meeting-notes-dump

These are the notes from the [https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Category:Meeting_Notes The XXXth Meeting of Noisebridge]. Note-taker: Patrick, Alex; Moderators: Steve.
* '''One or two bullet points of high-level meeting summary.'''

= SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENTS =
[[Promotion]] and [[Fundraising]] working groups are looking for volunteers.

= Introductions =

* Frank: Communications software defined wireless.
* Chuck
* Matt - coming here for 6 months
* Drey - in a meeting
* Gabe - visiting here w/ uncle bill!
* Bill - the afermentioned uncle. From "The generator" in Reno.
* Patrick: I'm a software engineer and trying to learn more about cryptography and security related things of value in the world. When I talk it types! I have a magical computer.
And you didn't even have to initiate that program?
* Steve - also from The generator. A geologist! Really awesome at pushing a broom
* Joe - from hackerspace in Uganda.
* Mari - hacks wearables
* Alex - also typing while I talk. Primary teach mondays and tuesdays. Mondays with CHM we do robot hacking, Tuesdays before the meeting we do music and game programming in Unity. I also do signage around the space
* danukeru - attemping to master flipping bits w/ a butterfly. but for the moment using emacs.

= Short announcements and events =

* Bill - open house December 11th at the Generator in Reno. 


= [[ Membership Binder ]] =

* Danukeru - what is Noisebridge? a non-profit that follows the hacker ethos coming from european hackerspaces, with a lot of the anarchy ethos mixed in. Only two rules: be excellent to each other, and doocracy: be excellent about the changes that you make, empower yourself to make change, but do so in a way that's easily reversible should it not be well received. 
* danukeru - noisebridge is an awesome space, but if you want access and alongside it all of the work and some extra responsibility you can become a member. Membership is like stewardship. Your membership application is decided by consensus. Members are the only group involved in making the large decisions in the space through consensus
* Alex - membership comes with 24/7 access, so if members leave for a night they need to make sure that the space is safe. Also the dues are $80/month or starving hacker rate of $40/month. The key to making noisebridge sustainable financially to long-term buy a building.

Patrick: Decision aking process of consensus is that no proposal shall pass except one which is acceptable to EVERYONE. Noisebridge does it where if Dunu says "I want to burn the space down" I'd say "No I don't think that's a cool thing to do" but I have to propose a counter-proposal like "Let's go burn down something else" or "Let's burn an effigy in the street". You must propose some alternative or else it's not accepted as a block. It means someone would consider leaving Noisebridge if the proposal needs blocking.

Exception: Anyone can block a membership application. If person is up for membership, anyone can veto new members to prevent bad actors to keep the process amongst reasonable members. Little c consensus happens when people just agree on an idea, big C consensus is only necessary when major changes are made.

= [[Philanthropists]]=
* '''Invite a knowledgeable member to describe''' [[Philanthropist/Pledge|Philantropy]], and the application process.
* Read off any names from the binder for the past month. Any applicants must have their sponsor present to vouch for them.
* If there are no objections, they're a philanthropist! Their pledge should be handed over to the [[Secretary]] posthaste, after which their token will be updated to give them the 24/7 access they've earned(?)

= Financial Report =
*We have 36,140.25. Noisetor liquidated $3K of Bitcoin. It has $4800 server costs unpaid from last year to pay with it.
*There is a firm number but we don't have it calculated at the moment.
*Noisebridge has $20K for itself.
*We pay insurance for the year at once. It went up because we were an office category before, now we're a group work space.
*We have insurance now for board members to avoid liability to board members.
*Noisebridge needs more money. We net lost $8K last year. We're likely the same this year. We need to up our recurring donations.
* We'll have a big red banner on the site to show how much money we need to get to become stable.


= Consensus and Discussion =


== [[ Consensus Items Hi


als from last week ]] ==
''(Add any items which are consensed upon or someone has raised a principle objection for to the [[Consensus Items History]] page.)''

== [[ Current Consensus Items | Proposals for next week ]] ==
''(Add any new items for consensus to the [[Current Consensus Items]] page.)''

== Discussion Items ==

== theft == 
* alex  - two items in the last 24 hours have gone missing, frank's SDR and mari's bag of stuff. we should make sure that lockers are available. 

== promotion == 

* alex - we have a lot of great stuff at noisebridge, equipment and classes. We should promote all of the things that would encourage folks to donate monthly. we should have folks that spread the word about things happening in the space. let's get physical posters out in the world! if you have ideas we'd love to hear them and document them on the wiki and even have a meeting!
* matt - posting the events on meetup could be helpful
* danukeru - could be problematic due to the volume of new people. we have a $5 token fee to limit attendance, but also filter out the no-shows
* matt - meeting also allows limiting the size of the event.
* alex - we could have a working group to promote things!

== fundraising ==

* Noisebridge metrics would make people realize they need to urgently raise money.
* We haven't been able to buy and fix tools like laser cutter.
* There's things that need to happen and things we are toying around with.



# We need better numbers on our monthly recurring donations.
# How many one-off donations happened last month?
# Quantify attrition rate?
# What is the rate of change over last 6 months, next 12?
# We need help building a fundraising team to gather the data and make a plan to work to the amount we need to get to.
# We need to actually execute on it.
# We need people to come up with ideas to fundraise, write grants, people who will volunteer a couple hours alongside all of us.
# It's not a single person's work, not even 2, it's a group that needs to form.
# We need to do this to stop treading water to be ready to survive after our 3 year lease and prevent ever losing it.
# Let's make that not happen.
# Rent is $4300/month +$1100 expenses.
# When rent was $3600, our expenses took it up to around $5000. It's around $5400 now.

Miloh: Can we form a group to bring back a fundraising proposal? A working group?

* Mari: We could do fundraising working group with a mailing list, slack channel, and meet once every two weeks to get all these things done.

* Patrick: Noisebridge needs to be able to make money on autopilot, not have constant campaigns to save it. It's totally possible, they do it the non-noisebridge way with recurring. Noisebridge's economic patterns are anti-pattern. It's not enough to rely on it continuing to work.

* Dunu: At Foolab we decided to just do rent and our treasurer gave us the state and we took it upon ourselves to do workshops that would have lots of atendees and high technical value that's worth the money. 

* Steve from Reno: We need to know where we're at right now to give people a picture of the things that will work.

* Alex: We need to increase perceived value to people who use the space.

* Patrick: People who come and use the space to work or use tools could know how much that costs Nosiebridge to provide it for them. We could incorporate that into the signage so people know what they're getting when they use it. Noisebridge is not a free coworking space, it is a community that you help keep running. There's making the space better by effort and people donating.

* Dunu: We had things like drinks with visible costs that helped raise money like a drink machine. Little kits, vending machines,

* alex - sudoroom has two vending machines, one of which they might not need. we could maybe pick one up.

* danukeru - we could make cheap arduino boards to stock in them. 




= End of Meeting =

* Reprise of the [[Hackernationale]]. [This is anarchy - we do what the wiki says!]
* [[PGP|PGP Key Signing]] could happen now (if it doesn't happen '''before''' any given Meeting).  Ask others around the space or check the [[PGP|list]] to see who wants in on the action.
* Return the [[membership binder]] to its rightful location.
* Clean and tidy the meeting notes including removing all these really verbose instructions, then save them to the wiki.
* Send a summary of the meeting notes to the discussion list.
* Enjoy the company of your fellow hacker, robot, or robothacker.
* Discuss any items for which there was not time during the meeting.

[[Category:Meeting Notes]]