Meeting Notes 2025 07 22

These are the notes from the The 823th Meeting of Noisebridge.

Date	2025 07 22
Note-takers	Jet, Mark
Moderators	Mark

Previous Meeting Edit redirect [Last meeting]

Next Meeting Edit redirect [Next meeting]

Meeting Summary

TLDR what happened at the meeting:

• Announcements:
  • Zachi: Decentralized Web Meetup – Saturday, 4–7 PM.
  • Elle: Sewing yard sale planned next month; volunteer doc coming.
  • JD: CNC donation expected late August.
  • Mark: Maker Faire application pending. Cinema Night now Saturdays at 8 PM.
  • Elle: Planning Noisebridge's 16th Anniversary Party; meetings to be held soon (#sweet-16-anniversary-party on Discord).
• Bureaucracy and City Planning Update:
  • Electrical updates:
  • New outlets, motion-sensor lights.
  • Inspector coming tomorrow. Avoid extension cord daisy-chaining. Plan to remove upstairs fans and unused cords before inspection. (Update - sounds like it went well?)

• Consensus Items: None
• Discussion Items:
  • Lockers – Monetization & Usage Policy. Move discussion to #locker-audit
  • 16th Anniversary Party Planning
  • How Old is Noisebridge?
  • OpenSauce After-Party Debrief
    • Clarified: Two different Luma accounts exist; only one is currently active with 274 members. Need to ensure account access and event posting is streamlined.
    • Suggested: Apple/Google calendars, canonical URLs for events. Add events early to increase donation potential.

Introductions

• Ask people to share their name, access needs, and preferred gender pronouns what they do at noisebridge

Mark - Like taking notes and labeling things Diana - right now I like to do puzzles JD - I do all kinds of stuff. Including getting a pizza slice Trevor - Been coming here a month. Tahoe sunnyvalle. Greatest thing ever and trying to be more involved. Marinmade makerspace in tahoe. They have a waterjet. Cool loft, a stage. Tevor helped clean and organize and paint and music events. Trying to work on 3d rendering holographic tech content creation. Liz - From LA and runs crashspace! The president. Wanted to checkout noisebridge. They think we're legendary. Likes to do cosplay wearables. Logts of things 3d printing. Likes electrinically actuated wings before. Nick - Fasion stuff. Touch designer. Ben - Came to the electronics class on monday pretty cool. Moved out here a few months ago and been surfing. getting back to engineering stuff! Noah who was teaching last night taught him about it. Thanks for coming by Josh - Into AV video conferencing. LIikes to tinker with stuff. Jet - I like to do robotics, programming, and being a big part(y) of the community. Zachi - Has their wearable compute in sitting mode rn. Bricked his phone by updating his linux phone. Elle - Does sewing, hacks organizations. Enjoys FUNdraising and gettings things together and makign things work socially. Will be working in woodworking this work.

Short announcements and events

Zachi - D(decentralized)-Web meetup this Saturday! 4PM-7PM

Elle - Sewing yard sale next month. organizing doc goes live for volenteers for sellers. Look for it on the sewing channel. Wont have additional classes this month but will have classses next month. We had 5 classes this month.

JD - CNC donation late august maybe.

Mark - Maker Faire application still pending will hear back by august 1st maybe.

Elle - 16th anaversery party in the works. should have some meetings about it if we have it in the fall if it's in november december. Check #sweet-16-anniversary-party in discord to help plan

Mark - Cinema night will now be on Saturdays @ 8pm!

Excellence

Our One Rule is to Be Excellent to Each Other. (Give a quick, 1-3 sentence summary.)

What does that mean? Please see our page on excellence https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Excellence!

Trevor - be considerate about changes you make to the space.

Anti-Harassment Policy & Community Standards of Excellence

Noisebridge has an Anti-Harassment Policy https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Anti-Harassment_Policy Everyone is expected to follow the Anti-Harassment Policy, please familiarize yourself with it.) More approachable & specific guidelines, https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Community_Standards https://safespace.noisebridge.net/ is one way to quickly raise issues which will be seen by people

Bureaucracy and City Planning Update

[Missing context, notes accidentally deleted] ...might have noticed alot of new light switches. there is a new lightswitch on each end. mostly lights are on motion detectors. many are wiredly switched. we're going to have to get used to understanding how everything works. there are alot more outlets in all spaces. the drop cords are 45 feet long. avoid grabbing an extension cord. Use existing conduit and infrastruction. PLEASE. do NOT daisy chain electrical cords. We will need to remove the two upstairs fans. relocate the upstairs underneight the power drops. remove as many extension cords as you can. fan out and remove any extension cords we can. Leave a stack of extension cords for after the inspection. sewing needs a good look.

JD will help us with all of these things to fix.

Big C Consensus Items

Nobody likes 3 hour meetings, only explain if new people are present. https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Current_Consensus_Items

None

Discussion Items

It is recommended to post items for discussion ahead of time at https://pad.riseup.net/p/nbmeeting. (Check that the template for the meeting is in place already, and that last week's notes have been moved to the wiki, of course)

Item prompts should follow the format: From/Raised by: [your name here] Seeking [decision/outcome/advice/something else] On topic: [topic]

Discussion Item 1

From/Raised by: Mark Seeking c(big C?)onsensus On topic: Lockers

WE should have a noisebridgy asthetic b We're trying to monitize the lockers but still be sensitive to the different locker uses. You probably shouldbnt have expensive things but also lockers should be well secured. Can we have more signs that say NO FOOD AND DRINK IN YOUR LOCKERS that is super unexellent and be punished.

Josh - Three columns locker number most recent date and contatc info. checkbox for if they paid or not paid up. So, 4 columns. This can be updated ad-hoc. could be a bank of lockers.

Jet - An actual list of how they paid should be necessary so we can keep track of the payments

Josh - do we want to be a sotrage facility or do we want to really encourage use of the space? If the latter, we need to track actual activity.

If we are going to monetize it, how are we to keep track of all this without forcing someone to take on the work of tracking against their wishes.

If you're storing things but not actively used then ???

Loren: a suggestion. Let's add a once-a-month (1st of month meeting?) process affirming we've done a check-in. If this process fails, let's re-examine. While we maintain this process, we keep re-examining in order to see how its working. Lots of conflicting potential uses of lockers that we need to keep track of. There is not really a simple one-size-fits-all system.

We need an actual plan thats laid out that we can work out.

Loren: using a tool called Polis and we can try out this tool to gain consensus.

WE Z - We want lockers and to monatize them. we have members who want to ensure that these lockers are not being sat on them but actually being used for actuve projects. Are we going to keep track of this with a sticker system. We have alot of properties in san francisco that are vacant that sit on them where we want people to live in them but they are used in a non-productive way. We want to see less homelessness in the world. we have resources here we want to prioatize them twords people who are actively making things and doing things. He agrees that people are actuvely using them.

Loren - New goal for the rest of the discussion of tonight. We should all submit our opinions to a forum that we can get a clear big concerns emerge and grapple privately without geated in person. Let's just say new viewpoints that aren't already said.

Zach - We've said We want peple who are using the lockers should be actually using them. but that is not very defined. but if someone like JD sayd that if his tools are here but he leaves them for 4 months and doesn't touch them that is a divisive thing of if that's exellent or not. Need an operational definition that econcompasses our spectrum of views on "usage"

Elle - Really concerned about people who connot afford the really low locker amount. and prioratizing them for people who can pay vs people who don't. We might have a scenario where a homeless member uses it as a place to store their belongings. is there closer to sleeping at noisebridge or is that a good reason to use our lockers. we need to define how we should manage the lockers

Nick - 1 year long member. lockers have never been avalible for new people here. we should come to a concensous for where people are using them frequenty. He thinks that most poeple using the lockers are not really using them.

Loren: Hard cases make bad law. If we need to make all kinds of exceptions, then we are not even operating on a clear principle for ppl to follow. In response to Nick, in the normal state of hings here, lockers do get used.

Nick: so it seems like a communication problem. Need to communicate to locker users how long they should expect safe locker stability.

Loren - you'll be assured by the spreadsheet.

Jd - we dont have any decent drillsets. if you want to know that you have a drillbit of a particular size. it's best to use a locker.

Josh - wanted to respond to zachy. the standard we had in 2012 when they had a locker issue then. if in 30 days the locker was not updated then the community said that they could reach out to reclaim the locker. It should not just be an issue of whether they paid or not.

Mark - Should eb moved to an online poll so we can better define what this is better

G - It might help to abstractly to say that the lockers are to contribute to the community. the point is to contribute to the community. it's not just the money but it is also the value that the locckers give us through the community using them. the more turnover the lockers havbe the more value that they can give us. the point is that they are used.

David - Do we have an assigned "Locker Troll"

WE Z - Nominates himself as a Locker Troll.

Mark - Mark and Diana have started the conversation and have gotten some feedback. Julliuus has a stake in this aswell.

David - The person who is a locker troll. give them a free locker and they have a 6 month term.

Jet - locker troll should not be compensated.

JD - Interested in who is pushing for locker turnover and asked who has a locker in this conversation.

Elle - there are several places in sewing where people are putting their sewing supplies. would like more lockers to be open.

Diana - this started because she needed a locker and started planning with others about how to get lockers to be turned over. thisis a more methodacal way to get people to use their lockers. This is all for noisebridge. this is because we need money in a way

Loren - This is not to financially fund us. this is not signifiganltly. it's more to get people to actually use it and to promote turnover

Diana - yes, but its also about holding people to contribute to the space and community

Josh - Doesn't see the lockers here as something for an incomme source. it's for the members to use them effectively. they are not getting used . they are a backlog of this. this is a use problem.

Elle - shocked that this is not going to be fundraising. is concerened that this is going to create disparity amugst access to the wealthy. No-one turned away for lack of funds.

Mark - Even in this room this is a small part of the community and wants to make everyone's opinoin is heard. we need to make an informed choice on what we should do . we should not make concensous until we agree and are more educated.

Will be moved online.

Discussion Item 2

From/Raised by: Elle Jet Seeking On topic: Starting planning for 16th anniversary

Elle - Omelia should be involved. Omelia is the do-ocratically manifested planner/ coordinator. Last year, the community came together for the party and we did somany thing. rube goldberg machine dance teacher electrinic music. DJ with electronic music all night. demonstrations upstairs. We made over 2k money and if we did it better we could have raied over 5k. As we plan we should take advantage of this history and please do scroll through the channel and learn the lessons from the open sauce parties and the anniversary parties. Lets use these examples to have a bigger fundraiser better fundraiser for the community. something like the opensauce event.

Diana was there Josh was there.

Mark will open a poll for when the next meeting will be.

Discussion Item 3

From/Raised by: Jet Seeking On topic: Explaining why it is our 16th anaversy but i've also heard we're 19 years old.

https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Halloween_Hack

Discussion Item 4

From/Raised by: Elle Seeking On topic: Debrief for opensauce after-party

From the Luma donations We got 635$, We spent around 200-something on drinks. There was also cash and paypal, etc donations...

Elle - Noticably the QR codes on the walls for donations needs to be updated. the venmo and paypal. It was hard to find them .

David - volenteers to print and post them all over

Elle - the old ones were old and went to our old venmo. They go to Liz's venmo who is not a part of NB so much anymore so she gets annoyed.

loren - Venmo says even for buisness accounts they can't transfer between acccounts. paypall is better for lots of reasons. we have creditcard donation online. venmo doesn't seemm like a greatinvenstement. it's alot more work than it's worth it for.

Elle - There should be at least 2 different ways to donate

Loren - will happily help tonight to get David to new donation QR codes. We should maybe have more up. Think up where to put them all up.

Elle - Put one up on every door. Take down all the old ones. Found some old QR codes. Also found on that was odd, suspect.

JD: there might have been a 3d print a box for cash box that was not official.

Loren - Was actually just because of it being an internal things for 3d printining classe. in 2023. That box has been ripped off.

Trevor - Would it be too much to set up an apple pay node.

Loren - we could do that with the stripe app. for setting up some payment terminals.

Elle - Pointing out how good luma was for getting people to the noisebridge luma. was at 113 now at 274. The Meetup has 14k members. but it's good to have a new set of folks. Might be good to have a 16th anniversity.

Jet - putting it on meetup luma nad discord

Loren - Seperate recurring event calendars and single event parties. In communicating with other makerspaces and wants to post event links there for noisebridge or where noisebridge is doing more commmunity facing events.

Funds -

Sunday July 20th. We got through paypal $80 - fees and $20 - fees.

There is a treasurer account. *This conversation got too complicated for me to transcribe*. Loren and Elle both mighth ave accounts for Luma but there is an account made by an old member. Elle created the account but not the event (other way around, created the event, not the account). It is under Elle's control maybe(nope, see update). It might be under someone else's control. Goign to work on figuring that out. Update: Elle did not create the account. There are 2 Noisebridge accounts. The one Elle uses points to Noisebridge Stripe and was created last August for the Quincenera by an excellent member who is no longer active. Strangely, only Elle and Noisebridge treasurer seem to have access to it but others should since it contains 274 members while the other Noisebridge account has 0.

Id be curious what people think about the ticket for the event only listing the donation amounts, then only once they are in the event page it has the "if you can't afford this, let us know" disclaimer.

Loren - We lost some in the fees in luma 3 people donated 100 dollars. 15 people donated 25 dollars with maybe a modification. Would encourage creating with large donation first and free at the bottom. Maybe a 25 ammoutn with a +- 25 dollars.

Elle - How we do it in meetup: we have people use a code. We could have discount and access codes for people who can't afford it.

Mark - More event with low overhead and high returns.

Trevor - Getting people to come we should have an apple calendar or google calendar that we could have it added to the calendar. we have a user with the name noisebridge where you could subsribe. we have a luma event calendar that is also confusing. we have a connonacal url that makes things nice. For one off events vs regular events.\'

Elle - Open sauce next year for an afterparty. We might want to put it up on luma a month a head of time. We might get more donations. We might not list the free tier and have people just show up for those hackers who can't afford.