Regular Member Meeting 2017 08 08

Time and Location

Date August 8, 2017

Called to order at 19:38 pm by juri_

Members present: Matt Zand, Ben, James, juri_, Tayeb, ubuntourist

Members remote: mirage335

Others present:

Quorum

Quorum met? No

Approval of Previous Meeting's Minutes

• July, no quorum: http://wiki.hacdc.org/index.php/Regular_Member_Meeting_2017_07_11
• June, no quorum: http://wiki.hacdc.org/index.php/Regular_Member_Meeting_2017_06_13
• May, no quorum: http://wiki.hacdc.org/index.php/Regular_Member_Meeting_2017_05_09
• April, quorum achieved: http://wiki.hacdc.org/index.php/Regular_Member_Meeting_2017_04_11

Old Business

• Matt Z encouraged to submit a proposal re: his MOU two weeks in advance of next meeting.

New Business

• Enrique - Should we invest in off-site storage unit, move the majority of the contents of the basement shelves to this cold storage, remove the basement shelves, install bright lighting, seating and work surfaces in the rear room?

Project Awesome Reports

Project SUPPLIES - Mirage

Nothing to report, this month.

Project EXPANSION - Mirage

Nothing to report, this month.

Project Electron Microscope (SEM) - Enrique

• Nothing important. Skip unless someone wants to read it: Electronics need to be checked for debris that may have fallen into it and could short stuff out. In retrospect we shouldn't leave a 15kV power supply uncovered so random shit can fall into it. After that, power on, see what happens to pressure. We need space to work on this, so it should be a separate SEM workday (date TBD).
• An untested cable for connecting the vacuum gauge to a computer serial port (RS-232 / DB-9) has been built.

Project CRISPR -Enrique

Preparing a Saturday workshop. The check of the as-received bacteria and antibiotic was successful: bacteria grow, but not on the antibiotic. The time constraints are still problematic; 4-hour and 12-16 hour steps don't lend themselves well to an after-hours hobby. Sophia took the samples home last time to get the timing right. Also found a short Prezi.com presentation of someone else obviously doing the same experiment and having the same issues we had (control also grows), weirdly reassuring.

Project SpaceBlimp -Enrique

As of this writing, we haven't located the Spaceblimp components: balloon, filling hardware, rigging, payload enclosure, radios, GPS... everything. There seems to be an entire bin misplaced or missing and if we don't find it soon this is not happening. A bunch of us will go down to NC/SC to watch the eclipse regardless though.

Project IT Infrastructure - Tom

I don't know the status of this budget and don't have any immediate purchase plans.

Member Reports

• Enrique - In contact with TOOOL and looking at dates for a lockpicking class in late August or maybe September.
• Enrique - If someone wants to arrange another Metasploit workshop let me know and I'll give you Hamza's email address.

Director Reports (Governance related stuff)

Vice President's Report

The church has had two building-wide outages in the past month, as well as a currently ongoing outage local to one tenant's connection.

I will re-iterate that we are in need of a reorganization of the server closet, clarification of the duties of HacDC's volunteer staff, and better documentation of the existing physical infrastructure.

Treasurer's Report

• We now have a DC business license, which we were lacking before. Still waiting to hear about our solicitation license which I also applied for. It might be in the mail. This is so we can legally get more than $1500 in donations or grants per year, which we should aim for.

Next: find & seek grants! With all our paperwork in order I think we should contact the DC government (mayor?) directly and ask if they have a mechanism to help us financially.

• I applied for a hardware donation from SparkFun and were awarded $150. (yay!) We have to build a wishlist and send it to them. Please make suggestions and r I'll pick stuff out myself.

• I asked Lockheed Martin for $1900 to support an FPGA programming workshop. (Surprise, Julia!) We'll see what they say. I also got HacDC on their list of volunteer opportunities listing Microcontroller and FPGA programing.

• Northrop Grumman and Booz Allan's charity programs are invite-only but I contacted them to find out more and invite volunteers to come help out.

Secretary's Report

(Ben Resigned - Enrique)

Director-at-Large Reports

Kevin

• We've been invited to the 2nd Community Networking Meeting hosted by Thrive DC. This will be in October. I attended the first one a few months ago, but will be out of the country for the second one. Julia has RSVP'd to represent us at the second meeting.
• The DC chapter of the ACM has a new chair who's interested in reaching out to other tech communities. So, I've reached out to her, and she's hoping to come by for one of the open houses and see what we might plan together.

Adjournment

Adjourned by at 20:26 by juri_