Meeting Notes 2025 09 30

These are the notes from the The 833th Meeting of Noisebridge.

Date	2025 09 30
Note-takers	Mark, Zoda, Julius
Moderators	Mark

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Meeting Summary

TLDR what happened at the meeting:

• Announcements:
  • Judy: Lit Crawl -- Oct 25th (Saturday) (2nd and the third sessions) will be setting up around 5pm. https://www.litquake.org/litcrawl sign-up for volunteers on Discord
  • Mark: Makerfaire happend and we got "editors choice" award. thanks to everyone who helped! if anyone wants to help clean up, please do!
  • Valencia Live for Thursday October 9th. 5pm to 9pm.
  • Sewing got stolen from again
  • Bike was stolen (and retrieved, thanks to AirTag)
  • EHR: Physics Frank Bynum, going into hospice.
• Membership
  • Associate member app: yon/yukki
  • Associate member app: Daniel Chadash (lazer daniel)
  • Big M Member: Daniel (1/4)
• Consensus Items:
• Discussion Items:
  • Beverage Bridge
  • Silent Auction
  • Makerfaire Postmort

Introductions

Mark - I like organizing and cleaning, but I like games even more
Rohan - newish, spacebridge, and also open to new things 
Zoda - Do mostly software. Also really like working with wood. Also have a lot of opinions about Noisebridge theory.
Caitlin - corporate burn out, beverage bridge
Jess - space bridge, community garden!!
Felipe - electronics, new-ish here, wants to help organize things 
Sunny - I'm from Toronto, this is my 5th day in SF, and I'm very curious. I like making stuff.
Julius - things that fly, baloons (with spacebridge), drones, rocketry!!
Yon/Yukkie - like to make music, clothing, software!!
Daniel - laser cut, code, 3rd print
ONLINE PEOPLE:
Elan - under the weather not here in person, space bridge, computer stuff, grafatti art
Nick - love gamebridge, video games, interested in grant writing
Elle - Writer, fiber artist, urban farming, permacutlure, and fundraising 
Loren - Finance stuff, software infrastructure 

Short announcements and events

Judy: Lit Crawl
Lit Crawl - Oct 25th (Saturday) (2nd and the third sessions) will be setting up around 5pm 
https://www.litquake.org/litcrawl will add some notes for the discord as well
Afro-surrealist writer's workshop. Been around 15 years. Selling wine beer and [something] to make some money. There may or may not be a third. 

Judy: Do we have any volunteers to help with the breakdown? 
Ellen: no, we have a smaller group. 

Judy: I can help with that cleanup, but don't know if i have anyone else that could help me

We can create a sign-up for volunteers. On Discord. Elle will post it. Judy will babysit it through the process, i.e. keep an eye on it.
Yon, Julius, and zoda say they may be available. Where are we sourcing wine and beer? there will be donations from the bottom up. Ellen will thinking about more. 

Yuki: Valencia Live
Will be moving forward with Valencia Live for Thursday October 9th. 5pm to 9pm. We can raise donations!! 
Looking for anyone who wants to help table for it or offer items for donations.
Tie-die shirts from Caitlin possibly for noisebridge.  

Mark: Makerfaire happend and we got "editors choice" award. 
thanks to everyone who helped! if anyone wants to help clean up, please do! 

Zoda: Noisebridge cafe happened. Raised probably slightly over $100!
COFFEEEEEE

Elle: Sewing got stolen from again. Removed all of our stickers and pins. All the items that were left in there for the silent auction. The silent auction boxes have been more firmly made and have better covers now. But PLEASE lock the sewing room door when not using it.

Incidentally, a bike was also stolen (thankfully it was retrieved thanks to airtags and diligent work by the owner.) Be careful with your stuff!

EHR: Physics Frank Bynum, going into hospice. His friend basically offered all his stuff to NB. If anyone knows him, please reach out and touch base with them. 

Excellence

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

Judy: assume possitive intentions

Its our one and only formal rule, subjective on purpose, so we can continually talk about it as a community.

Zoda: I think its also, really welcoming everyone, and going above and beyond to really help them be their best Noisebridger. Help people do cool things they want to do!

Rohan: Picking up one more thing from the table than you had seen before you sat

Julius: Showing up for difficult conversations and making room for hard dicussion to really reach consensus is important

Nick: Mindfulness. Consider the space to be an extension of yourself and vice-versa

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

Brief Kudos

Recent examples of excellent participation, say 3, unless the passion moves you.

Rohan: whoever cleaned up the front hallway post-party!
Loren: All the people who put up a great table at makerfaire, packed supplies there and back and invited all new people here.
Zoda: And people who brought stuff for the party, and doing bartending, etc @ Chris, Elan, and others
Elle: to Double Union, the feminist hackerspace, for coming and hangin at the NB Makerfaire booth and showing their stuff too!
Mark: Calling out CoreyFro + Pyconut for their car and driving service, uniquely enabling that whole experience.
Nick: special shout out to the young dude, Aurelius, from the booth behind us at MF. He came to our booth a lot and helped us out a ton!

Zoning & Permitting Standing Item

Status this week? Helpful broad asks to the community?

NB city bureaucracy WG -- JD & Alice, among others.

Bit of a limbo state right now. There was a slight paperwork snag and we are trying to get it sorted out. Mostly in the clear. The work itself is done.

We are physically done with the meaningful, large parts of it!

Big C Consensus Items

none

Memberships

New assocate member: yon/yukki

• love helping out, love being part of the community, want to fundraise, and help host events
• my sponsor is Elan

Elan: They are constantly helping out in the space, constantly coming up with good ideas and doing excellent things.

Zoda: Strong endorsement added. Been working with them on instagram stuff, etc etc

Ellen: what do you expect is the hardest part about being a member?

Yon: Not sure TBH

Joshua: that's the right answer! it should be easy to be a member D: I have an answer: closing when someone doesn't want to leave.

Zoda: whats your favorite part about NB? Yon: Talking to and hangin out with everyone around the space. Zoda: one thing you wish to change about noisebridge? Yon: Fleshing out the music room more! Zoda: policy-wise? Yon: nothing really Judy: Event you'd like to see? Yon: Been thinkingof running my own coding class... Frontend react? Rohan music you like to play? Yon: Punk, hyperpop, indie, anything

3..2...1...

AND THERE WAS MUCH REJOICING

Daniel: Big M Member Sponsor: Elan Mark: What have you done at your time? Daniel: Sweepin floors, cleaning bathrooms, trash, helping to evict people whove been 86'd/tried to sleep here, making the danger fan safe, repairing 3D Printers, getting new printers donated Ellen: Dont you think we have enough Daniels already? Daniel: I think at least at this time I am the definitive Daniel.

Zoda: Why do you want to be a big M? Daniel: Feel like I'm already stewarding. I know its like, not supposed to be "hierarchical", and the whole thing is that I'm already doing the work anything, so it's not like anything should be different anyway. I want to get rid of some of the hierarchies and I have some plans for them.

Elan: I want to say, he does a really good job of uplifting existing community members. Willingness to take on some of the less comfortable community steward tasks.

Julius: feels like a bit of a tension exists where self-volunteering to step up to become a big M should be about being encoraged to do so, not seeked out aggresively

Zoda: feel like everyone has plans for NB but don't necessarily do a great job of talking about them. Don't be a Big M just to get ideas approved. Just a concern of mine in general. Nothing about you. I've worked with you. You are really cool.

Elle: There are people coming in with their own agenda, but it only takes one vote to contest. Is there something I'm missing about the discussion of people coming in with their own agenda? (not present): if theyre seeking power to change things its an antipattern.

Loren: concern is about the lengthening list of people that could push issues and perhaps coerce agreement?

Elan: I think those reponses make sense, but one clarification could be we're not increasing the number of people cause active members has gone down. By not increasing membership we're inadvertantly consolodating power, my 2cents

Mark: Question about membership title and its relationship wtih funding. Membership doesnt seem to start or end at funding... Daniel: What I would wanna have changed is (dun dun dun), tell people that as soon as you start a reoccuring donation, you are a "member". Make sure not to give anyone power unless they are giving a donation. I think there should be a social by in for certain levels of access. It's more important to be arround than to maintain some kind of "status quo"

Rohan: Isnt that inherently heirarchal? Daniel: I dont see this any differnet than existing heirarchy. Jess: Don't like the direction we are approaching though by suggesting we are sorting people by donations Loren: we have bylaws we can just rename and change that as quickly.

Daniel: I think a lot of the trick is just in naming.

I think last tuesday, someone wanted to beecome a member on like their first day, then we explained like the trust system involved. They just wanted access. I just don't see why we cant have some kind of tite for showing up and contributing well.

Daniel: No meaningful change becides the ideas in the heads of the people who show up. I like the word clerk because it's a boring word that just implies beauracratic labor.

Jess: definitely not important to get caught up on the names. Something about the correlation between "members" and "people who donate" and the spatial field there, what that looks like

Daniel: Its very rare for someone to use the word "member" for someone who just shows up for the first few times.

Loren: We should talk about this at length with google doc and continue this conversation.

(Let consensus bubble up)

Mark: We have four weeks to talk about all of this and to assess his ideas about what memberships and these terms mean.

Another new associate member app: Daniel Chadash (lazer daniel) Sponsor: Mark / Arity Tell us about yourself: came to sf 8 years ago, been in tech many years, sold my company, and now want to focus more on art. want to focus on personal projects and community.

Caitlin: how come ive' never seen you? Laser Daniel: I come in early on, I had a baby two months ago, second baby. Weezy: How long have you been coming to nb? Daniel: 3/4 months? Judy: Any interpersonal issues? Daniel: No, gave to two tours, helped with project

Whos is your least favorite person at NB? Daniel: Haven't met them yet :)

Most favorite? Daniel: whoever built the Flaschen Taschen

No one objects?

3...2....1....

Much rejoicing.

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: Caitlin
Seeking: Advice 
On topic: Beverage Bridge in terms of public endorsement and id-ing?

Q: how public should we be about it? Caitlin: I think its best to keep it to people who actually come to noisebridge and check discord.

Zoda: like the idea of it being a more informal event. Not everything needs to be on Meetup or discord or wherever

Judy: When educator group goes out for drinks, they call it "going out to have tea"

(anonymous hackers): has privacy concerns about law enforcement abusing power potentially. or any disgruntled hacker.

You can meet individually to do this. It can't be endorsed explicitly or implicitly. Don't communicate about it in our public channels, that's too much. Word of Mouth is good.

Fine to drink in the space as friends. Not a thing that NB can endorse Also, do NOT ever give minors alcohol.

We are not going to endorse this and we think you should really really be careful. It's your responsibility. If you give out alchol to minors, we will call teh feds. Not okay. Noisebridge takes substance abuse seriously.

Discussion Item 2

From/Raised by: Elle
Seeking: Announcement?
On topic: Silent Aucion

Silent auction is coming up. Jonathan offered to take up organizing of it. Everything on the wall above the print shop is part of the auction. Also stuff on the landing above the front staircase. Let's try to get more volunteers to help out Jonathan!

Items held in sewing machine got stolen.

We had a email we put into the file for the Luma and meetup invites, and it got taken down somehow.

What is the planned day for the event again? Saturday the 11th. REAL SOON Last silent auction raised 2k, we lost money because the event we coshared with lost money. But this solo event should raise 2k or more.

Landlord has offered 2 things for the auction. He has offered a emcee. Potentially a emcee in drag? He insists on having a receipt for the macbook he is donating.

Judy: we need to promote it better.

Elle: Agreed. Its been on meetup for months, on luma for a month. We currently have about 17 people registered - about half the people we had for the post-makerfaire party we did on Sunday.

Judy: Do we have facebook?

Elle: Multiple facebooks. I have access to one. Not sure if I can get to the other but will try.

Also not sure if the updated email went out or not? With the corrected Paypal link? Q for Loren maybe?

There's no "new paypal" I have no idea where this repeated phrase has arisen from.

https://paypal.me/noisebridge (not https://paypal.me/@noisebridge)

Mark can work on emailing Members who we have emails for.

Franck from Resident offered to do music for the event. Mark will reach out to him.

Keep asking for donations when running a meetup or class.

Discussion Item 3

From/Raised by: Mark
Seeking: Discussion
On topic: Makerfaire Postmortem

Afterparty was a success! Great "tea".

Mark: did makerfaire, it went smoothly, some hiccups with volunteer coordination, but overall really good. Big congrats on that.

The run up to it could have used more effort.

Elle: notices a fair bit of pushback, that can cause undesirable inertia.

Zoda: asking people directly and talking to people helps push momentum towards these things

Elle: I have noticed people come out of the woodwork to help out last minute. I have showed up to things that I thought were abject failures up until the day of, but then things turned around.

Zoda: positive encouragement, personal relationships