[sudoroom] Meeting Minutes including Action Items

Thu May 17 08:48:09 CEST 2012

PLUG:
Event at The Holdout on Cell Phone Security (a Hackmeet production):
http://sudoroom.org/ai1ec_event/hackmeet-2-5-cell-phone-security-for-noobs

WIKI LINKS:
Minutes (Agenda and Notes) -
Most critical aspect (Who makes decisions) -
http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/Sudo_room/decisions#Who_makes_decisions.3F
Property listings (Former and currently available places for sudo room) -
http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/Sudo_room/open_a_space#Options.2FSources

ACTION ITEM FOR EVERYONE (more action items at bottom of this email):
Translate the following minutes to the wiki, and build off of them! -
http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/Sudo_room

MINUTES:
http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/Sudo_room/05-16-2012_Meetup

*In attendance:*
Jenny, Timon, Rachel, Eddie, Victoria, Marina, Micheal, Greg, Eddan, Matt

*Agenda*

0. Introductions
1. Decision Making
2. Finding a Space

   - + Community Bank of the Bay

*Notes:*

1.1  Decision Making

   - Topics:

   - *Membership.* Do we have it? If so, what are the levels/ benefits/
   rules of engagement & expectations?

   - Membership and Governance are related.

   - Governance is a superstructure of Membership

   - Paying Membership get voting rights? Or setup a timebank system?

   - Lets define a what a member is

   - Qualitifations

   - Rite of Passage

   - technoshamanic rituals :P

   - Financial Contribution

   - Time bank

   - Anthony Di Franco BACE.org

   - Honorary membership?

   - Representative Do-ocracy?

   - *Project Endorsement.* When does SudoRoom attach its name and
   "backing" to a project, if ever?

   - *Governance.* How do we make decisions on behalf of  SudoRoom? Are
   financially-concerned decisions different or do they  involve a different
   group of people vs. other kinds?

   - Is it more important to setup governance first?

   - Heuristics: make only neccessary decisions

   - Are we going to register as non-profit (501(c)3)? This will  determine
   legal structure

   - Examples: How do you pay rent? Insurance?

   - What are the possible legal structures? Pros and Cons

   - 501 (c) 3

   - LLC

   - Corporation

   - B-Corporation: http://bcorp.com

   - *Activities* (non-hacking). Will SudoRoom have speakers/  events/
   classes? What system or structure do we put in place to  facilitate this?
   Do others need to agree on any aspects of these  "extracurricular"
   activities?

   - What is the culture?

   - How do you establish  a culture?

   - How do you regulate the flow of new people to ensure the establishment
   of culture

   - Vision/Goods/Culture

   -  *META and BUSINESS decisions*

   -  Rent? Utilities? Insurance? Liabilities? Changes to group structure?
   Dissolution?

*1.2. Who makes these decisions?*
Qualifications:
-Application: can range from asking how to be a member or a project
proposal or rite of passage (below)
-Rite of Passage: demonstrates committment / reliability / follow-through
(consistency)
-Alternative currencies:

   - -Time Bank (contact Anthony Di Franco)

   - -OurVolts (Anca & James, Drupal)

-Recommendation (trust-based referall network)
-Honorary Membership
-Agreement - opportunity for accountability

   - **Assessing whether people are "being Sudo or not" (Rachel)

-Representative Do-ocracy

1.3 How are these decisions made?
-Consensus
-Representative Do-ocracy

1.4 Where and when are these decisions made?

   - *Options:*

   -     Online (proposals and concerns?)

   -     Weekly meetings (agenda and discussion?)

   -      delay/schedule for introduction & decision making, allowing for
   asynchronous discussion & predictable decision making cycle

   -

*2.** Money Making*

Three broad categories of income-generation:

2.1. membership
2.2. goods/services
2.3. fundraising/crowdsourcing

2.1. membership

what are the advantages, if any to membership? to what extent should
financial contribution be separate from 1) governance privileges 2) access
to the space

   - if there is agreement on separating financial membership from
   access/votes, how do you solve the perception of the "usual" definition of
   member (ie, many people understand membership as paying x for y privileges).

   - can an alternate term be more useful to avoid the "usual" perception
   of membership? here are some alternate terms!: participant, affiliate,
   joiner, building block, supporter, sudo-agent (this term got a lot of
   support)

   - instead of defining benefits of membership, define responsibilities of
   membership?

   - logistics

   - membership amount ($50-100, sliding scale?)

   - in-kind options vs just cash; is there a need for this; a list of
   trades? (services exist that allow management of this kind of setup:
   timebank, ourvolts)

2.2 goods/services

   - examples: classes, events, conferences, speakers, skillshares,
   workshops, movie nights, etc.

   - sudoers have a lot of talent and can offer many possible
   services/events/goods that can be used to raise money.

   - membership and fundraising interacts with this type of income

   - selling goods/services can fuel and support membership (ie, members
   can provide goods/host events/teach classes/act as speakers + these
   activities can bring new members)

   - maybe members are ones who can initiate classes, speakers, and other
   group projects

   - goods/services provided can inform viability of grants/crowdfunding

   - **does charging for these opportunities run counter to the sudo open +
   accessible principle?

2.3 fundraising

   - examples: grants (foundation, city/state/govt), crowd-funding,
   corporate, investment, donations

   - kickstarter-esque campaigns have been discussed in meetings in the
   past and have received support

   - fundraising is time-consuming and difficult and will be more likely if
   membership is solid (also, goods/services provided by the community can
   inform the viability of grants/crowdfunding)

   - "donate" button on the site is a good minimum option

   - crowdfunding vs funding portal (eg; Sudo Room as Kickstarter Project
   vs. Sudo Room as Kickstarter :)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Key points tabled:*

   - How do we demonstrate transparency, the moment of
   decision-making/consensus? (Eddan)

   - We should discuss our autodocumentation meta-strategy :) (Jenny)

   - Talked to Anthony Di Franco about democratizing our tax model and
   cooperative voluntary equity/revenue share

*---------------------------ACTION ITEMS---------------------------*

*"**What's on the Wiki Counts**"*

1. Model + Budget + Income investigations (e.g Noisebridge, other)
2. Tax Structure Options: Eddan, Matt, Eddie

   - Timon - Zoning

3. Distilling Decision Maker/Community Options (Matt, Marina, Rachel,
Jenny, Timon)

Will work on tonight (May 16)
4. Most transparent process [#3]
5. Determining important deadlines
6. Clean up listing of table  of properties (Eddie, Matt)

Eddan spoke to Debra Acosta about realstate and had a place that he was
interested in and it fell through. it's important to keep track of contacts
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.hackerspaces.org/pipermail/sudoroom/attachments/20120516/a3b205dd/attachment.html>