Meeting Notes 2014-08-20

sudoroom meeting august 20, 2014

facilitator: yar scribe: jenny

Attendees

(ice-breaker: what do you see for sudo room in 5 years?)

• yar (solved climate change; omni owns building)
• sean (with me as a member)
• matt (expanded, automatonomated, mortal)
• jeremy (ewok village above. pallet shelf container modules in the room)
• jenny (sudo planet / anti-nation)
• marc the half-man-half-robot (working internet)
  • can we make that 5 days? -- yar
• adam (deep-dive education and hacking platform)
• ron (changing oakland forever (for good (slightly (maybe (until the asteroid hits (or all the sea creatures die off))))))
• boyd (BAPS computer-skills crossover class)
• julio (here probably)
• patrik (here)

Synopsis from last week's meeting

• We consensed to allocate $500 to electrical upgrade for sudo.
• Discussion of Jeremy's Omni governance/voting proposal
• We need more folks working on things related to sudo reboot & making the Omni ready for the public!

Announcements

• Omni community potluck tomorrow from 6-8pm. Come help set up at 4pm! Let's set up a table with the 3D printers and sell Rikke's kombucha for an Omni donation. Perhaps put up the People's Open Network poster. Any other ideas?
  • set up a node (marc? matt?)
  • also set up nodes in the basement, it's very necessary
• uc berkeley is building a hackerspace
• Host the Bay Area Consortium of Hackerspaces (BACH) Unconference at the Omni in October (issue call-for-participation and save-the-date)
  • Proposed date: October 18 - 19 (to coincide with Cryptoparty on the 19th, typically held on Third Sundays at sudo room)
  • Halloween theme. Dress up as JAWS.
  • Sleepovers at crash-pads nearby
  • Share bikes
  • costumes should be indistinguishable from random
• turn off the floodlights - breaker in locked stage-side room
• OMG WTF HACK-O-MAT VENDING!y
  • blame marc
  • what to sell? mate, electronics kits, dna
  • awesome!

New Members

Member What is your (pseudo)nym and/or name? Why do you want to be a member of sudo room? If you know already, what are you excited to do at sudo room? If you know already, what are you excited to share with the sudo room community?

• Sean
  • Why? Radio experiments. Roof access?
  • What? Learn node.js and experiment w/ cavity resonators
  • Share?
    • teach you C, or ham radio
  • heard about sudo room from stan

• Adam aka halfnhalv4
  • Lot of opportunity here in sudo room, person like myself gives me access to tools I would not traditionally have access to, in order to experiment, and explore doing things I would not be able to do in a traditoinal society.
  • Work on some amazing projects, maybe invent something, come up with something that can make a difference in peoples' lives
  • Just my life experience, the things I've been through, meet other people, etc
  • Never been banned from a hackerspace!
  • Not an undercover cop!
  • If you can get close enough to tickle me (implied that he likes being tickled?)
  • Found out about sudo from EB Express article

Newbie Night

• Who will host next week?
  • Julio (tentatively), Tuesday
  • Whoever hosts is responsible for: 1) adding event to the calendar, 2) posting to sudo-discuss and otherwise promoting, 3) showing up! and 4) answering the door, giving tours, and otherwise being friendly and answering questions.

Finances

• Internet Archive Account: $5,823.42
• Community Bank of the Bay Account: ~$1K
• September Rent to be paid: $2,000
• Weekly Gittip income: $333.90 [goal: $1,000]
  • Cards bounce and users are not notified. Please check that your account is still active! <3
• Jenny paid back David $150 for sudo room insurance (from her own bank acct). She's also collected $97 now in sudo room donations from members and guests over the past month, so sudo now owes her ~$50.

• hol proposes (in absentia) allocating $300/mo from sudo revenue to omni capital improvement fund for next 4 months (sept-dec). first month covers 1/10 of ADA inspection ($250) and 1/10 of scissor lift rental ($50). omni needs working capital - any excess of actual cost of building upgrades approved by ooc gm could be counted against rent. working on this in omni finances wg and hope to update with actual capital outlay costs soon.
  • Concerns over our current income status
  • We would have 5-6 months runway even if we did contribute to the capitol fund
  • Jeremy: We should spend money on specific things
  • Patrik: Or, we should contirbute to an Omni collective fund and let the Omni finances wg tell us what they spent it on.

Omni Labor Problem

• Secretary for David or Niki
• Better for David to do less and document more
• What are the biggest stressors?
  • Fixing ballroom ceiling [scissor lift]
  • Fire extinguishers every 75 feet
  • Electrical covers: scour entire building to find where outlets have missing electrical outlet covers
• Encourage use of "Decentralization Flash Mobs"
  • Gather, in an ad-hoc fashion, to target certain tasks, responsibilities, projects, etc, that are being centralized, and find an appropriate and effective alternative that helps to decentralize the situation!
• David Brain Extraction Squad
  • "What's this?" "A Brain Extraction" "What's it doing?" "Going hungry!"
• Omni working party on a weekend, with an analog checklist

Proposals for Omni

• OmniDoersProgram
  • Sign up to MAKE shit HAPPEN for The Omni through your (un)expertise (all skills welcome!)

Projects

• mid-meeting break for talking about projects going on, so new people can hear about non-beaurocratic exciting stuff

--- Projects Status Starts Here ---

Order Number | project | bottom liners | Progress | Comments

1- Electical Wiring: Jake, Whitney, Jeremy(?): 5% Whitney has skills, will check with Jake. 2- Robot: Jake, Marc: ?% 3- WhiteBoard at Entrance w to do list: Jeremy: done-ongoing: 4- Rack panels cabling: Daniel, Kare: 60% -Server panel 24 ports patched 8.11.14 , Switch panel started, 3 ports done today 8.13.14 (meeting took my time away :)). 5- Triple-scale auto-doc station: Marc : 20% : Need help with raspicam to microscope adapter 6- Hacking Intfrastrcuture + Omni Communications Working Group (wifi, terminals, web solutions, support, etc) 7. Omni-wide calendar + local map: Jenny: 10% see http://cal.omni-oakland.org and http://tidepools.co --- Projects Status Ends Here ---

Consensus Items

tabled to next week

• Select new Omni Oakland delegate?

a million omni things

• Pay for Jesse (our lawyer who helped us negotiate the lease) : $500/month for 8 months (from Omni fund)
• Paying David back )~$300)
• CASPA inspection ($2500)
• $500/mo scissor lift

• PROPOSAL : REMOVE PARTITION IN FRONT ROOM
  • Makes the whole building more accessible

• Proposal: All groups submit relevant permitting documentation pertaining to operating or modifying their space: land use permits, business licenses and building permits.

• Process for changes to the building: Submit an email and make sure it makes it to the delegates meeting before making modifications to the building.

• PROPOSAL : PREPARING THE OMNI TO BE OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

• PROPOSAL : STANDING COMMITTEES AND WORKING GROUPS OF THE OMNI
  • "1) Six Standing Committees are defined by the Omni. These are Communications, Governance, Fundraising, Finances, Facilities, and CDC. In order to meet the standards of a Standing Committee, each group must meet on a regular basis (self-determined by the group, minimum quarterly), and must be populated by a minimum of two people in order for OOC to continue to function.
  • 2) Each committee needs one person who is the bottom-liner. Bottom-liners are responsible for making sure meeting times are announced publicly, that notes are distributed, and they are the contact person for their respective committees.
  • 3) One person cannot bottom-line more than one committee (i.e., each committee should have a different bottom-liner). Bottom-liners are encouraged to rotate quarterly."
  • 4) Other Working Groups are important and are invited to form and populate on an as-needed basis.
• PROPOSAL : POPULATE THE COMMITTEES + WORKING GROUPS

"Each Member Group of the Omni will be required to populate at least 3 seats in at least 3 committees. Member Groups with more than 12 members will be required to populate at least 5 seats in at least 3 committees."

Action Items

• Finish Stripe and set up Everbutton [Jenny] (Ron willing to help on this if needed / extending it)
• Investigate business license [Jenny]
  • Non-profits ARE exempt from paying Oakland Business Tax (but $60 registration fee required)
    • http://www.oaklandnet.com/government/fwawebsite/revenue/revenue_faqbiztax.htm
    • "Q. I am a nonprofit business; do I have to pay business tax?"
    • "A. If you are a nonprofit Federal or State of California tax-exempt organization, you may be exempt from payment of the business tax. You must submit a copy of your letter of determination from the Internal Revenue Service or from the California Franchise Tax Board confirming the exemption from income tax. However you are required to register and pay the registration fee."
    • There is also an exemption for small businesses(GROSS budgets =< $2800 / year)
      • http://www.oaklandnet.com/government/fwawebsite/revenue/revenue_SmBizex.htm