[nb-soc] summary from last week's meeting, signage!

[Danny O'Brien]

Sorry about the delay, I got distracted by shiny things.

Annnyway, so the broad summary from last Tuesday meeting was that
everyone *loves* hacking a technological solution to sociological
problems, and also that (in the words of Other Other Other Rachel)
"Noisebridge has grown a lot, and needs further structure. Al says
rules give people backup. I think that structure could also be the
same thing. Example: R. decided to practice massages in the craft
space. I asked them to move. They didn't understand. I didn't have the
right words. I need tools. Structure, not rules."

We also had a long discussion about whether providing such structure
would be called a committee or a taskforce or a soviet, etc. I think
at Noisebridge it is mainly called a mailinglist, so here we are.

A summary of the brainstorming session is below:

Best practices !
Signs!
Ramone's idea of a sentry -- a night shift crew
People who will commit to check in early in the morning -- not just Al.
Request free school stop classes
Panic Button/ Panic Noise
Last person closing the space
Anonymous reporting hotline/web form
Phone tree
Creating hacker livingspaces nearby, encouraging people to join

---

Here's the status of a couple of these:

1. Signage -- Darawinne and Liz went out around the place, checking
out the signs and  working on templates. As with all people
considering such things, they got obsessed with the front bit of the
space, and are going to reform the Great Wall of Information.

2. Phone tree for emergencies/backup: I set up a number on Google
Voice, +1 650 24ALERT . It now routes to me, and potentially Al if he
wants it (Al, are on this list? I'd need to send you a confirm thing).
Unfortunately, you can't forward calls to numbers that are already
being used for Google Voice, which is a pain. I guess we don't really
want to make this dependent on NB's asterisk system if it's an
emergency number. Anyone got better suggestions for forwarding for a
number of people? Who wants to be on it, before we use it as a general
number on signage?

3. [NOT TECH SOLUTIONS, OFFTOPIC] I'm pretty sure the free school
aren't doing classes, beyond the rebellious rinpoche (is he still?),
and the cool
work on the all-new tastebridge.

Al, I'm still pretty sure that it
shouldn't be just you checking in late at night. Do you want to work
out a schedule with others?

4. [TECH SOLUTION, ON TOPIC] This is actually a general challenge: we
have a lot of stuff that people do in the space, but it's ended up
getting stuck to one person, rather than a set of roles that can get
freely passed from one person to another. And then sometimes that
person wants to stop doing it, but can't work out a way of unravelling
themselves, so they keep getting drawn back to stuff that they no
longer enjoy.

The biggest leap it seems to me is responsibility for privacy,
and/or money. Right now people are (understandably) very hesitant to
share any of the powers that require those responsibilities, and it
means transitions close to those roles are getting stuck. We need a
bunch of steps between "oh i turned up and cleaned up the dirtyshop"
to "oh i am in charge of collecting the vending machine money" where
it's pretty clear where someone is, what they want to do, how they can
get to do it, and how it could be fun.

Maybe need a tech tree, like Civilisation has, so that once you complete
dishwashing, you can go onto i don't know, fire extinguisher testing
duties, or the Collisseum. Does anyone have any idea what I'm talking
about here?

5. Panic button -- not sure what this means, but I think it would be
hilarious to actually set an automated set of things in the space.
Lots of people are worried about cameras, but I'm not sure they'd
worry so much if the cameras were part of the vision systems of
autonomus robots. Foolishly.

6. Closing space -- not going to happen, but we need some sort of tech
solution for that feeling Mike described of feeling imprisoned if he
wants to leave but doesn't feel comfortable with an empty space or
somebody he doesn't know left there.

7. Anonymous reporting -- I don't know, as I said, I'm happy to be the
recipient of these, but it's hard to reassure people something is
anonymous without them taking control of it. Maybe something at a
.onion address overtly tunnelled through Tor would do it.

8. Lots of people talk about having hacker hostels, but I don't know
anyone who is really pursuing it. DO IT.

9. I'd actually like to get a bunch of (printed) info about other
places that people can stay at -- Rachel mentioned that there are
other anarchist spaces which do let people sleep there, and I'd love
to be able to give people better advice than "well, I'm sorry you are
a hacker who lives in a car, but you really can't sleep here forever".
I'd like to be able to give them places that might work for them to
sleep.


d.