Bootstrap Meeting/Archives 2011

December 17th

Please come first to our booth at Chrëschtmaart_2011 take a piece and put it into car(s). Then walk down to the space and fetch a piece from the car(s) and put it at it's right spot in the space.

November 19th

Topics

• Welcome to slopjong to the office!--Macfreak109 14:44, 19 November 2011 (CET)
• Xmas Market in Strassen (Dec 16 & 17, 2011)--Macfreak109 16:08, 16 November 2011 (CET)
• HacKids on Dec 6 --Macfreak109 16:08, 16 November 2011 (CET)

(Pre)Minutes

--Macfreak109 14:44, 19 November 2011 (CET)

Notes for the XMas market of Strassen

The XMas market will take place on December 16 & 17 2011 from 16h to 20h. syn2cat got booth number 13 (randomly assigned) which lies on the outer ring towards the parking space. This year, every booth will have a heating device in front of their booth. As usual, the equipment inside the booth will be up to us (incl. the heater _inside_). They hope that there will be enough power to feed all the attendees (there are about 20 booths) and urge everyone not to bring devices which draw too much power. Should you have time to support our activity on the local market, please get in touch with office or myself so that we can manage the schedule who attends when. Thanks!!!

Meeting was cancelled for lack of attendees.

October 15th

Topics

• revisit tasks and todo from former bootstrap meetings --Kwisatz 18:16, 25 September 2011 (CEST)
• Blinkentree status: material for 15 trees are ordered. Slopjong Oct. 13th
  • Roadmap: https://source.hacker.lu/projects/blinkentree/issues/gantt
  • Please tell me if you will contribute. Otherwise the roadmap remains static which will be processed on every second weekend.
  • The plan is to finish the blinkentrees end of November to help NPU to bake tons of tetris bricks afterwards.
• draw conclusions from Martin Andre's assessment --Kwisatz 12:01, 15 October 2011 (CEST)
• Feedback on SVCi suggestion --Kwisatz 14:02, 15 October 2011 (CEST)
• personal reflections by Mich --Kwisatz 14:02, 15 October 2011 (CEST)

Minutes

Macfreak welcomed everyone to the Bootstrap Meeting, also announcing that NPU has been accepted into the Office circle. He also repeated that everyone can request to join the office circle if they are motivated to do so. Anybody interested should send an email to office_AT_hackerspace_DOT_lu.

Revisiting tasks

It has been suggested that tasks to be revisited at future bootstrap meetings should immediately be added to the next meeting's topic list.

• Syndelights
  • Macfreak re-contacted Codic who should decide whether the project will take place or not, he will contact them again within the week.
  • The Blinkenarea crew offers the complete infrastructure for free, syn2cat only needs to take care about the logistics. This results in a project that is much cheaper than the original plan. Blinkenarea would like to visit the site on the WE of the 22nd and 23rd October.
  • Hamilius is to be demolished until January.
  • If 5 people work on this, 3 WE are required to set up the project. Blinkenarea will bring 6 people into the project.
  • The project shall also feature an information stand up to 4 times during the project.
• HacKids
  • The next HacKids has been reported to November 8th.
• Circles of Interest
  • The circles will be implemented using a large frame and four circles made of cork. A square will hold all the avatars that are not in a circle.
• Afterhack
  • It's been suggested that the after-hack.lu party shall be more elaborate in 2012, with more food and beverages. (What about a shuttle service?)
• Sat-dish
  • We have still not received a letter concerning the satellite dish. Also, we will have to find an alternate solution to bring the cables down into the building, since the original plan will not word.
• Internet
  • The letter requesting a faster Internet connection has not yet been sent off. Macfreak and Azunix suggested to finish it right after the Bootstrap Meeting.

X-mas market

On November 9th there will be a meeting of the township discussing the X-mas market. >> Macfreak will go.
We will have 15 Blinkentrees made by Slopjong and tetris-shaped cookies. Steve will also offer Qkies to be sold and their QrCodes linked to whatever URLs we wish.
Furthermore we will offer Yerba Mate and maybe even hot Club Mate Winter edition. There should also be some tea or glogg for the kids.

Blinkentrees

Slopjong started the production of 15 Blinkentrees on Saturday and will continue the workshop in two weeks time.

Science Festival

There will also be a meeting with MNHN on the 9th. >> NPU will go.
Have been ordered or will be ordered for the Science Festival (and Students' faire):

• 100 Lanyards
• 3 banners with our Logo (design suggestions to pubrel_AT_lists.hackerspae_DOT_lu are welcome.)
• 2500 Flyers

Students' Faire

Macfreak, Pascal and Kwisatz will be there, Macfreak will bring a TV-set.
Macfreak also suggested to join the organisational crew. The redmine wiki and previously sent mails will be revisited and people have been invited to have a look at them.

Stuff that breaks

People who break stuff should not keep it a secret. Everyone of us has an insurance and insurance is meant to be used. By owing up to it, we will know that stuff is broken and we will also be able to replace it. Breaking stuff is good, because it shows that you do stuff, so don't hesitate to notify the office if something is broken or missing. The office will then see to replacing the missing or broken piece.

Accessible webpage

Following up to an assessment by external observer Andre Martin, we discussed how to make the webpage more accessible to people who don't have a clue about what we do. Using the blog as a frontpage and moving the wiki to wiki.hackerspace.lu has been suggested.
The shackspace webpage has been cited as a good example of a presentation page.
The issue shall be further discussed in the Pubrel circle and external people should be consulted on the issue.

SVCi

Kwisatz once again explained the possibility of hosting a civic volunteer. Doubts were raised whether this person would be able to achieve the tasks brought before her or him.
A dedicated working group will define the scope or "job description" such a volunteer could fill.

Personal reflection by Mich

Mich resigned as a member of the administrative council arguing that the recent talks and developments in and around the "Steering Group" didn't amount to much and that in his opinion, an office group is actually unnecessary. Mich brought up even more topics that you might want to discover by talking to him personally.

Misc

Haxogreen 2012

Will there be a camp in 2012? Kwisatz explains that an incredible number of camps are supposed to take place in summer 2012 and that some, but so far only very little, effort has been undertaken to set up some kind of rotating scheme with wandering hackerspace villages, at least in the BeNeLux.
It is feared that too many camps will spread their attendees too widely and that a lot of efforts could be in vain.
Kwisatz will enquire about the status of this idea and the list of planned camps.

September 17th

Topics

• syn2lights project : where we stand --Macfreak109 08:36, 1 September 2011 (CEST)
• HacKids@Signal --Macfreak109 08:36, 1 September 2011 (CEST)
• Decisions taken at the not so secret steering group meetings --Kwisatz 14:02, 17 September 2011 (CEST)
• Hack.lu Afterparty organisation --Kwisatz 14:02, 17 September 2011 (CEST)
• Commune Stuff --Mich
  • Satellite dish --Mich
  • Internetz --Mich
  • Space --Mich

Minutes

syndelights

On the CCC camp contact was made with the crew from blinkenarea (Aachen) and they offred us to revive the project via using their infrastructure. Only cost would be the transport and used lightbulbs. There are currently about 6 people involved in the project.

We would need some guys speaking fluently C or C++.

• If we use Bartek's software, C knowledge is needed. And also people would need to create clients (in any language) which produce data to be displayed (via sending UDP packets).
• If we use Blinkenarea software, C++ knowledge is needed. The current animations would need to be adapted to the new building size (ours is smaller).

hacKids

The dutch radioshow "signal" had Marc as a host where he talked for 10 minutes about the hacKids activity. This contact was also a result of the CCC camp.

steering group

There have been 2 meetings so far. The reason is that many people were worried about the direction syn2cat is taking and the motivation of people. In fact there was no real direction and increasing demotivation.

The current result is a reorientation of the office and bootstrap roles. The bootstrap will be an "input device" for office to take decisions. So the bootstrap meeting won't take decisions on behalf of syn2cat. This because there have been many re-discussions and also the voting is not representative. Still the office can ask members to vote on important issues, this will probably be done via an electronic means so that as many members as possible can give their voice.

The office is now equivalent to the classic "comité" of an a.s.b.l like defined by the law. Any member who is interested in becoming member of the office can simply ask to be "co-opted" during the year. At the next general assembly he can then be confirmed in the election.

The number of working groups will also be reduced from 7 groups to 4 "Circles of Interest".

• facilities
• events and PR
• office
• sysops

The first two are open to anyone. Those are loosely structured and represent interests. If you like to work and help, you can simply join without any administrative overhead. To join office, see above. Joining sysops requires the same scrutiny as before.

There is no more obligation to be in a minimum or maximum number of circles. There will be a visual representation of the circles on the new wall where people can place their pin in the circle they are in. This allows also other members to quickly see who to contact for questions and help.

Some questions remain to be addressed:

• how are office decisions announced?
• how many meetings will the office have?

Afterhack party

it would be great if syn2cat members would be present on wednesday 21 september to meet with fellow hackers from the hack.lu conference.

facebook

Some members of other associations (scouts) have a little logo embedded in photos they upload to facebook. Our members are free to do the same and gunstick volunteered to create a logo-tagging service on our website.

regulating issues with commune de strassen

• sat dish

They were asking why it's not yet up. So now we will finally get a written confirmation that this is OK.

• fast Internet

In the same discussion the issue of getting a commune-sponsored faster Internet connection was addressed. Mich set up a letter and got help from several members to do the formulation right.

• the commune is also aware that our rooms, depsite being great to have, are becoming too small for our activities

christmas market

The market will be on 16-17 december. NPU made the great proposition to create geeky cookies representing space invaders or pieces from tetris. He offred to use his kitchen for this activity.

28c3

People who would like to participate, please contact Marc (trollchen) for arranging participatin in the panned renting of a location. There is also the idea to stay in Berlin for new year's eve.

chill-chill

The new wall has been presented, and also the new bar decoration. Again thanks to everyone who helped, this was awesome. The time-lapse video of the buildup was premiered.

science festival

The messy tables got a bit of a cleanup and several instructions sheets now explain what to do. There are even tasks not requiring soldering.

made with vi

August 20th

Topics

• Revisit tasks created at the July and June Bootstraps --Kwisatz 18:29, 24 July 2011 (CEST)
• Recruit attendees/helpers for upcoming events. --Kwisatz 18:49, 20 August 2011 (CEST)
• Brainstorm about community events, altruism and motivation --Kwisatz 18:29, 24 July 2011 (CEST)
• syn2cat-discuss archives: private or public? Communicate --Kwisatz 12:02, 3 August 2011 (CEST)
• we urgently need to get to the waste deposit --Kwisatz 18:59, 20 August 2011 (CEST)

Minutes

• Tasks from previous bootstraps (Next time this should be prepared in advance)
  • July bootstrap roundup
    • Mediawiki radioshow is now showing when there's a show. The special comment filed is implemented and was tested as OK during the bootstrap.
    • vector skin of the wiki is currently being adapted.
    • no progress in youth in action
    • issue of regular meetings which sometimes have other times is not yet solved
  • June bootstrap roundup
    • the planned drill will be bought when the material for the new wall will be aquired
    • again some discussion about paypal. No equivalent (in price) system was found. As there's currently bitcoin in all news, we could offer accepting donations as bitcoin. Also, even if paypal is evil and/or not very friendly to vendors, why not accept donations like noisebridge does.
    • the cleanspace days are not enough advertized so attendance is very low. They don't appear on the schedule because of issues with recurring events.
    • wildcard cert: a letter for optaining a donation of a wildcart ssl cert has been written and just needs a reread before sending out.

• recruit attendees and helpers for events
  • night rallye on 2nd september. Please register on the wiki page.
    • prepare on the days before. Details will be posted on the discuss list.
    • set up stuff on the rallye circuit
    • decorate the booth
  • Hack.lu_2011 19-21 september
    • for people who wish to help at our stand, please register on the wiki page and contact Steve for further informations.
    • After last year's success, we will again do the afterhack party at the space
  • Science_Festival_2011 10-13 november. We will create a mechanical 4 bit adder out of copper. The look will have a steampunk aspect.
    • help build: It's easy. There are multiple similar items to create. Simple ones and complete structures. No real skills needed. A good occasion to learn to manipulate metal, solder and soldering iron. Please register on the wiki page. No "maybe there" registrations, we need firm commitments. This project has official funding, so it has to be done, else the money is a loss for syn2cat.
    • first 2 days of the festival: do workshops with the kids where we build logic gates out of LEGO and then explain the adder. Also a couple of people is needed to support and help the presenter.
    • final 2 days of the festival: these are the open to public days. People need to man our stand to protect our items from too curious kids and explain what's going on. Probably no LEGO building that day.
    • please register on the wiki page and also fill out the table on which days you want to participate.
  • 25ième_Foire_de_l'Etudiant 10-11 november. You will notice that his is the same days as the science festival! Like last year we will be present at the booth of beeSecure. A great occasion to present syn2cat and gather new members.

• mailing lists public or private? The discuss list has been set to private which disables the search engines to give hits on the archive and so promote syn2cat. Idea is to use the announce list for interesting discussions or use a dedicated anounce list for this, which will be indexable by search engines.

• starting 12th september the items stored in the hallway will get cleaned up. Everything which is not labeled will got to the recycling. Please label the items you want to keep and think where to store them. please contact faccat for arranging storage space.

• motivation: why don't people participate? What can be done to improve attendance?
  • priorities are important for our members. For many syn2cat is not necessarly the first priority (kids, family, job, birthdays, holidays, sports ...)
  • who accepts that syn2cat participates in events?
    • some events just have to be! Official representations. Occasions not to miss.
    • some events are recurring and from last time we know that they are an advantage to us to participate.
  • how can I help? Just jump forward, no fear!
  • the personal interest in a public project (mainly events) may be low. If you put this forward as a reason not to participate at the event, this may put off other people and so generates a climate of un-motivation. Our club has not yet reached critical mass of members that could allow for jumping off an event just out of disinterest. The result would be that the office will have to do the work as the event usually can't be canceled.
  • participate anyway if the event is representing the club. Show the commune that we do stuff. Show the public (potential new members) what we do. Create relations with other clubs in the region.
  • organizational problems of some members, mainly transport issues, can hinder participation. Maybe have locations of our members so that carpools can be organized?
  • besides events, there is also activities at the space itself like workshops, presentations or infrastructure. There you see the classical 2 categories. Some people talk but don't act, other people just do it. Of course the second way is the one we like the most.

• Misc: for events have dedicated boxed with all event stuff. The aim would be not to have to remove a lot of equipment from the space and set it up back again after the event. This of course means that items will be duplicated, once for the space and once to sit in a box for events.

July 16th !!! starting 14:00 not 19:00 !!!

Topics

• syndelights progress report (or rather cancel report?) --Kwisatz
• Must some pages really be non-editable? List of protected pages
  • version control
• Should everyone be allowed to be subscribed to mailing lists of WGs no matter if one's not a member?
  • some information is posted to PUBREL which is not only pubrel-related.
  • allowing encrypted mails?
• Facebook group admin, why only pubrel, why shouldn't a workshop leader not create an event himself?
• Wiki skin (Results of the Poll, further points to be considered) --Kwisatz 14:38, 11 July 2011 (CEST)
• clean space day (vote for a date from BM to BM) // destructive
• Let members know that certain projects could be eligible for youth in action grants --Kwisatz 17:39, 15 July 2011 (CEST)
• Present Up4Grabs --Kwisatz 18:08, 15 July 2011 (CEST)
• Procedure for out-of-schedule recurring events (join the ThinkTank!) --Kwisatz

Minutes

syndelights status

Syndelights has been canceled.

• Gunstick explains why: There have been talks with Codic: there would have only been one month for build up, and it would only have been running for two weeks. Neither any more funding by the city of Luxembourg. All in all a bit disappointing.
• A request had also been sent to the ministry of culture, but we didn't hear anything from them.
• City pointed to codic for funding but 10.000 EUR was too much for them... they weren't happy with the halogen technology either.
• Gunstick would do it again under the GRL label. GRL in Austria got support from multiple companies.
• We could use a bus for the project (video projection in a driving bus).
• Alternative buildings? CFL, blvd. de la pétrusse? Casino Luxembourg's aquarium?
• Mudam? How's our relationship with mudam nowadays. (macfreak recounts the mudam story)
• 3 Eechelen? Festungsmusée? Alternative locations? Philharmonie? Look out for alternative buildings..
• We'll try to get the Lasertagging hit&run going! (before the 6th of august!!)

Mediawiki protected pages

• Some pages such as the wish-list are protected. Where does that make sense and where not.
• Some pages don't need to be protected, we removed the status where it isn't really necessary.
• Send a mail if you need changes to a protected page to sysops
• General Assembly pages should not be freely editable. Mistakes or wrong information that is not immediately seen would be fatal.
• Todo: Look into an option to display information about the Radioshow or other events on the Frontpage. (what about an embedded Meebo chat or shoutbox?)
• How to display information about an event that is easily accessible?
  • Add a variable field to the event template, i.e. "extraInformation" to be displayed on the frontpage if used.

Subscribing to working group mailing lists as non-member?

• Read-only for people that aren't members to a working group but want to read in on the communications will be moderated (can read, can't post).
• Don't encrypt mails on a mailing lists. (What about security issues?)

Facebook admin status

• Why can't everybody be admin?
  • Everyone can mail wg-pubrel to have them create an event. (i.e. Steve's BSD talk worked well, was announced everywhere after he sent us an email.)
  • Centralized public relations, we have trouble coordinating pubrel relations as it is. Too many cooks spoil the broth.
• Use social monitoring tool?
• Social media policy?!

Wiki Skin

• vector skin won with 8 votes to 6
  • Additional improvements will be made to the syndivector skin

Cleanspace

• Should we decide on dates of Cleanspace on Bootstraps because otherwise people might forget or not be available? (YES)
  • • Which date? Stay with August 14th as scheduled.

Youth in Action grants

• Consider grants from the youth in action program for our future projects and activities.
  • Forms, reports, and information available online. (www.snj.lu)
  • A first concrete project would be haxogreen 2012

Up4Grabs

• A todo/project list with projects that we like to see but can't do ourselves right now.
• Others can take up the projects or tasks

Out of schedule, recurring events

• A brainstorming session will take place after the BM to discuss conceptual and technical solutions.

WG reports

* Pubrel group: foursquare challenge, free mate on 3 check-ins
* Plurionet agenda imports and the announce globally radiobutton.

misc

• perforin asks about member-cards
• gunstick: we're having technical issues with the cards.
  • Problems with inkscape -- or pebkac :D

June 18th

Topics

• The 12h bootstrap topic rule - keep or kill? (this is already in violation of it)
• Revisiting the previous BootStrap Notes
  • Noise-Free
  • Acquisitions (drill, hotair, hairdryer)
  • hardware wishlist
• Hardware Wish-List - what do we really need, what should we acquire?
• Working Groups
  • activity reports
  • Camp-Orga!
  • do they achieve their goals or do they rather the opposite?
  • Facilities & Catering and Space Infrastructure, Library & Acquisitions - final assessment: merge or don't merge?
  • Budgets - can we get to know the numbers?
• can we haz more members event? We get more members, how can, hmm?
  • wg-evdev - wg-pubrel
• we wantz a paypal account as other optional payment method for various:
  • events (e.g. h4x0)
  • shop (e.g. mate, electronics, -choc-keyboards)
  • membership fee
  • future virtual account etc
  • THIS IS NOT TO REPLACE ANY CURRENT PAYMENT METHOD!!!
    • THERE IS NO OBLIGATION TO USE IT IF YOU DONT WANT TO!!!!
  • CleanSpace Days (evaluation)
• The ssl cert(s) situation
  • Solution should be gratis 4 the space
  • _Has_ to support multiple distinct+sub- domains in one certificate (6-10, or wildcard)
• ApplicationForm evaluation - goals met or not?
• over-bureaucratization
  • dontmakemesteal.com
• The Office (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mgfb9vLIdAE)
  • What is transparency? (And why might it not be what you want?)
  • Do we even want to embrace change?
  • Excellence through openness (lower the entry level)
  • Can we learn from out mistakes?
• Shall we allow Pets in the space?
  • Who will be responsible for cleaning (e.g. hairy mess)
  • Ppl with allergies ???
• Hx2 project(s) : wassuuuppp????
  • Hacktaculous Cocktail Bar
  • Sushi workshop
• Facilities & Catering : space optimisation - some proposals
• Large Hacker Convention II: Does somebody else go there?
• Free (OpenAir) Yoga Classes

Minutes

11 people present --> majority thus 6

• 12h topic rule: 6 for kill
• noise-free: has it been introduced or not? please don't exceed noise levels, even when using headphones
  • just tell people if they go on your nerves
• no acquisitions where made concerning drill, etc
• hardware acquisitions... (lego mindstorms, 4 sets of mindstorms rcx could be retrieved, so could be a couch of up to 2m, and additional lockers, bisly's got a keyboard/synthesizer)
• soldering tips have not yet been bought
• pcb etching equipment is actually available
• two video projectors (sins replacement bulbs) were brought in by macfreak
• Ask schools if they have spare Ikea Expedit
• A drill should be acquired (around 50€ ?)

Working Groups activity reports

• Public Relations: dropped facebook group, now only using the page, dropped zap account, had talks with agendas for automatical event propagation)
• Facilities & Catering: almost out of club-mate, NPU brought some crates today, will we stay with the same 'provider' (ordering a minimum of 40 crates at once) or switch to a supplier that is cheaper that will require us to pick up the crates in Trier? We should either stay with the same supplier or look for another supplier who'd also deliver.

Did we ever talk to DrinX (Munhowen)? Faccat will try to see whether they'll take it into their offer.

• web & server management: ddos by arte, what did really happen? do we have stats? no we don't as the server went 'lala' too soon.

mediawiki got upgraded, so did redmine, logwatch did weird stuff parsing two years old logs, httpd benchmarks will be performed on trollchen's server

• landlord relations: the internet went down, smb cut down the line and blamed us. They found this issue after some calls. Had good talks with Schmidt, for more than an hour. The dish can be put on the roof, a call was dispatched to the mayor. A friend of Marc's could take a look at access to the roof. "Sure, you can do whatever you want".
• Satdish can be put up. We never got a contract, not sure if we should insist. Submitted funding request to the commune this week. Will the satdish survice storms? Sandbacks will secure the dish on the roof. Discussion got into modifications to the roof. (Balcony anyone?) Updates on the bank account. Some people still have access to the accounts, though they shouldn't ;)
• Camp-Orga Is there somebody who could do the coordination? Kwisatz, Sim0n and Prometheus, cannot. If nobody is available, we might have to cancel the contract asap. We will give ourselves two weeks time to decide, maybe smb will step up by then.

Working groups evaluation

• Working groups make sense as long as they're staffed, distributing tasks among multiple groups makes sense to some.
• Pubrel vs. Evdev.. There should be more communication between those two groups.

Improving communication would be preferred over merging these two groups.

• Merging Faccat & Spila?

A meeting between those two groups in the next couple of days should clarify things

pubrel

• make sure everyone from the pubrel group has access to the announce mailing list.
• publish more in the press? what?
• we will get an interview in a luxembourgish free magazine
• do things where you're sure to get press (grl hit & run)

Getting more people to the space =

• Do another session of the soldering workshop and distribute flyers in Strassen
• Have diverse talks and workshops by...?!
• the-network.lu (business women network, it-departments)
• having geocaching, sushi workshops, chocolate keyboards worked,
• mobile hackerspace, have a booth at museums, scout-meets, join every possible related fair, exhibition-galleries, present people's projects.
• let your ideas sprout and the evdev group help you out.

PayPal account (or any other online payment)

• does the space as an entity agree to using paypal?
• are there alternatives?
• almost everyone is in favour of the principle of having online payments
• we will have up to two days of inquiring into alternative online payment providers

CleanSpace Days

• There have not been people on every cleanspace days. What shall we do to keep a clean space?
• Can't we get service from the commune?
• There's not enough respect towards others when it comes to the toilets, dishes, and trash (food leftovers)
• Should there be an enforced enrollment? Toilet cleaning every week? How to enforce this? Will this educate people?
• We should point people to the cleanspace days more efficiently

SSL certs

• 5 people on favour of a commercial wildcard cert thus, we'll stay with CACert
• Do we want to have a single commercial cert (i.e. starssl?) on www.hackerspace.lu and stick with cacert on the others? (this would require more IPs) (6 votes pro)

ApplicationForm evaluation

• are the goals being met?
• you have rules that could be enforced.

over-bureaucratization

• too many hurdles, blackboards, application forms, too many rules, not enough trust?
• a lock on a locker with personal information of people? Addresses of people on bank statements, etc..
• This does not correspond to transparency of bank account.
• Is everyone root in the space? On servers?
• Steve is convinced that people will not go snoop into lockers looking at people's personal information.
• Putting locks on stuff could propagate, instead, there should be no barriers. (people don't use things that have barriers)

"the office"

• no office meeting after march 26th (meetings every three months)
• what about not having an office list any more and posting everything on discuss? --> Some stuff is sensitive and not everybody should see it.
• the office is now more transparent than it was before
• everyone can join the office group..
• it's hard to ask if you don't know what is going on, if it is kept under wraps
• stuff that is not being disclosed is membership applications, including privacy matters
• there has to be a hierarchy on the paper

shall we allow pets in the space?

• some people are allergic to cats
• no snakes, tarantulas or scorpions, rats...
• it's dirty enough, pets will only worsen this
• only non-annoying, non-dangerous pets are allowed as long as there are no allergies
• no farting! ;)

Hx²

• Camper to CCCamp in Finowfurt
• How to represent syn₂cat at CCCamp? Do we want a project at Hx²?
• Marc presents DIY bartender robot idea. Project might be nice but not enough people are participating.
• Leaving on August 7th, i.e. the project needs to be done by then.
• Maybe there will be a Lasertagging event in Cologne (in cooperation with betahaus, C4 and dingfabrik)
• The theme of hx² is Oasis (there will be a pool)
• There is a wiki page about hx²
• There will be a sushi workshop as well.
• More suggestions for technical workshops would be appreciated (Nothing old, something that has our own touch)

Faccat - space optimisation suggestions

• separating the chill into two rooms, having a smaller, quieter library, thus allowing to move the books from the lab into this new room, also allowing electronical parts shelves in the lab.
• Want to buy Ikea expedit racks (total cost between 400 and 500 €)
• Will this not reduce the size of the chill room and disallow people from taking part in meetings? --> creating another room would also enlarge the current sofa-area (by removing the table near the windows)
• there is a plan on how this will look but it's not on the wiki yet.
  • the plan is here: http://www.dabbleboard.com/draw/Gunstick/syn2cat-chill Gunstick
• A light is to be removed, sound isolation to be put on the shelves.
• Unanimous agreement to having this.

Yoga

• Interested in free yoga classes for beginners?
  • I can give course in Ashtanga Yoga. Gunstick (not certified instructor though)
• Where could it take place?

May 7

Minutes

There were no topics planned but several people had some points to bring up

• There are not many people registered to the Strossen Wibbelt event on 15 may (i.e. next sunday). There we will build throwies on our provided booth and do geocaching activities. Spontaneously several more people registered right away so that this activity can be run nicely.

• Note that next sunday the access to syn₂cat headquarters may be difficult because of "Strossen Wibbelt" the road will be closed.

• CCC camp: Marc has organized a camping van. There are 2 sports left. THose were taken by fellow attendees of the meeting. Van is full now.

The camp theme will be OASIS. On the way there some other hackerspaces will be visited. Trip goes from 8 - 15 august.

• • Pleas bring up ideas for stuff to present at the camp!

• From a TED talk came the idea to have noise free hours in the lab. The need to have some silence when working in lab is there, but there was no consensus of how to implement this.

In general it would be nice to try not to annoy people with useless noise (yelling, music ...)

• What about cyberpunk fridays? Those should be set up spontaneously by anyone who is present at the space. Just watch a movie if you feel like it.

• cleanspace day: the last cleaning day was a full clean, moving furniture out to wipe the floor. This should be done every 4 months. In between there can be classical cleanings for vacuuming, cleaning kitchen and toilets.

And please don't schedule those days on holidays as several people wont be able to attend.

The lab room got new cabling and there was an idea to have extractable lan cables. The idea was rejected as we would have to buy them whereas we get as many LAN cables as we want for free.

• The ubuntu release party was not well publicized to the press. This should be better handled in the future. Send press kits out before the event. Just twitter and facebook does not work for normal press channels.

• talks and workshops:
  • annound them on the mailinglist
  • reach out to general public to gather attendees
  • don't restrict on technical subjects, but other themes are interesting too like cooking, plants, music.

• remeber that the soldering workshop will be happening in 2 weeks time...

• there is a new money box on the soldering table. This is when you use items from the electronics stock for you own use that you put some money back. Soon there will be prices fixed to the drawers so you know how muck that couple of elkos costs.

• some items are needed
  • a classic drill
  • an hot air gun
  • a hair dryer (hot air is for some actions too hot)

• the harware wishlist should be rearranges and made more easily readable for non members if people want to donate stuff. An idea to categorize is a needed / nice to have separation, as well as a section for more technology oriented items and one for general household items.

• next hackids is on 7th june about solar bots. If you have or know kids interested, register them! The last hackids had no attendees...

April 2nd

Topics

• Faccat and Spila merger evaluation
• Donation policy: A member who brings something to the space MUST take the tim.e to find a safe and out of the way place for it.
• Acquire a ultra sonic cutter. This tool could be used for plastic cutting. You can see demo video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcA2qQvGoF8 , product page is here http://www.mmech.com/ultrasonic-cutters/honda-usw-334 (Kris)

Minutes

There was no Present your Project.

• Faccat and Spila merger evaluation

No meeting has happened until now, so nothing new to report. Both groups should do a meeting together.

• Donation policy: A member who brings something to the space MUST take the time to find a safe and out of the way place for it.

Currently most lockers are full. To make place, everyone should only use one case. To make this easier, members should use the wooden lockers. The hardware will be stored in the steel lockers.

First there have to be rules what can be brought to the space. See the various wish lists on Infrastructure for some ideas. Also that page and the Wishlist should be reworked so that we have a single page to refer people to when the donation question arises.

In final people are ok that Spila should organize this. Some ideas were brought up how to handle this:

• • have one box labeled "/tmp" or "incoming" where new items land in. SpiLa will sort it in where it belongs.
  • Unneeded items will be put onto the table in the hallway. Members can collect there items they might use for themselves or a project. Unclaimed objects will get garbage collected.
  • Pictures of new stuff arriving and old stuff scheduled for removal should be put on the mailing list for information. This is already done mostly of the time and is a good practice.

• Acquire a ultra sonic cutter.

This is going to cost almost 300€ for an item with not a so great field of application. E.g. would it be possible to cut PCBs with it? After a small vote the were 2 in favor, 4 against and 4 neutral. Some suggestions were to try building such a devide yourself or use a heated piece of metal to cut through plastic. DO NOT use a soldering iron, because this will ruin the tip.

Facilities_%26_Catering

• club mate order is delayed because of production problems. Should arrive monday. New kind of juice as trial: Fritz Limo.
• self building road signs instead of buying expensive professional ones
• We checked the roof. There is a possibility to put the sat dish and also a way to hang a banner from the roof. That banner should have in big friendly letters "hackerspace" to make the building look less like a school.
• relighting the lab: the lab, by night, is not looking as cool as the chill room. Some colorful lights are needed. Also dimmable lights would be nice.

Space_Infrastructure,_Library_%26_Acquisitions

• new books were added
• lockers rearrangement planned (see above)
• clean out unneeded items
• decorate outside (see FacCat)

Press_%26_Public_Relations

• the first batch of stickers is a failure, they need to be redone
• there are now stats on the blog

Future_Events_%26_Developments

• the same topics are still current (ubuntu party, idea talk ...)
• the cyberpunk friday is not happening very often. Anyone can decide what to show and invite.
• the easter holidays are arriving. Slopjong will do a workshop 22-25 april
• please come forward and do talks!

Web_%26_Server_Management

• there is a new, better, WiFi access point set up.

Camp-Orga

• the dudelange camp site has been reserved for haxolight

Budget,_Legal_Matters_and_Landlord_Relations

• the Office did their first public meeting. The minutes are online OfficeMeetings#Meeting_26_march_2011
• the aim of those meetings is to make the office more open and transparent

//////// mondays are busy days, that's the day to come to the space and meet cool people \\\\\\\\\

March 12th

Attention: This bootstrap meeting is on the second Saturday of the month for a change because we hold our General Assembly on the 1st.

Topics

• Working Group progress reports and group switching (if any)
• Opinion gathering about merging faccat and spila
• Introducing the FreeSpace project
• Hack in the Box Amsterdam Attendance
• Upcoming workshops (Soldering and Cocktail)
  • slopjong: dunno if you mean my soldering workshop. If so the voice changer is soldered which sounds like this. The robot voice is understable if a microphone is used as the input instead of the line-out of my macb00k
• Science Festival 2011
• CleanSpace Days

Minutes

Meeting start at 19:15

• Working Group progress reports and group switching (if any)
  • Pubrel
    • several members work on a grafical charta so we can have a corporate identity. There will be no requirements to members to use a specific email signature
    • facebook group or page? Decision taken to keep both, but itnation and zap will be dropped.
    • who reads space status (open close) via twitter. Seems everyone just consults the main website. So either remove those updates altogether or create a dedicated twitter account so that the syn₂cat twitte page gets less cluttered and more interesting to follow. Additional idea is to improve the status page to show a short history of the last changes and maybe finally create occupational statistics.
    • the new free twitter like service itenti,ca will not be used as the users are mainly geeks and ners who know anyway about hackerspaces
    • idea to create a yearly PDF based newsletter
    • spreadshirt: trial of the premium membership (60€). Should we only show the recent designs? Decision to have old designs in the shop but only on later pages. Personal designs should go on your own spreadshirt shop.
    • there will be generic business cars without individual names created. People can get personalized ones if they pay for them. Other possibility is to have A4 sheets with the cards pre-printed which can be personalized by anyone, either by printing or simply handwriting the name or alias.
    • Keep the GRL brand? Yes. It's a label for street art. Put link to linux software on the site.
    • Blog: it's possible to write your own posts. But please finish your posts ASAP. There are many unfinished ones on the site.
  • Evdev
    • no meeting yet
    • please remember the ubuntu release party
    • what is the group about: not really to create events but more supporting you in creating your events
  • sysops
    • wordpress has been updated
    • openduino2 is a standalone project
  • camp orga
    • the contract with dudelange scouts has to be signed
  • office
    • a suggestion was made that the council should be more open towards members what's going on
    • internal office meeting is scheduled for this month
  • faccat
    • from now on please put small bags into the trashcans in the lab room, else they become very dirty
    • one cupboard will be fitted with wheels so the stock will be easier to access
    • mate order will be made next monday. Personal crates (25€+5€ deposit) can be made until sunday night
    • anyone having trays to make ice cubes, please bring them, so we have ice for Kenn's coctail workshop
  • infrastructure
    • some new books have arrived. This could be tweeted. Using the rss feed from librarything is the easiest way.
• Opinion gathering about merging faccat and spila
  • 2 of 3 members in faccat are favorable to the merging, in spila nobody did oppose the idea.
  • one advantage is that the 2 budgets of faccat and 1 from spila can be merges into 2 budgets. Less admin time, more hacker time.
  • it's possible to tranfer faccat tickets in redmine into spila
  • trial period until next bootstrap or the one after
• Introducing the FreeSpace project
  • something like Die Bäckerei in austria
  • 500m2
  • not commercial, so nothing like carree rotondes. It will be an autonomous structure
  • shall syn₂cat be part of it? there are 3 possibilities
    • not participate
    • use some working rooms for our use
    • move completely there into our own dedicated rooms
  • is syn₂cat behind this, supporting the idea? Yes
  • everyone should have a look at Die Bäckerei to have an idea what it's about
• Hack in the Box Amsterdam Attendance
  • this is a business conference with a high entry fee which is held from 17 until 20 May
  • participating in the hacker challenge can get 2 syn₂cat members free access
  • who of our members is interested? Ask on mailinglist for people
• Upcoming workshops (Soldering and Cocktail)
  • slopjong: dunno if you mean my soldering workshop. If so the voice changer is soldered which sounds like this. The robot voice is understable if a microphone is used as the input instead of the line-out of my macb00k
  • please sign up for the workshops!!!
  • ice cube trays needed several days before next saturday!
  • Kenn needs some helping hands to move the coctail stuff to the space
• Science Festival 2011
  • the project got approved including budget for parts and remuneration for people running the workshops
  • purpose: do science workshops to teach kids. On 2 days the classes with teacher will visit the workshop to experiment with logic gates using legos
  • a big calculator using the same logic gate principles will be built by syn₂cat to be put up at the festival
  • there will be around 6 people needed to build the half adders via a small mass production chain
  • Currently Jhemp and Gunstick are in charge of the project
• CleanSpace Days
  • there has to be a cleaning day once a month
  • rule which was accepted by everyone: each member has to participate at least in 4 cleaning days per year

Meeting finished at 20:45

• Green Rack (after meeting presentation)
  • Gunstick presents his idea of bio-mod the syn₂cat way.
  • The main purpose is to have a daylight visible sign to make people aware where the hackerspace is
  • Instead of enclosing running comupters and plants in an autonomous system, this idea will be more into the theme of nature taking over technology
  • the unused rack in the lab room will be used, including computer hardware. The servers will be plant pots where flowers and other green stuff grows.
  • must take contact with donators of the various hardware in that rack if they are OK to trash that (and transform into plant pots)
  • anyone interested in doing this?

February 5th

Topics

• Funding for the Syn2rbine project
• Sushi Workshop debriefing, and discussion of non-member participation.
• Hx² and the CCCamp 2011
• The HacKids project (and the future role of the hackerspace in (fundamental) schools RFC)
• Poll: who finds the "Repage" script useful? If many, would the Superüberadmins adopt the redmine template?
• Can we have a paypal account plz ? ^^
• haxolight... we should start the discussions and come up with a date
• PYP recordings:
  • What to do with them
  • Can we get a wireless microphone to go with the camera? (will be below 100 EUR139.359 $
    87.19 £
    121.988 CHF)

Minutes

syn2rbine project

• David asking for funding for a wind turbine project.
  • magnets 12 x 5,30€
• Q: Meeting assembly asks whether there exists a budget (for?)
• A: no
• Talk about type of bearings to use
• is the project going to be funded? --> 40% upfront, remaining 60% upon completion (see Guidelines)
• majority votes yes

sushi debriefing

• question about non-member participation and member participation
• marc: workshop was amazing, 13 people running around, 150 pieces of sushi made with 2kg of rice, introduced 2 sushi virgins to sushi, marc would like to recreate the workshop because everybody enjoyed themselves.
• only 5-6 members
• might get one more member from this workshop
• "non-geeky" workshops attract and convince people with a "nerdy" perception that geeks are not as creepy as they thought
• the workshop was cozy, lasted until 3:30 AM
• workshops should be public by default but members should get a 2 week warning window to register beforehand
• photos have gone missing!!

refrigerators & plates

• we need more fridges
• bartek will get 2 from jhemp and jan
• send to mailing list: does somebody have a set of plates (non-plastic) to replace our shitty plastic plates

hx2.org

• need one volunteer to communicate with kun to do organisation of the hacksquare on ccc camp 2011
• david presents ccc camp using videos
• -> poll on mailing list who wants to go this year, who will take responsibility of taking over communication

HacKids

• Marc presents HacKids workshops: every first Tuesday of the month
• the question is: do we want to give free workshops to schools?
• Kenn: we can get funding through FNR, I already spoke to the guy who decides these things
• Kenn: it is a question of time, although marc is very motivated, how will you find other people to help you out
• marc & bartek will write up funding proposal to FNR / MinEduc, David suggests that we should also contact SNJ to be added to list of acitivities for official helpers

general funding

• get funding from strassen! there is a deadline!

romain's poll about source.hacker.lu

• turn greasemonkey script into plugin? yes!

redmine

• is it possible to limit stars showing for groups other than reporter only?

paypal

• yes 4, no 4, 4 abstained

what to do with PYP recordings ?!

• it should be left up to the talker whether the video be published on youtube
• Q: who edits it?
• A: the PR group

wireless microphone

• should we buy one?
• not decided yet as no particular model

stock

• georges presents his spreadsheet for tracking expenses

January 8th, 2011

Attention: This bootstrap meeting is on the second Saturday of the month for a change because the 1st is hangover day.

Topics

Working Groups

• status updates
• faccat: find consensus of how the tic board should be used
• introducing sugar
• general wg evaluation and feedback, aka "How would you improve the working groups?"
• How to handle people leaving/joining wgs?

Administrativa

• Proposal for using real names and no nicknames on source.hacker.lu
• Question about the way members get reminded of their membership fees
  • When do you get the initial fee? When do you get reminded?
  • Is email the best solution?
• Handling the storage vault. (Wuala/Dropbox/webdav or /dev/null?)
• A database where all the members' interests are listed
• Optional feature request: limit #users on Lusitania to historical 1198 [1]
• Concerning "children work" (≠ Asian children work) a box on the front page where parents could "register" their children for workshops would be cool

Events

• Realizing regular workshop for kids & some kind of shop (everything realized with stuff, they've got on sparkfun.com, evilmadscientist.com, etc.)
• Science Festival. CallforProposals Photos 2009

Acquisitions

• Buy gas-heater?
• Buy fold-able transport boxes?

Projects & Funding

• Fund an OpenLase Installation (~500€) @SteveClement
  • Git repo
  • OpenLase Project Site
  • Buy Galvo Motors (e.g: K12N Laser Galvo)
  • Ask youtube for Video Demo!

• Idea: "Present your project"-Sessions

New members

• who is new in the space?

Minutes

Miscellaneous

• Book aquisitions: How to do it? Does this need OK via bootstrap?

=> Best is to add to the wishlist including an abstract. Inform Library & Acquisitions of your request.

• Haxolight, if people know of some potential places, what are the requirements? [did we have an answer on this?]
• Member fees timing and insurance: if members quit, and don't pay the whole year, the budget previsions would be off. Last meeting stated: members pay for a full year, even if this is done via monthly payments.

Working Groups

• status updates
  • evdev have had an internal meeting which covered potential events and ideas for 2011. Also an after event questionnaire is planned to get people's opinions. Their next meeting is 22 jan.
  • faccat presented the new tic board operation. Only people regularly visiting the space should put their marks on the blackboard. This is meant to ease the handling of multiple payments in one day or weekend, not to live on long term credit on syn2cat's costs. The maximum stays at 20€.

Buying kitchen and catering stuff is only handled by faccat. If members notice an opportunity, please contact a faccat member first, to avoid double buying. Small quantities you can still buy, at the risk to have to use it for your own needs if the syn₂cat stock is full. In any case, never take money directly from the cashier! Please give the bill to a faccat member who will pay you. The wishlist on the fridge is not only for needed beverages and food, but also for any kitchen or equipment item you think is missing.

• • spila if members have interesting items, don't bring them right away to the space. There is not so much room and a lot of stuff ended up at the recycling centre. Please ask spila first if there's need.
  • pubrel has been asked to rearrange the top banner on the blog to point to the wiki pages and put the blog links to bottom or side. There will be new stickers. Pubrel also has a new member, which is also a new syn₂cat member. If anyone is knowledgeable in XML and iTunes, there is a script needed to transform our radioshow into a podcast for the i-devices.
  • sysops have been asked to access the webserver statistics for optimizing the blog contents. There should be no problem to access the awstats. The questions of using google analytics was raised. Some concerns about privacy of website visitors have been raised, and the Idea is not accepted. If there is any need (new python version, new tools...) please file a ticket in redmine. There are plans to provide email facilities (including spam and virus checking) on the hackerspace.lu and syn2cat.lu domains.
  • hsoffice ADHS has been contacted today (as they were present this day) aboput the cleaning issue. They will have a general assembly next week and will tell us if our proposal is ok or they may be could offer us another solution.

A meeting is planned with the commune to discuss on several outstanding points (convention, letterbox, sattelite etc...) Members contributions will need to be raised due the the assurance cost. This will be voted on the next general assembly. Members are advised to pay the new amount (which is €9.5 or €10) already from 1st of January on.

• sugar is a CRM (customer relationship management) tool which is in use by the office group since the very beginning of syn2cat. So it's not "another new tool". Roughly it's an evolves contact managing phonebook where you can also add exchanged emails and notes. The accounts (companies) have contacts (individuals). The use is to track communication with non-syn2cat people and groups. The advanteg compared to a spreadsheet or similar is that it's structured and won't end up with unorganized information clutter. Sugar is not available to everybody because of privacy issues. Please contact sysops for access.

This tool is not mandatory, you can still use a sheet of paper, wiki page or any other format for managing your contacts. If you find good alternatives, suggestions are welcome. A rudimetary bridge between sugar and redmine exist. To be studied if it's worth implementing.

• How to improve the working groups?

If you want to inform yourself about what is going on in a workgroup, a good idea is to browse through their redmine pages and tickets. Note that sysops and hsoffice are not browseable. The bridge between faccat and spila is not very clear. Maybe people should join both, or even merge both working groups. => a meeting spila-faccat should be planned to clarify this.

• How to handle people leaving/joining working groups?

The consensus is, that no restrictions or barriers should be imposed on joining a workgroup. But leaving will only be possible at a bootstrap meeting. This is mainly to remove workload from the people needing to work behind the scenes to make all this happening (sysops). Joining is generally not validated by anyone, except for hsoffice and sysops. TO have a trial period before deciding to join, members are free to assist a group meeting or talk with the group members before really joining. Are there member and group number enforcements. There is a rule of at least 1 group and max 3 groups per member and max 6 members per group. This is just a rule of thumb. Depending on workload and people's interest, the real numbers vary.

Administrativa

• Proposal for using real names and no nicknames on source.hacker.lu

As this has been covered on last meeting, not much has changed. Everyone is free to choose the name he wants. If people know each other, this should not be a problem. If there is urgent need to know the identity, you can ask office.

• Question about the way members get remembered of their membership fees
  • When do you get the initial fee? When do you get reminded?

The reminder sent out was a manual action.

• • Is email the best solution?

It will always be email as any other solution (paper, sms ...) involves cost. Some ideas for nagging people not paying came up, and vanished again.

• Handling the storage vault. (Wuala/Dropbox/webdav or /dev/null?)

The storage contains a multitude of logos and documents which have been used in the past of syn2cat. This should be migrated from svn (the only remaining svn depot we have) into git, so one can access it from redmine.

• A database where all the members' interests are listed

There was the project to do interviews with the members, which has not made much progress. Members could fill out on their wiki profile their interests. The proposal to use the semantic capabilities of mediawiki is accepted, so that this info becomes searchable.

• Optional feature request: limit #users on Lusitania to historical 1198 [2] nice joke, but the ship had 2198 passengers, oh, oh, fail.
• Concerning "children work" (≠ Asian children work) a box on the front page where parents could "register" their children for workshops would be cool. This box should populate a mailing list which we can then use to inform parents when a workshop is held.

Events

• Realizing regular workshop for kids & some kind of shop (everything realized with stuff, they've got on sparkfun.com, evilmadscientist.com, etc.)

On the christmas market, we noticed a big interest in electronic blinking and gaming gadgets. So the idea came to organize workshops. Start small with a couple of children. Then increase the number. The scouts were interested to cooperate.

• Science Festival. CallforProposals Photos 2009

The deadline is on 16 january! Before proposing, verify that you are available during the festival. Some ideas already came up:

• • computer science, unplugged. Have people interact physically to reproduce computer activity (binary counter, networking, calculating ...)
  • build micro robos with sensors so they can interact with environment and themselves
  • create a device with non newtonian fluid where people can play with
  • [your idea here]

Acquisitions

• Buy gas-heater?

For the cold events like christmas market or lasertagging. Postponed to next bootstrap. If you see gas heaters in local shops, note down the price.

• Buy fold-able transport boxes?

Consensus is to invest in some solid stuff. Jhemp may have a ressource to get industrial grade boxes. Else the maximum budget allowed is 150€

Projects & Funding

• Fund an OpenLase Installation (~500€) @SteveClement

Nice idea. This was not discussed in detail. Some ideas were raised to use alternatives to galvanometers (harddisks, laserdisk pickup, loudspeakers)

• Idea: "Present your project"-Sessions

Everyone was favorable to hold a sort of lightening talks before the bootstrap meeting. This can be about potential or running projects.

• video stream of bootstrap meeting? The idea of the meeting is to be actually together. Else everyone would stay at home. Not approved.

New members

• who is new in the space?

Several people have joined, mainly in the media and multimedia area. Welcome!