Bay Area Consortium of Hackerspaces/May 24 2013

BACH Meeting Notes – May 24, 2013

BACH Meeting Minutes 5/24/13

Attendees

Judi, Christina, Praveen, Chad, Patrick, Marina, Vicky, Mike, Jenny, Matt, Larry, Caroline [Hayward, on phone]

Notes

• Hackerspace bootstrapping exchange volunteer program
• Building hackerspace communications infrastructure
• Planning space for Hayward hackerspace - converted car dealership
  • Future sudo room: http://oaklandwiki.org/Biff%27s_Coffee_Shop
• San Leandro has gigabit infrastructure and city interest in innovation, this is a conversation that needs to occur
• Identify commonalities / value alignment and move forward from there
• "Global is a good goal but Bay Area is gonna rock" - Judi on mapping & Mycelia
• Reaching out to the different kinds of spaces and incentivizing them to attend the meetings
• "Our strength is our diversity."
• San Leandro Westgate Mall space is of interest to the city for developing a manufacturing hub
  • TechShop still seeking a real business model, requires $3M startup for 3 years
  • San Leandro has an economic development challenge - needing people to build infrastructure and bridge between seeding and deploying projects

Roundtable

• Sharing challenges (and assets) that we're facing to discover commonalities and potential for collaboration
• Timeliness - what's relevant to particular timeframes
• Discussion of pros & cons of different governance/organizational/communication structures
• Pros and cons of different legal structures
• Illuminate the ecosystem of Bay Area hackerspaces for onboarding new members

*Show and tell of concrete examples illuminating the different challenges & assets (lightening talk format) [eg; Super Happy Fun Dev House; 5 Minutes of Fame]
*Formalizing vision and goals; needs assessment 

• June 8th is too soon [overwhelming majority chooses June 15th]
  • What about June 15th? w/ digital participation
  • Potential call-in Google Hangout
• Mass: 1-3 representatives from each space would be ideal
  • Roundtable as a precursor to get people on the same page
• Unconference that is self-defined

*Where should we hold the roundtable?
**Noisebridge [loud, but quintessential hackerspace - would be great to intro]
**Flaming Lotus Girls - BoxShop [difficult to get to via public transportation]
**Instructables HQ [right near Embarcadero BART]
**LOLspace [East Oakland, 20 min walk from BART]

Action Items

*Newsletter will happen! [Judi & Jenny]
**Expectations of what we can get out of a roundtable discussion 
*We need a logo!
*Roundtable (first official meetup) - when and where?
**Propose an unconference seeding out of the roundtable
*Non-digital marketing [Judi and Vicky]
*Set more concrete "DO COME TO THIS" messages for meetups
*Send out communications info for meetups [point of contact], directions, and make invite list visible for coordinating rideshares etc;
*Invite more folks to the BACH list

• • Jenny, Vicky, Judi, Praveen, Matt [Delegation working group]
• Succinct description of what our expectations are from the roundtable discussion [lead: Vicky]
  • Deadline: June 1st

Next Meeting

• Saturday, June 15th at Noisebridge!

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Pre-Planning

Time

• 6:30-7:45pm Pre-meeting happy hour at Drake's Brewery, back corner of West Gate.
• 8:00-9:00pm Meeting. See front entrance at West Gate for details.

Location

• West Gate San Leandro, 1933 Davis St. map
• There's a free shuttle FROM San Leandro BART to West Gate every 20 minutes. Last one leaves at 7pm. Links Shuttle
• Unfortunately no free shuttle back to BART but those of us with cars will help. It's a bit over a mile to walk or bike.
• Meeting location details will be at Drake's and at the building entrance between Office Depot and Home Depot. [File:http://hackerspaces.org/images/c/c8/Westgate.png finding the entrance]

Ride Sharing

Please list yourself if you need/can offer a ride from Oakland or San Leandro BART (name and origination point).

• NEED:
• OFFER:

Second BACH Event

Goals for Event

(borrowed from first meeting)

• Comments to the SEC re: crowdfunding on behalf of BACH / Common Declaration (Eddan)
• Getting hackerspaces inter-exchanging; introducing to new spaces; networking/exchange (JC)
• Commitment from key people of different hackerspaces to convince them to participate (Tim)
• Needs assessment (Marina)
• First steps toward shared inventory / skills / projects database (Jenny)
• Needs assessment and general feedback / survey / patterns document / sociology (Matt)
• Converge, commit, feedback, interoperability

Discussion Overflow

Shared Values

• Helping to articulate the unique and common values among the spaces.

Next Meeting

• Saturday, June 15th at Noisebridge!