[SpaceProgram] Request: accountability frameworks for makerspace governance?

Wed May 18 10:03:22 CEST 2016

"Mike no one wanted to work with you because of emails like you just sent."

I thought there should be more openness and oversight, and so nobody wanted
to work with me? Interesting. I hadn't realized that openness and oversight
were such unpopular things when spending taxpayers money. Unless, of
course, you're a taxpayer. Are you?

"Since I wrote the grant, and got the Corp formed, and followed through
until the project start, I think it's ok moraly."

I always assumed an education in philosophy would acquaint a person with
the difference between morals and ethics. You learn something every day, I
guess.

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 Wed, May 18, 2016 at 1:48 AM, cole santos <cksantos85 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Mike no one wanted to work with you because of emails like you just sent.
> We are amateurs hacking it. Ps haesh was my project and it was somewhat a
> sweetheart deal. I had to choose between a project or a job. Since I wrote
> the grant, and got the Corp formed, and followed through until the project
> start, I think it's ok moraly. The other projects were all random
> submissions. The principal aka jerry got overwhelmed and didn't even really
> want the job. I kinda forced it on him as I had a full time job. Reality is
> not nearly as sensational as u wish.
> On May 16, 2016 9:07 PM, "Michael Turner" <michael.eugene.turner at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> 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
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> SpaceProgram mailing list
>>>>> SpaceProgram at lists.hackerspaces.org
>>>>> http://lists.hackerspaces.org/mailman/listinfo/spaceprogram
>>>>>
>>>>>
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>>>>
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>>>>
>>
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>>
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