of the building.
• Lesley: Rents in sf actually fell in the last two months, so this might be a better time
• Matt: Our price is fixed
• Sigma: What is the worst possible outcome if we proceed with the split and then a small group of malicious actors attempted to exploit or destroy the omni?
• Various scenarious discussed
• Marc: Extra things you can do to address these include contracts between the two organizations
• Tim: Can do deed restrictions with contracts so they couldn't sell
• Marc: Might not be able to completely restrict as there are some rights which can't be overriden by a contract
• Matt: More likely risk is lack of participation or resistance to participation which leads to a fiefdom which stagnates. Common examples like the granges, abc no rio in new york
• Marc: Can add some board members who aren't participating on a daily basis
• Robb: Often board members are good trusted
• Matt: Often I have the opposite sense where we would prefer and trust someone who is involved
• Vin: My friend is involved in lawsuit, where Monsanto funded board members to be part of national fraternity, so they own their building, but their membership in the grange was going to be revoked, and the national grange has the right to confiscate the building
• Matt: In NYC, there was a building claimed and turned into condos
• Matt: I am not happy about any of this, it sucks, but it seems like the only way
• Marc: We have the option to buy the building, as soon as we get the valuation, it will probably be for more than the option to buy, so maybe we could sell the building to the donor for the purchase option price, then they could buy the building for the valuation and sell to us
• Matt: This is goint to make things more complicated and it's going to suck
• Marc: We've talked about spliting things between two organizations before
• Matt: Want to bring in jesse to a board meeting and get some questions answered in real time
• Marc: Might be better to compile a big list in email
• Robb: Still saying AV studio to get income as part of omni
• Marc: The problem with that is it needs to be historical so it has to be real like sudo

Proposal #1:

 * Openly invite, if possible, the other 501(c)3 organizations to join us in our plan for Proposal #2 below:

Proposal #2:

 * Sudo Room will change its name to Sudo Commons
 ** Or something more omni related (cleared by our lawyer Jesse)
 * Consist with its mission, Sudo Commons will broaden scope to host its educational public-benefit non-profit activities indefinitely in the omni commons, acting as an organization that participates in managing other organizations' rental and use of Omni Commons.
 * Sudo Commons will fiscally sponsor a project using the old name -- Sudo Room -- to conduct hackerspace activities within Omni Commons. 
 * The fiscally sponsored project with the old name shall continue in spirit and in practicalities to continue as before.
 * Sudo Commons will accept a large donation in order to finance the purchase of 4799 Shattuck with 50% ownership with Omni Commons, and therefore provide tax-deductibility to this donor.
 * Sudo Commons will sign a mutually-binding mutually-beneficial well-structured contract that ensures high levels of accountability and oversight for harmonious co-management with Omni Commons of 4799 Shattuck.
 * Funcitonally speaking, the Sudo Room community will have re-structured its organization to both carry on current (or similar) activities, as well as provide an ownership model for 4799 Shattuck.
 

Consensus

• For: Sigma, Dante, Lesley, Tim, Marc, Daniel, Robb, Matt (with sad-face hesitations), Coyote, Jenny
• Blocking:
• Abstaining:

So consensed!

More discussion

• Marc: Figuring out the split is the hard part, needs to be fair with irs, needs to be fair with regards to board members

action items

• jenny: Make a callout for a board meeting

Labitat loan

• Marc: Went to Labitat, old hackerspace I had costarted from before, asked for them to donate some money. Bringing it up as we have consensus

Proposal

• Sudo agrees to be responsible for $8k in order to get a $15k loan from the Labitat hackerspace. This loan helps to cover our shortfall over the past few months.
• https://labitat.dk/

Consensus

• For: Marc, Daniel, Robb, Matt, Coyote, Dante, Sigma, Lesley, Tim, Jenny
• Blocking:
• Abstaining:

Repair Cafe

• Matt talking about successful bike shop Spokeland which does a repair Mondays thing
• Matt: They sell bikes, fix bikes up
• Matt: They pay their rent, through multiple eras of burnout
• Matt: They always break even by fixing these bikes through donations
• Matt: Thinking of having sudoers commit to a few hours a week to come in and volunteer to fix and repair computer stuff
• Matt: Imagine there being a better route to help people
• Matt: Have people come in, sit down, get stuff fixed, and then at then end come up a total and get a donation
• Matt: Idea is bring in whatever, we'll take it apart and try to fix it and try to put it back together
• Ian: I remember a few years ago people would come in with busted computers and ask for people to help
• Dante: That happened to me at Noisebridge where I came in and wanted to get it fixed
• Dante: It's kind of like putting two laptops together
• Matt: Need to pick a night
• Ian: Call it MacGuyver night
• Leaning toward thursday night
• Robb: Going to become Geek Squad
• Matt: Actually exactly what I want to fix, that way when random people come in, you can just say come to Thursday MacGuyver night

finance

• jenny: omni should be good for nov and dec thanks to $15K in recent loans that cover building appraisal and oct/nov/dec shortfall, but if anything unexpected comes up or it takes longer than until the end of the year we're screwed

new members

• Following https://sudoroom.org/wiki/New_Member_Script

Vienna

• Would you like to very briefly introduce yourself?
  • Moved to bay area from Malaysia, civil rights, electorial reform. Started a media station, and a tech related startup. Interested in blockchain governance, reason coming to the bay area. EconomicSpaceAgency, developing open source protocol based on blockchain to provide economic empowerment from the bottom up and transform the economy. Feel like traditional activism doesn't work and we need a better system.
• What brings you to sudo room and what do you want to hack or learn at sudo room (if you know)?
  • Spent some time in Berlin, this is the first place that reminds me of it. Had a friend in Berlin that introduced me to his network and it was inspirational. Been in the Bay area like a year and half and trying to convince people to move to Oakland is there a conversation around social change. Been here two or three weeks now. Want to make think tank, left collectivist people creating new financial tools. Like 21century coops, interested in collaboration with sudoroom. Want high quality people coming by, infuse thinking into bay area. Was at meeting with Director of institute for the future. Lack of dialogs around labor movements that are progressive around building infrastructure. Would like to see Oakland at epicenter. Speaking ImpactHub Oakland, potentially here also. Three day event maybe here. Public forum in the first day, Next days would be more like hackathon. Have four projects to present or hack on.
• What do you want to share or teach at sudo room (if you know)? Economic transformation thinktank is the working title. November 11-15, and 12,13,14 are the main days. Looking for advanced thinkers around the labor movement in the 21st century. Want to see the conversation here.
• What's your plan to abolish sexual violence, police brutality and white supremacy? in 10 words or less
  • Decentralize the system and empower the people
• What's your plan to end the anthropocene extinction, world hunger, global warming and global inequality? in 10 words or less
  • Economic empowerment, liquid democracy, higher consciousness [mediation] and a borderless world.
• What's your plan to ensure freedom and privacy of communication for all? in 10 words or less
  • Distributed computing, encryption, zero knowledge proofs, mesh networks, distributed javascript [open source infrastructural protocol working on]
• Sudo Room is part of the omni commons and as such, we take the omni commons statement of solidarity and safer space policy seriously. These policies include expected codes of conduct and the consequences of unacceptable behavior. As a member, you are expected to both act according to the code of conduct and also to be a part of acting to counter unacceptable behavior (we don't let mistreatment slide). Is this going to be a problem for you?
• Ideally this should include the group going over the statement of solidarity and the expected behavior and consequences of unexpected behavior section of the safer space policy to make sure the person understands what's expected of them.
• Have you ever been banned, asked to take a break, or similar, from a hackerspace or any other collective? No
• What are the best ways to contact you? What is your schedule like? Do you have particular times that you think you'll be around? vienna@cryptolab.net