[SpaceProgram] Request: accountability frameworks for makerspace governance?

Tue May 17 06:07:24 CEST 2016

First things first:

I'm interested in setting up a framework in which every iota of effort on
funded projects can be tracked, and every penny of spending can be
recorded. I'm interested in this because I'll need donors at some point,
and donors typically require high transparency -- and results. I'd like to
hear from makerspace leaders who've been successful at setting up such
frameworks.

Now, about the "drama":

On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 2:51 AM, gmc <gmc at hackerspaces.org> wrote:

> Yay, drama. It's what hackers are best at! Bye bye mailing list.
>

Clearly, some disillusionment and malaise has set in.

Hackerspaces.org? No blog update since just about two years ago.

Interesting critique there, though:

  https://flux.hackerspaces.org/2014/01/19/diversity-and-the-hacker-scene/

Drama will never go away permanently. Sometimes the only way to quell drama
is with rules.

If you're going to have rules, you can try counting on ideas like
legitimizing all decisions through the rule of relying on consensus (it
always breaks down). Or on rules set by some "benevolent oligarchy" (the
"oligarchs" often get tired of arbitration and moderation, and go missing.)
There are a variety of other dodges of the basic responsibility of
collective governance, which is tedious and stressful compared to making
things.

In the case of SpaceGAMBIT, the dodge took the form of locating all
authority over spending that $500,000 in a tiny handful of people who
operated in a pretty opaque fashion. In at least one case, the opacity was
defended by a SpaceGAMBIT principal in terms of DARPA's tight regulations
about the release of information. When I asked for chapter and verse of
those regulations, there was no answer. Wait: you're saying you got money
from a government agency that doesn't tell taxpayers the basis on which it
allows awarded organizations to release information about how taxpayer
money is being spent? Interesting.

Given the nature of the political differences over taking money from DARPA,
I can see a reason for not identifying winning teams when the awards went
out. It might have been defensible as a way to protect the awarded teams
from harassment by those who were most loudly opposed to that money, and to
what any hackerspace group taking that money symbolized to them.

The problem was: opacity could enable sweetheart deals. Waste. Lax controls.

And what do we have at the end?

Examples:

$20,000 for an open source satellite mission design project that apparently
never checked anything into a repo.

The HAESH project, which, by some odd coincidence, was based in Hawaii.
(And apparently on Maui.)That was statistically unlikely, especially when
you consider that the main SpaceGAMBIT executive exulted at one point about
how great it was to work internationally, not just in America, and not just
in his tiny home region of -- you guessed it -- Hawaii. Maui, in fact.

How about the thousands of dollars for the open source Make-a-Space Kit? It
had a laudable goal.

"The goal of this project is to complete the content--finalize the entire
kit-- and then create a turn-key online template which a new or existing
space can use to instantiate the online project management, assign specific
tasks to board members, track accountability, and effectively communicate
about the status of the activities as the space is launched and formed."

Where is it? Dead links on the SpaceGAMBIT site. Try to get something back
from the Wayback Machine? Unsuccessful.

How about that Asteroid Badge?

  https://github.com/CuriosityHacked/Learning/wiki/SpaceAsteroids

There's something in there that looks like a rough draft of Make-a-Space
Kit, but certainly nothing that looks "finalized."

Thousands of dollars spent on those two projects. And this is all there is
to show for it?

It's what happens when there's no openness or accountability, and when
money can be spent without significant oversight by a small group of people.

So, to repeat my request:

I'm interested in setting up a framework in which every iota of effort on
funded projects can be tracked, and every penny of spending can be
recorded. I'm interested in this because I'll need donors at some point,
and donors typically require high transparency -- and results. I'd like to
hear from makerspace leaders who've been successful at setting up such
frameworks.

Regards,
Michael Turner
Executive Director
Project Persephone
K-1 bldg 3F
7-2-6 Nishishinjuku
Shinjuku-ku Tokyo 160-0023
Tel: +81 (3) 6890-1140
Fax: +81 (3) 6890-1158
Mobile: +81 (90) 5203-8682
turner at projectpersephone.org
http://www.projectpersephone.org/

"Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward
together in the same direction." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

>
> On 16 May 2016 18:26:04 CEST, Michael Turner <
> michael.eugene.turner at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 12:55 AM, cole santos <cksantos85 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Actually we took the DarPA money and the project was a great success.
>>> Www.spacegambit.Com
>>
>>
>> A great success for some people, I suppose.  In a certain sense.
>>
>> I pick a project at random.
>>
>> http://www.spacegambit.org/satstatsim/
>>
>> Funding: $20,000
>>
>> SpaceGAMBIT claim: only open source projects will be funded.
>>
>> Reality: well, ta! ke a look.
>>
>>   http://satstatsim.blogspot.jp/
>>
>> Excuse: "schedules slip". OK, but you can't check in any code, anywhere?
>>
>>   https://code.google.com/archive/p/satstatsim/source
>>
>> At least, that's the only repo I could find.
>>
>> There's nothing in it.
>>
>> It was largely because of my concerns about openness, clear
>> communication, democratic process, and leadership accountability that I
>> decided to have nothing further to do with SpaceGAMBIT. This was after
>> feeling enthusiastic about it and even defending it against what I thought
>> was unfair criticism.
>>
>> Really, I'd prefer to have been wrong in my suspicions.
>>
>>
>> Regards,
>> Michael Turner
>> Executive Director
>> Project Persephone
>> K-1 bldg 3F
>> 7-2-6 Nishishinjuku
>> Shinjuku-ku Tokyo 160-0023
>> Tel: +81 (3) 6890-1140
>> Fax: +81 (3) 6890-1158
>> Mobile: +81 (90) 5203-8682
>> turner at projectpersephone.org
>> http://www.projectpersephone.org/
>>
>> "Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward
>> together in the same direction." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>> On Monday, May 16, 2016, Michael P Weber II <michaelweberii at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Mon, May 16, 2016 at 3:05 AM, Michael Turner
>>>> <michael.eugene.turner at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> > Whether intentional or not, the choice of watercress could be very
>>>> > space-relevant.
>>>> >
>>>> > (1) Biosphere II saw the direct participation of the late Roy
>>>> Walford, MD, a
>>>> > pioneer self-experimenter in CRON (calorie restriction with optimal
>>>> > nutrition) as a strategy for life extension. This research interested
>>>> the
>>>> > Biosphere II organizers because, in feeding long-duration space
>>>> mission
>>>> > participants, fewer calories eaten means, to a good first
>>>> approximation,
>>>> > less mass for the ecological life support system, leading to lower
>>>> mission
>>>> > cost, etc.
>>>> >
>>>> > (2) Research into how CRON appears to increase lifespans (in part by
>>>> > reducing cancer risk -- a big issue in space travel because of space
>>>> > radiation) reveals that it's more about protein restriction than about
>>>> > calorie restriction per se.
>>>> >
>>>> > (3) Further research has suggested that it's specifically reduction of
>>>> > methionine intake that is the main driver of life extension in CRON
>>>> (hence,
>>>> > presumably, lower cancer risk);
>>>> >
>>>> > (4) High-glycine diets sop up excess methionine. (To be sure:
>>>> methionine is
>>>> > an essential amino acid; glycine is not. But it seems that with
>>>> methionine,
>>>> > you can get too much of a good thing.)
>>>> >
>>>> > (5) Watercress is very high in glycine, quite low in methionine.
>>>> Watercress
>>>> > might be ideal for offsetting the cancer risks from space radiation in
>>>> > long-duration space missions.
>>>> >
>>>> > I think a good next step in such work would be to try to optimize
>>>> watercress
>>>> > production in an aeroponic rather than a hydroponic style.
>>>> Hydroponics is
>>>> > great, highly productive, but ... water is heavy. Aeroponics can give
>>>> you
>>>> > much of the benefit of hydroponics but with a fraction of the
>>>> equipment
>>>> > mass. Aeroponics should be more adaptable to low-g and microgravity
>>>> > environments since it's not gravity-dependent -- it's basically just
>>>> the
>>>> > deposition of nutrient-enriched mist droplets on plant roots.
>>>> Aeroponics may
>>>> > have gotten its start from NASA funding.
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> > Regards,
>>>> > Michael Turner
>>>> > Executive Director
>>>> > Project Persephone
>>>> > K-1 bldg 3F
>>>> > 7-2-6 Nishishinjuku
>>>> > Shinjuku-ku Tokyo 160-0023
>>>> > Tel: +81 (3) 6890-1140
>>>> > Fax: +81 (3) 6890-1158
>>>> > Mobile: +81 (90) 5203-8682
>>>> > turner at projectpersephone.org
>>>> > http://www.projectpersephone.org/
>>>> >
>>>> > "Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward
>>>> > together in the same direction." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
>>>> >
>>>> > On Mon, May 16, 2016 at 4:35 PM, Michael Turner
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Michael,
>>>>
>>>> Are you going to take over the list then?
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> SpaceProgram mailing list
>>>> SpaceProgram at lists.hackerspaces.org
>>>> http://lists.hackerspaces.org/mailman/listinfo/spaceprogram
>>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>
>>>
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