Meeting Notes 2026 03 24

These are the notes from the The 857th Meeting of Noisebridge.

Date	2026-03-24
Note-taker[s]	Nthmost, Julius, mcint
Moderator[s]	Jet

Previous Meeting

Next Meeting

Meeting Summary

• Fundraising Update: None
• Announcements: Decentralized Web Meetup Saturday 3-28-26 with progress update on shared computer access; CHM moving downstairs with manifest list in progress; Front door and light automation now active via Noisebell
• Finances: $100-200 approved for storage bins and tracking system; kitchen/break room upgrades to be costed out
• New members: None
• New associates: None
• Consensus Items: None
• Discussion Items:
  • Gaming Guild Saturday events - coordinate with existing Godot meetup and other Saturday activities
  • Board size and election process - approval voting with anonymous tokens, one-week nomination acceptance, two-week voting period, one-week blocking/step-down period
  • Corporate sponsorships - no paid sponsorships but equipment donations acceptable
  • Storage bins and inventory tracking app - approved to proceed with demo next week
  • Kitchen/Break Room improvements - Michael to cost out renovation including stainless steel countertops and cleaning supplies
  • Bylaws cleanup - create committee to propose updates on membership, voting, and board structure

Attendance: Jet, zacchae, Daniel, Julius, Naomi, Heather, Marian, Elan, Poitié, Chris, Michael Nueman, Loren, Alex, Mico

Introductions

• Jet (They/Them): If I were to have a house, I would want it to be one story tall, with a garden.

• zacchae: I like the idea of having minimal dwelling units with shared space. Lots of shared space.

• Daniel (He/Him): No. No. No. I don't really think about it because I don't give a shit. But I heard you're allowed to be happy when you own property.

• Julius (He/Him): Got to have a library and a workshop

• Naomi (nthmost): it'd be a treehouse and go up with climbing holds. sliders, moats, sharks, three stories.

• Heather (She her, we, i): Blacksmith forge. backyard, forest.

• Marian (He, They): corner bookshelf spiral staircase

• Elan (He/They): Renting next to a metro center

• Poitié: Wants to build a house where each room is its own building connected by pathways

• Chris (Blitzkrieg): I want an alpine lake house, with acreage, and a shop large enough to build canoes to take onto the lake.

• Michael Nueman (he/him): adam family mansion, secret doors, graveyard.

• Loren (he/him): In the city, with a view.

• Alex (He): I do game stuff. My nightmare house is "You will own nothing and you will like it". My dream house is (I took a crack at this) shipping containers, floor to ceiling pegboard. Everything modular.

• Mico: Two dishwashers, always move clean dishes.

Short announcements and events

• Decentralized Web Meetup this Saturday (3-28-26). Zacchae will have a progress update on making it easier to share computers.

• CHM wants to move downstairs! Noah and Chris have a "manifest" list of what they'll need, running.

• No longer have to turn off FT and lights manually, we have that automated w/ the Noisebell!

Excellence

Our One Rule is to Be Excellent to Each Other.

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

Poitié - optimization.

Jet: "descend those gradients, people!"

Anti-Harassment Policy & Community Standards of Excellence

Noisebridge has an Anti-Harassment Policy!

Everyone is expected to follow the Anti-Harassment Policy, please familiarize yourself with it.)

For approachable & specific guidelines see: Community Standards

Please note: https://safespace.noisebridge.net/ is one way to quickly raise issues which will be seen by people in Discord.

Brief Kudos

Jet: thanks to Naomi for setting up HA

Daniel: Michael was caught CLEANING THE KITCHEN yesterday. may even have left it nicer than he found it!

Naomi: Jet gets kudos for being really easy to work with

Alex: someone came in, boingo, come through and triaged ALL the consoles, took all day

Julius: Geffin (sp) came through, offered to train people on the space / high-vacuum testing chamber he's loaning to the space

Loren: kudos for Derek for taking out ALL the trash before 7pm and taking excellent notes during the infra meetup

(Guild: reports from meetings, status, report of tasks)

Sewing: Sarah from Stabby Machines who's been repairing the machines -- we've been considering bringing her in and paying her to teach ppl how to repair the machines (workshop)

Gaming: going to expand to have regular Wed + thurs + sat night activities -- lots of new ppl showing up

2026 Board Elections

Process

https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Board/2026/Elections https://forms.gle/X5SZKSMHbvHYZ3sD6 - nomination submissions

The 2025 Board appoints a nominating committee, which will collect nominations & confirm willingness to stand for election & serve, with each nominee. A membership committee board is also materializing membership status from meeting & donation records. The steps we need to complete:

• Announce (30+ days in advance)
• Nominations (nominate someone https://forms.gle/X5SZKSMHbvHYZ3sD6 - open until 2026-03-24 23h59 PST)
  • Acceptance of nominations (don't skip this step)
• Election
  • Counting & Announcement
• Handover

tonight is the LAST NIGHT to nominate someone for the board

Elan: state of CA requires 501c3s to have a board, sticks to the mission according to the bylaws, etc. NB: board is expected to do as little as possible and abide by the consensus process. informally: by being on the board you're maybe expected to pay more attention to things? We have modified our process pretty much every year. We require our

Naomi: there's a wiki page of History of Board Elections

Elan: we should get in better habit of being on top of this.

Nominees

(as of 2026-03-24 19:17, deduplicated, ~28 unique / 34 submissions)

Ahn
Alex Peake
Chris (Blitzkreig)
Daniel (webdaniel)
Elan HR
Emmett Shear
Evil Daniel
franksalim
Jameson (@jt)
Jane(ratlord)
JD
Jet
Julius
Liz Henry
Loren
Meredith Whittaker
Mister Name
Moxie Marlinspike
Naomi
Nat(Nat20)
Rainey Reitman (EFF)
Travis
twiceasnice
Zacchae!
Zackie (Duplicate)

-- To add: Erik K, Derek

Discussion Items

• First get the topic + advocate + outcome sought, completing the template, pre-committing

1: Gaming Guild vis a vis Random events on Saturday

On topic:	Gaming Guild vis a vis Random events on Saturday
From/Raised by:	Naomi + Alex Peake
Seeking:	decision/outcome/advice/[?]

Naomi: we have an informal consensus / praxis of having stochastic event-runners do their events on Saturday... if the gaming guild is having regular events on Saturday how does this interplay with that

Alex: If gaming wants to have regular events on Saturdays, how does that interact with the common practice of people having it suggested that they do their spontaneous, informal events on Saturday? 3 thursdays of the month, rotating between indie developer showcases. on 5MoF we're going to contribute to that -- adding "10 minutes of game"

Alex: On Saturdays we already have a Godot meetup from 2pm to 6pm. in the spirit of gamebridge staying platform agnostic, we'll have a Unity meetup 1 sat/month, godot another, another write your own game engine... demo-scene level programming.

Julius: electronic music night on Thursdays (last thursday of every month) typically takes over the hackitorium. Resident_Electronic_Music https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Resident_Electronic_Music

(Loren: they have set lists (artists) going back to 2022 on the wiki page)

Alex: that's also compatible with what we want to do and maybe even interface with them.

Jet: i've been hosting 5Mof... for that specifically it already lasts 7 to about 9:30 and that's just the 10 presentation -- always would like to have more stuff at 5Mof but not sure what 10 minutes of game would look like... not sure how that all works together.

Alex: presumably we'd do it beforehand... game stuff is like a "bait" category to pull people in.

Jet: cool, we'll coordinate!

Julius: are these events on Meetup? can we syndicate these out?

Alex: yep! we JUST started talking about this and we will put them on the schedule. I am a meetup admin.

2: How big should the board be this year (+ "broader community" "celebrity" board members) (+ process is a pillar of legitimacy)

On topic:	How big should the board be this year (+ "broader community" "celebrity" board members) (+ process is a pillar of legitimacy)
From/Raised by:	Naomi, Loren
Seeking:	advice + strawpoll

Loren: celebrity board members: it's typical for nonprofits to have ppl who are serving on multiple boards so you can learn better how to manage. matters more when there's an exec dir reporting to them. you can learn about how to do bureaucracy things a little better. also a way to be better affiliated w/ other organizations.

How many? Boards can be as large as we want but if we were to elect a 20 ppl board we'd have a hard time getting 10 ppl to get a decision. Good way to get the board to do nothing! board members can serve as NB representatives. 2-3 officers... we have Treasurer, Secretary, back-invented President where it was helpful b/c of talking to external ppl. Probably at least 6 ppl

Julius: 5 7 or 9 ppl makes sense. 7 feels like a good number to help to have some redundancy in getting quorum. even numbers harder to get quorum

Elan: as long as there's a norm that if you're unable to be responsive to needs of the space - like we need to quickly meet to write a letter to a bank (we had to do that recently). a lot of ppl just don't respond at all. if you don't have time, you should consider stepping off the board.

Jet: q, for decisions of things, every single person has to be responsive?

Elan: Quorum, a bare majority is currently active in the space (is sufficient)

Jet: officers don't have to be board members, but they can?

Elan: board members don't even have to be Core Members.

(Jet tries to push for a straw poll -- 5 board members? (boos and thumbs down) 7 board members? (boos and thumbs down) 9...?

Naomi: yeah we might want to decide how many ppl are on the board b/c it might affect our election process, if we have 20+ candidates.

Loren: want to try out w/ the next board -- shared governance software designed for use by cooperatives + other flat/nontraditional organizations. help the board do async 24 hr board meeting. might have to update the bylaws? but probably an improvement

Naomi: We used github for a while (github discussions). Only a historical note, not a recommendation.

Loren: The thing I want to try is called loomio.com. It can be self-hosted.

Jet: What bout the process => legitimacy thing?

Loren: When we have a bunch of us come together, we try to run things in a fair way. The way most organizations solve the problem of what is to be done, is to put a person in charge. But we don't operate that way. So there needs to be something else that people orient around. So having meeting notes is how we let people know what happens in the meetings and scale to more people than are in the room. Systems are the way that we maintain legitimacy.

How many board members do we have now? https://nb.wtf/w/Board

Zacchae: I imagine not everyone will accept nominations.

Michael: if only 9 ppl accept nomination whens' the next time we get board members?

Jet: Next year

Loren: we've only presented the model of board where they're an entrusted to cabal to vote on things where they have a quorum to vote on things. it's also been a way to find trusted ppl in the community to resolve sensitive issues well, or work that involves finances. so we'd also seek to find ppl who can donate work, money, etc -- we don't quite do that now but other boards do that.

Zacchae: is it shitty to say that i won't know until i see the ppl on the board?

Julius: i have a weird feeling this is like a reverse birthday paradox, like the bigger the number the harder it'll be to get ppl together.

Jet: Q: how well has 9 been working for you guys?

Elan: there are 5 ppl who respond, ever. and there's one person whose legal name isn't what we have [that's bad].

Naomi: that's a thin margin

Elan: being on board means you cannot be privacy-maxxing

Michael: do you want more ppl on the board now? is the answer to make the number bigger?

Elan: more RESPONSIVE people would be better. in the ideal case the board doesn't have to do anything. but every once in a while -- city permitting, financial, legal action -- we need the board to be responsive. So the communication we need to emphasize is: we need you to be responsive if you're going to be on the board.

Michael: do we have a lawyer guild?

Elan: some ppl have reached out for nonprofit representation

Julius: not about the number, just common expectations. what is your name, how can we reach you? 2 forms of contact would be great. whatever platform we decide, ppl

Naomi: i like 11 b/c it's a prime number. the end.

Julius: the implication is that ppl will be able to block the overage

Loren: to add further color that only 5 ppl respond: there are 9 ppl from that pool, we ask ppl to be responsive and once there are 5 we stop asking ppl to be responsive. maybe we don't need to overspecify this right now. ppl can also step down from board.

Jet: maybe this will self-regulate from approval/block process. everyone clear on how the process works?

Elan: we can send out the approval forms to everyone, we can opt to pull in ranking... [not sure what Elan was saying... -naomi]

Daniel: b/c 501c3 members we have to have some layer of indirection --

Elan: something something anonymous tokens

Julius: do you have an implementation of this?

Elan: yeah

Daniel: we could 3d print them

Julius: i don't think we should bake the whole access members can have tokens thing into the process this time around. maybe in the future but not like right this second.

Loren: access membership is easy to get but it doesn't

Naomi: that's why i've been content with the idea that it's Core Members who can vote for the board, we have this layered trusted thing in our organization

Elan: going through physical records to validate ppl's membership status and cross-checking their donation status has been a painful process

Loren: Naomi w/ the help of some LLMs assembled a nice Board History page

https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Board_Election_History#2025_%E2%80%94_Approval_Voting_via_Tinyurl

..echoing Elan, this is messy middle stuff where how we solved this last year is Mark and Elan heroically did the join on member check during elections. a lot of this can quietly effectively get solved but there's a lot of process

Naomi: we've always sucked at this.

Julius: i wanna propose that (next year, after formally changing the bylaws) we open up voting to the larger NB community via the "electoral college" idea. Core Members still maintain the ability to block ppl's nomination. still a strong oversight mechanism, privilege escalation. after this election we need to pare down the bylaws and update them. the address is still an old address and a lot of stuff we can't even do realistically!!

Jet: recapping for this year, since nominations close tonight

• reach out to all of them to take part in the voting process
  • using physical token system, pass out a single anonymous voting

• approval and blocking anonymously

Julius: approval voting: you can vote for literally everybody, you can vote for nobody. you're looking for ppl who have a broad base of consensus.

Elan: we could do ranked-choice voting

Julius: NOPE! i will block that -- needs to be transparent and easy. not like a pachinko machine.

Loren: wrt physical token does that mean everyone has to be here in person next week?

Naomi: yeah i have problems with this

Elan: can we communicate this in time.

Jet: how long is the nomination acceptance process?

(general acceptance of a week being good)

Julius: then election process could be 2 weeks. Elan do you think you can be around the space to give ppl tokens to vote?

Jet: this seems like we should make this digital.

Elan: yeah ok we can just make this digital.

Julius: it'd be nice to have this be

Naomi: if you look at board history, historically our biggest problem is just tracking ppl down to get them to vote.

Loren: do we have some way to broadcast that we're doing voting?

ideally, historically this would've been the mailing list

Elan: i have an email list, from the last 2 years' elections

Naomi: membership binder, how complete is that?

Jet: proposal, Core Members, we need them to all be able to vote. reasonable to make everyone aware that we're doing voting available as of next week. and we should do this online so as not to disadvantage ppl.

Elan: let's send out a blast to this 8000 person email list that i have. so instead of let's go through the binders and do the book-keeping

Julius: we need a Come to Jesus moment where we actually get our shit together. let's just have our board election now, then upgrade everything.

Loren: let's break this off to another discussion item, what should we clean up in the bylaws, let's get bulletpoints out tonight or maybe another night.

Daniel: I don't want to end up in a situation where people are given power to weigh in if they aren't involved, even if they are giving us money. The whole point of the board is to kind of do nothing. So having a bunch of people come and be like "hhhhmmm how about this?" is not helpful.

Elan: we do have some remote board members who are very responsive and responsible, helps producing quorum, there are maybe some cultural issues w/ this but overall positive.

Michael: As someone outside of this, hearing Daniel's suggestion that you should be here and you should be active, makes sense. So you send out an email and let people know that they have to be here in person. And if they really can't, they have to prove it.

Loren: we've also said we want to include access members in this, their opinions will mean something in this process, feels like we've covered this topic pretty thoroughly.

Jet: This is the working proposal: Starting tonight at midnight, nominations will close. During the next week, people will be notified by magical, mythical processes. They have to accept, and provide their names and contacts.

Also during this time, we will reach out to as many people as possible for core members to register to vote. This should include contact information. The past board will look at these responses and make a list of eligible voters. Members will be given tokens. They will have to come in person to vote.

Approval voting. People can approve or block as many people they as they like. At the end of two weeks, votes are tallied. There will be another week during which people can block, or step down, if they like.

3: Has NB ever accepted corporate sponsorships, how do we feel about it

On topic:	Has NB ever accepted corporate sponsorships, how do we feel about it
From/Raised by:	Blitzkrieg
Seeking:	decision/outcome/advice/[?]

... | seeking = decision/outcome/advice/[?]

Chris: i'm putting together a CURRICULUM for a woodshop class to build 1 of 2 tables. blueprints, finding tools. i'm finding shortfalls in the equipment we have. thought was there are 150 corps i know we can send emails off to to ask if they can send tools. plywood, power tools, etc. Dewalt, McMaster Carr, whatever. just one cohesive set of cordless power tools. several types of drill bits that actually work. things i would ideally like to put behind a lock as previously discussed for the Woodshop Guild.

Daniel: there is a locker but it's Ken's right now

Chris: I've put on a lock on the other cabinet rn. so that's the source of the question. not necessarily about big corp sponsorship

Zacchae: if you put a banner up someone might tear it down

Julius: limitation is you just need to understand the promises you can reasonably make to corps

Chris: just wanted to get that question out to the group

Naomi: i don't think there's a problem w/ that

Jet: our cut is we don't do paid sponsorships

Loren: also the front door system been hoping to roll out to more guilds -- RFID lock system, could extend to Woodshop Guild.

Naomi: also a great reason for you to be on the board.

4: want to buy some bins + want reimbursement

On topic:	want to buy some bins + want reimbursement
From/Raised by:	LX
Seeking:	decision/outcome/advice/[?]

announcement, or enough spending to need consensus??

Alex: i want to buy a bunch of bins + i'm building an app to track what's in there. i'm going to seek reimbursement -- to the further use of storage in all rooms. a long time ago we had tags on all the things, some things still are tagged but they're all deprecated.

Alex:

• get sterilite bins
• put standard template tag on them -- so you can point your phone at a thing, get a code, automatically tracked by the system
• system directs ppl to where stuff is.

I already have a label maker and starting to get this experiment underway.

Jet: how much would it cost to do all these bins?

Alex: we can get stacks of these bins -- so for like $100-200 we can solve this whole problem

Julius: i like more intentional storage. want to know your plans for making the app accessible, maintainable by others in the space. the more loadbearing something is in the space, the more ppl need to be involved in maintaining it.

Alex: yep, that's why i'm including a dry-erase surface as well. no matter how easy the system is some ppl won't be arsed. so someone who can do it can come along and bridge the gap between the dry-erased thing and the digital thing.

Julius: Demo? Software?

Alex: i'd like to get bins and have them next week. probably also next week for the software.

Jet: treasurer, do we have the money to spend $200 on bins? loren?

Loren: yes. it's a sneeze. we spend $14k a month on rent w/ utilities. systems that make the space more usable is a good use of resources.

Julius: might be a bit more expensive to get *everything*

Jet: seems like consensus is go get some bins and some code and a demo

5: Kitchen

On topic:	Kitchen
From/Raised by:	Michael + Zacchae
Seeking:	decision/outcome/advice/[?]

Michael: the kitchen could be better, let's talk about it

Michael: show that this kitchen can be more productive and cleaner all the time. upgrade that could be done to warez that we have. things that are up there not intended for high-use space. trash cans -- we need Rubbermaid bins that are washable.

Loren: totally support this, been wanting to make cleaning station w/ a mop and broom throughout the space. would love to work w/ you on a standard layout. been taking them out for many months, would love to document and improve this

Janitorial guild??

Jet: upstairs floor is WOOD, untreated

Julius: yeah we need to upgrade our flooring

Michael: it'd be a renovation, i'd be willing to put time and energy into it.

Julius: can you cost it out? build materials, etc?

Michael: yep! Discord handle i'll get to you after the meeting. A lot of the stainless countertop things you can get from old restaurants, possible to get cheaper than new

Julius: we could reserve a spot up on the shelving where we can accumulate stuff up there

Zacchae:

Julius: for brooms and mops, and trash cans, i propose a disneyland rule, that you always have one in sight

Loren: for mops, we might be fine with 1 mop per floor, in a cart.

Loren: reminder, NB doesn't want to appear to have a fully functional kitchen, that's sort of an intentional feature that prevents us turning into a squat (more or less) / attracting ppl who aren't super compatible with the educational mission of this space.

Naomi: yes well stated. we might want to call it a BREAK ROOM not a kitchen.

LX: the breakroom has also been really great as a staging area for events.

Downstairs NoiseCafe and upstairs BreakRoom (as more excellent name than "Kitchen")

Naomi: just FYI, Permaculture (Discord handle) was into the idea of creating a cleaning guild -- lots of support for this idea just ppl not at this mtg.

6: Request from meeting for proposals to clean up bylaws (with board & meeting / membership) + how future voting

On topic:	Request from meeting for proposals to clean up bylaws (with board & meeting / membership) + how future voting
From/Raised by:	Loren (cc julius)
Seeking:	decision & bullet points (and a committee)

(Loren tacks to making it an announcement -- rather than dragged out discussion.)

gDoc of topics (purpose-grouped batches of changes) to address in updates to the bylaws

Do-ocratic Task Board

Participation also means doing stuff to contribute to the space. Propose new tasks or pick some tasks from Github, from what needs to be done around you, or whatever, and see if someone will sign up to work on that task. Anyone can sign up and it's a great way to show you are contributing!