Meeting Notes 2014-10-01

Attendees

• icebreaker question - what are you excited about?
• yar - to see what omnidance does with their room during their 2 months of occupancy
• matt - to be here
• ian - doing IT for a film festival
• noemie - sunday's film shoot!
• patrick - going to humboldt
• chris - going to a symphony
• korl the internet addict - life, flowers, the bees that are left, getting stuff done
• happy birthday jenny - going back to sleep. no longer trustworthy.
• marc - getting an incubator from biocurious
• jeremy - opening the omni

Announcements

• Omni fundraiser video this Sunday starting at 11:30 - we need everyone!
• roof access - a million hours of gushing about how awesome it is
• 2014 BACH Unconference happening HERE (at omni) Oct 11-12
  • BACH planning meeting was awesome!
  • Show up on Fri Oct 10 night (7pm-ish) to help set-up for the weekend ;)
  • Help plan, contact @tunabananas (Jenny) or @wrought (Matt)
• 6pm friday - film editing workshop!
• mesh thursday meetings are for outreach, tuesday nights are for tech/dev
• yar not doing 3d tuesdays every week anymore
• https://omnicommons.org/lists/
• einstein candidacy for mayor official announcement tomorrow at OGP
• Noisebridge Remix party this Saturday! Music, fun, and all your favorite Noisebridgers

New Members

• https://sudoroom.org/wiki/New_Member_Script
• Ian has been pondered and is now a member!
• also greg!

chris

• why? likes hacking here, meeting smart people, wants to spin off projects. working on a project with anthony on math & programming. gonna make a raspi robot.
• what hack? oh you already said that.
• what share? ROBOTS! knowledge about accounting, full web stack knowledge.
• never banned, not a cop
• consensus is good. not too much of a believer in it, not intending to join the politics.
• hasn't read much about sudo's history. main motivation is to hang out w/cool ppl and hack on cool projects.
• what's your secret project? anthony's algorithm.
• feels threatened by the robot.

Newbie Night

• alex ended up not doing it yesterday.
• korl will do next week, Thursday from 5pm to 6pm, the activity will be making origami blow-up boxes!
• 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
  • https://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-discuss

Money

• who's going to pay omni rent tonight?
  • it is already paid.
  • whoooooa :O
  • utilities were $364.17
  • total expenses this month were around $2364
• Internet Credit Union account: $3,308.59
• Community Bank of the Bay Account: $1,000
• $431/wk on Gratipay

still in major deficit. $600/

Omni

• Tomorrow's delegates: Patrick, Tom

Community Print Studio Re-Proposal

• old proposal: http://wiki.omni-oakland.org/w/Print_Studio_Proposal_v1
• new proposal: http://wiki.omni-oakland.org/w/Print_Studio_Proposal_v2

Rundown

• Some pretty rad, totally nonprofit small presses
• Changes in this proposal: Adjusted open hour times, working on making it more accessible and open for everyone, working to reduce dues for members.

Concerns from Marc

• Since a collective is being split, both of these "new" collectives need to create new proposals. It is currently very unclear why a TIL that does not include the printing collective should be regarded as a collective rather than a non-voting Tenant.
• Giving up common space: The basement was previously designated common space. If the other collectives are losing common space then what are they gaining to compensate? Not more rent money.
• Noise: Anything else happening in the basement will be consistently disrupted by the sound of the presses. Their solution seems to be to add the times when the common space will be noisy to the calendar. This does not solve the issue of the common space being disrupted.
• Money: They're paying $600 for a fairly large chunk of space, yet are composed of 6 independent small press businesses.
• Commons: How does this project tangibly fit into our mission toward "a radical commoning of space and resources"? What does this provide for the commons that a digital duplicator or laser printer cannot? This is a lot of space taken up for something that will be unlikely to improve the lives of anyone outside of a small group of printing nerds. Its relevance to what we are doing seems to fall somewhere between stamp collecting and calligraphy (yet both of those would take up very little space). The commons benefit to required space ratio of this collective seems disconcertingly small.
• Consensus Process: Did not ask for consensus before moving in and occupying a large amount of designated common space (see http://wiki.omni-oakland.org/w/File:Omni_full_floorplan_proposal.png ) - can we trust they'll work with the OOC in a spirit of consensus in the future?
• Tactics: They are, intentionally or not, using the fact that their equipment is difficult to move to pressure other collectives into accepting their proposed location. They are responsible for moving their equipment into an area without bringing it up with the other collectives. At best we should ignore any extra workload caused by moving the equipment.
• Spin: They are trying to spin most of what they are doing as if it was already discussed and agreed upon long ago. At best there was some idea that there would be printing equipment somewhere and it would be available for use as part of the omni commons. Location, amount and type of equipment was never agreed upon (was it ever even discussed?). Claiming sole ownership of common resources without going through consensus is not only worrying, it is antithetical to the values of the Omni.
• Access: Egress and access to the basement from sudo are not addressed in this proposal.
• Membership fee: Was originally $100. In this new proposal it's not specified. $100 membership != commons. Sudo values access and transparency over exclusivity.
• Membership: It is not specified how someone becomes a member of the print studio. What does it require?
• Organization structure: Is the print studio collective a top-down or horizontal organization? How are decisions made? Is it a non-profit or co-op?
• Lead safety: There are now large amounts of small pieces of lead in the basement. Has anyone from the collective addressed safety or regulatory issues?
• Not participating in communication: Juul had a bunch of questions to TIL on the omnilogistics list but there was no response from TIL (email available here: http://pastebin.com/gubd1UV7 ). Not responding to questions and criticism is problematic.

Juul blocks splitting TIL into two collectives. Juul blocks giving up common space for the print studio in the basement.

other discussion

• who is a member of TIL? emji & joel? and they're both also members of CPS? yet will be delegates for both?
• it's expressed that it makes more sense for TIL to re-apply, separately (or become a tenant) - break up the proposals
• need to reconcile the different logics, premises, that people are coming from to describe this problem
• we'd like them to articulate their decision-making process
• growth concerns: benchmarks for growth of membershipand contributing more rent to the omni moving forward
• worries about micromanaging
• yar is worried about having too high standards of omni groups driving groups away from us. maybe we should take what we can get, if someone's excited about doing something at the omni.
• maybe we need to work with them over the next month as they grow
• yar says maybe we should consent to a temporary formative period. basically what they're asking for anyway since TIL proposed the whole "6 month review" thing.
• hard to determine fairness when it comes to space and money in this kind of project
• jeremy points out that we had shit sitting in the basement for a month and a half
• scott points out that OMP for instance may fail at being the kind of radical, community-based project he hopes it will become, and were that
• yar: a lot of these concerns are future hypothetical problems, not actual problems
• jenny: what about access & egress?
  • yar: there will always be pathways through. machines all need wide working radius. also, the way i arranged the pews before was even worse.
• another actual problem: noise. not adequately addressed.
• matt: what happened to the "occucopy" vision? is this like occucopy?
• seems like the critique of "obsolete, elitist" etc is pretty harsh and hard to answer
• matt: letterpress is actually easy to quickly make a flyer, etc. the point is that they're still formative and haven't articulated a shared vision yet.
• still excited to see a manifesto, but frustrated about asking for forgiveness rather than permission.
• patrik: our robot arm may not serve an obvious social good either...
• offset press (noisy, messy) less important to the project than letterpress (can be used for things like making flyers)
• yar made this but matt says it doesn't address some questions http://wiki.omni-oakland.org/w/Print_Studio
  • what are the advantages of each machines? talk shop. why all of them? Can we add more functionality to the print studio to accomodate even more printing methods that are especially useful to the community? (e.g. risograph and xerox for 'zine-sters-- HIGHLY populist mediums)
• apparently they don't know how to use the offset yet
• yar: they taught me a bunch of stuff for free just because i showed up and was excited.
• yar: most of the empty space in their layout is due to the offset, which needs access on all sides. if we could find another place for just the offset, then everything else could in theory condense into a smaller area. emji & joel were talking about putting it in a library room. so where else could the offset go? if we put it in the middle of sudoroom it'd still take up less space than the robot...
• yar is disappointed that proposal v2 didn't address any other solutions to the geometry problem
• tangents about possible uses of the omnidance space upstairs
• jenny: we all need more time to figure shit out
• yar: but we should show them kindness and offer some legitimacy while they do that
• yar: a "counterproposal" is micromanaging. real help would be show up at a CPS meeting, show enthusiasm, get involved. it's really worth your time to infuse face-to-face love into our community right now. omni needs that more than ever.
• matt: "we do believe that printing & publishing resources are an effective contribution to the commons." can we agree on that? our nerdiness includes your nerdiness?
• jenny: maybe one of the CPS members should bottom-line a working group for scheduling in the basement?

Some concerns:

• Clearly articulated community angle that benefits the commons
• Provide some vission/values that explain to everyone how the resources and tools provide benefit everyone (eg; more than a letterpress, can we also support technologies like risograph + xerox for zine-sters?)
• Consider space needs and possible alternatives
• noise & ventilation
• decision making structure and how do members relate to one another?
• how do we get in touch? is there a printing-press-collective email list?

1) offer advice and support in creating

La Commune Lockability Proposal

"This proposal is a second attempt to define hours and lockability for La Commune. We need to be able to lock our space to secure our stock & equipment against theft and vandalism, and we also want to make sure our security solution works with the needs of the Omni as a whole.

In light of feedback from members of Sudo Room & CCL, we propose the following lockability setup, effective November 1.

La Commune will be open from 10am to 6pm. The cafe's main door, at 48th & Shattuck, will be locked at all other times. Access to the Omni before and after those hours will be through the 48th Street side-door.

La Commune is committed to ADA access. In order to maintain ADA access at all times, we will adopt the following solutions.

We will build out an enclosed hallway and door which will give access to the ADA bathroom via the 48th Street hallway, as per drawings from Patrik. This will permit us to lock the cafe while allowing after-hours visitors access to the ADA bathroom.

On evenings when ballroom events will take place after 6pm, La Commune will designate a point person who can unlock the cafe door & assist visitors who need to use the wheelchair lift. Since the wheelchair lift requires an attendant at all times, this solution does not represent any further loss of autonomy for visitors who need to use the lift.

La Commune has striven to accommodate all the feedback we have heard on the question of lockability. We need to be able to lock the store in order to open on November 1. If there are serious objections to this proposal, we hope to hear them. In the absence of such serious objections, we hope the Delegates Council will pass this proposal."

discussion:

• matt wants to do an insurance scam or something. he's joking.
• What's the problem, exactly, and how can we help you solve it?
• Jenny suggests a 'Front Desk' working group that can steward the entryway from 6-10pm
• Provide free labor in exchange for being able to keep the cafe open
• apparently marc tried to have a meeting with them, but they cancelled it?
• "our insurance, consignments arrangements, and vendor relationships require us to lock the cafe at night"
• yar: that lift is temporary. long-term we are talking about having a more permanent lift. so long-term we should still try and find a better solution. short-term i think we should go easy on them. they obviously feel strongly about this.

• several sudoers (jake, matt, marc, yar, jenny, korl, ian, noemie, you?) volunteer to help ensure that everything that la commune needs to secure can be locked up at the end of

Oakland Nights Live

Concerning the next Mayoral debate scheduled for Oct 11 (Sat) -- feedback and open discussion from sudo based on experience with last debate.