Meeting Notes 2014-09-17

sudoroom meeting september 17, 2014

Attendees

• ice breaker word: power!
• yar is excited for sudoroom the get more electrical power
• jenny is fearful of the power of the robot. shit's powerful.
• rhodey is more than somewhat fearful
• patrick also fears the robot
• robot says nothing because it's POWERED off
• treeherder thinks the robot thinks that fear is power
• korl wishes she had all the superpowers
• francisco would like to destroy the power
• noemie: "power to the people!"
• niki: "flower power"
• alex: the only real power is willpower
• david: it's impossible to escape the dynamism something something
• matt is playing with the power of regular expressions
• akira has power at his house
• alice feels powerless to the pace of technology, wants to learn how to cnc to label her beehives!
  • several hundred words about religion and stuff
• steve: self efficacy. 220. transmissions.

Announcements

• alex is making a kitchen sign
• eliminating stovetop kettles in favor of electric kettles
• jenny's coworker donated mate cuttings
  • it's rooting
• Farm Hack event in February - two days, building machines to automate farming, to distribute in several farms across the bay
  • Would need a projector, probably two rooms
  • Could sell lunches to raise money
  • Sunday night potluck at a nearby community garden

New Members

niki

• wants to play with the robot, in a choreographed dance
  • already programmed one dance
• gonna repair all her broken macbook chargers
• wants to share baked goods
• never banned
• not a cop
• 23
• successfully pondered!

patrick

• been coming here a lot, has lots of ideas
• wants to pay attention to our ideas
• horticulturalist, wants to hack open hardware, water use, radiation stuff
• can share horti skills. interested in tissue culture. rooted our mate baby.
• never banned
• not a cop, undercover cop, federal agent
• 23

Omni

• Did anyone fill out the Financial Health & Sustainability questionnaire sent out by finances wg?

please join working groups!

• http://wiki.omni-oakland.org/w/Working_Groups
• Working Groups in need of rad sudoers!
• Challenging Dominant Cultures - Saturdays at 11am
• Communications - rarely meets! Once-a-month Mondays @ 7 - omnicomms@lists.riseup.net - next mtg Monday 9/15
• Finances - biweekly Tuesdays @ 7pm - see http://wiki.omni-oakland.org/w/Calendar
• Facilitating Collectivity - Tuesdays at 7pm
• fundraising mondays
• Space Ops - Talk to Stephen from BAPS
• Ballroom - Wednesdays 4-6

please be a delegate!

• Rotating delegates: yar, jenny, matt, patrick (in training), Korl (in training), you?

agenda tomorrow

https://pad.riseup.net/p/omninom

kitchen

• david advises electric kettles instead of stovetop
• ground floor illegal kitchen is going away
  • david wants us to brace ourselves for this trauma
  • Food Not Bombs needs help setting up basement kitchen. contact joe liesner.
  • new kitchen will have higher standards of cleanliness and FDA-approved infrastructure
  • we'll also have to rent it out at times. prepare yourselves for this.
  • matt suggests moving all the appliances down there
    • but there's no electrical hookups for that. stoves need 220
    • that would make it even harder to get it ready for inspection
    • patrick helped FNB the other day and those gas burners will work really soon
  • what day are we dismantling all of that? nobody knows. no plan.
  • also, until basement kitchen is inspected, it has to look like it's not being used. plausible deniability.
  • health department already came once
  • need a concrete grinder to shave off 1/16" of floor. for example.

Consensus Items

TIL split

• Concern that the specific diffs between TIL and the print studio have not been articulated.
• 'Day use' rate for a 'public, community print studio' available only one day a week.
• They're asking for the entirety of the basement from library wall to sudo wall for only $600/month (2/3 of sudo's space for less than 1/3 the cost).
• Other common areas are also being occupied without consent. Any charge we make should also be made about all common spaces.
  • All stuff in the green room is A/V equipment for performances
• We should talk with TIL about how to hold a public, commons-oriented space
  • Eg; Financial contribution models, public access concerns, etc
  • Read https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Articles_of_Association
    • e.g. "sudo room is a deliberative collective, meaning there is horizontal democratic control and participatory management of the organization, which is composed of all individual members. However, the group actively strives to substantially incorporate interested community participants and beneficiaries who are non-members. Members agree to decisions made by sudo room as well the terms of these Articles of Association and all future amendments. By using spaces or services operated by sudo room, community participants and beneficiaries are obligated to respect all decisions by sudo room as well as the terms of these Articles of Association and all future amendments."
• Ask: "Do you plan to use this equipment for professional (business) use?"
• Counter space proposal of the inner basement rooms being dedicated 'printing space' (both screenprinting and printshop)
  • smaller sqft footprint (maybe expected
• Concerns expressed about 'common' space being increasingly closed off and marked 'DNH'
• There are two free printing options in the east bay:
  • El Qilombo (offset and silkscreen in basement)
  • Bay Area Alternative Press
• ABC No Rio has an active silk

Sound Equipment Proposal

• Sudo counter-proposes that the green room above the stage be the dedicated sound equipment room (it's already set up as such)

Omni PA

• Sudo member Ed has a PA he will ;) donate. Battery needs to be replaced, but doesn't need the battery (can use AC power).

http://www.ionaudio.com/products/details/blockrockerbluetooth Ion Block Rocker Bluetooth

ballroom events

• all omni ballroom events that need the space dedicated should apply here https://dochttps://pad.riseup.net/p/sudomtgs.google.com/forms/d/1w_PYdVScDqR9UNEWF-6j20WmaJKU4WL3OjCEaNovgjc/viewform
• matt says ABC No Rio is a warning about power distribution - certain people get too much power for booking events. so they added more people to their version of their "ballroom wg" and then the power hungry person went away.
• concern about music events due to the history of the building as a death metal club shut down by the neighbors

Working Group Autonomy

8/26 PROPOSAL: standing committees that are empowered to make any decisions autonomously should have a clearly defined scope for their responsibilities and operational leeway by October 1st, containing at minimum these 4 parameters: 1) what the group is tasked with, 2) what the group is empowered to do autonomously, 3) what the group is not empowered to do autonomously, 4) how the group cooperates functionally with other OOC organs

• [PROPOSAL] All new working groups should clearly articulate their mission, goals, and tasks to be consensed upon by the OOC.
• [Counter-ProposalEmpower Facilitating Collectivity wg to articulate what the wgs are autonomously empowered to do

Prioritize Making Money

PROPOSAL : To prioritize renting the ballroom as a way to bolster our working capital and get out of deficit. This means through the end of this year we will seek out and, at times, need to prioritize money making events over free events.

• Some groups work out an algorithm by which paying events pay for free events. Perhaps Finance Committee could come up with a working model?
• Origin: We turned down $4K due to a previously scheduled free poetry conference
• Would like to have a good sense of expected profit
• Should also have a process for bumping previously-scheduled events off the calendar well in advance

OO 3rd anniversary

"Sudoroom formally requests that the urban shield event on the 3rd anniversary of occupy oakland be offered the ballroom instead of the basement."

• 10/10 yes
• yar points out that none of us would be here if not for OO. For real though.

Newbie Night

• Jeremy presumably hosted Monday September 15th but nobody remembers
• Matt's feedback
  • tough not having an activity plan
  • people expect stuff to do
  • plan an activity!
  • board game? soldering lesson?
• Alex will do it next week. Tuesday the 23rd. will involve portrait drawing.
• Korl will do it next month
  • 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. 5) have a planned activity ready to avoid awkwardness

Money

• is the root of all evil
• $4840 in iacu account
• ~$1k in community bank of the bay
• how do we deposit cash money?
• grattip/gitipay went down $40 in the past week to $383.90

raising money by holding events?

• niki points to the ballroom working group
• explanation of what that wg is/does

space improvements

electrification

• david got a licensed electrician to assist/check whitney & sean's work
• whitney met with them on monday
• this one is awesome. johnny. he's coming tomorrow
• sync up with Whitney and Sean to bend conduit

lockers

• yar hasn't started the locker census yet. next week. gimme a break. sorry.
• people right here
  • patrick is 52
  • yar is 61
• patrick went to urban ore, but only found lockers without doors
• wants feedback from those who want differently-sized lockers
• considering building lockers
  • korl has friend at UO
• 5 people at the meeting would like differently-shaped lockers

bins

• korl's gonna find clear bins instead of cardboard boxes for storage shelves
• dollar store adventures
• proposal: spend $60 on it
• 8 yes, 1 abstain, 0 blocks, 1 matt
• or just collect it out of band
• concern that we are still in the red financially
• general concerns about money are voiced. we need more.
• everyone agrees we should move towards making the space neat and tidy and photogenic, in order to inspire confidence. Good for PR.

floorplan

• korl has a grand plan. turns out we can just plop a walkway on top of our existing shelves, if we find others the same height.
• modular wheeled unit with storage on the bottom, typing humans on top
• yar thinks enclosed space is valuable as a sawdust container for power tools
• enclosed space could also be a quiet room for meetings, could even be made out of windows! ideally salvaged materials
• rhodey suggests setting a date for talking about it more
• pulley platforms with plants on them
  • yar is excited by plants. also wants giant tree in a giant pot.
  • our new mate cuttings will someday be that tree

lights

• noemie has ideas for better lighting than the flourescent overheads
• incandescent would be more pleasant
• LEDs more efficient
• blue/white halogens are damaging to the eyes & brain
• doesn't want lights plan to fall in the way of other catwalk, etc, plans
• warm LEDs and some incandescent
• david suggests this be integrated to phase 2 of electrification
• la commune was considering dimmable LEDs but they are even more expensive
• rhodey might hook us up with a few flourescent-shaped LED replacements for our existing overheads
• noemie is lighting bottom-liner

fire inspection

• We'll need to "clean our room" before the fire inspection
• Any bare wood should be stored under the stage and/or painted (especially furniture in the basement)
• we fucking moved 3.5 tons of shit this morning
  • this included peoples' large personal items like a futon. we paid to dispose of that. really need to vet "donations".
  • please discourage people from moving in their personal belongings and abandoning them
  • it's not just sudo, these were people from other groups too. omni-wide problem.
  • attention is drawn to a pile of clothes strewn in the corner of sudoroom at this very moment. discussion of why it is there.

matt announces theatrically: "this is an opportunity for a unique cultural expression!"

• fire inspector will come back
• we need a shorthand expression for "emergency cleaning the fuck out of everything"
  • We should make an email-list and phone-call-tree for "emergency cleans" i.e. "the MAN is coming"
• Tape notes to objects that need to move / change
• We should possibly print stickers that people can affix to objects that say who owns it, what it is, how long it will be there, with contact info
• pipeline with EBDfCR
  • need a liaison so we don't overwhelm them
  • marc is their most frequent customer

need storage system for the Scientific Americans.

sleeping in the basement

nappers vs sleepers?

• granted, we all need a nap sometimes but people are sleeping regularly and now it's setting precedent and more people are gravitating towards the brown couch area. escalating.
• difficult to wake somebody up who you don't know and ask "who are you?"
• what if it's one person and they're always here and they sleep in the basement every day?
  • matt's confronted them and hasn't seen repeats
  • matt reads: https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Articles_of_Association#Section_5.2_Domestic_Use
• hasn't been talked about at omni meetings. lease forbids overnight sleeping, but not naps.
• Maybe if you feel uncomfortable, leave a note clearly saying not to sleep here
• 'No Sleeping Here' sign [made on a CNC machine]
• patrick offers to approach people
• maybe amend articles to include extension to common areas
• loose "three strikes" rule
• concerns about the "domestic use" clause - does it apply to eating food?
• caravan collective forming (10 sudoers living in vehicles)

"All of our expectations of members' behavior within Sudoroom also apply in spirit to the common areas around Sudoroom. Doing something in the common areas such as sleeping does not exempt you from our Articles of Association. https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Articles_of_Association"

• 10 yays, 0 as, 0 bs

Action Items

• let's fix internet in the basement please?
• Document incidents on the omni wiki
• Finish Stripe and set up Everbutton [Jenny] (Ron willing to help on this if needed / extending it)
• Investigate business license [Jenny]
• pamphlet to give new members
• upload our shit to http://openinclusivity.org/
• yar will initiate a locker census
• give blurb about sudo to omni fundraising committee
• set up a work party for electrification [Jenny]
• Ask Marc to be a liason with East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse
• fill out the omni's financial questionaire [jenny]