Regular Member Meeting 2015 10 13

Time and Location

October 13th, 2015.

Called to order at 7:48pm pm by Enrique

Members present: Ben M., Don J., Sumter T., Mirage, Enrique C., Phil, Julia L., Evan P.

Members remote: Michael C., Kevin C.

Others present: Nick, Tom, Robert H., Bobby B.

Quorum

Quorum met? Yes, 9.

Recognition

• Mirage planned out the new space layout in good detail.
• Mirage, Dan, Don and Enrique helped clean up the front basement room in preparation to move workshop equipment down there.
• Mirage built the shelves at the new space with help form Nick, Bobby and Enrique.
• Dan and Enrique went out to Community Forklift to look for building materials for the new space and basement.
• Enrique facilitated a lockpicking class attended by 17 students and 3 instructors from TOOOL.
• Julia has been keeping the space open, greeting guests and answering the phone during business hours.
• Julia has been relentlessly representing HacDC at the Columbia Heights Farmers Market weekly.
• Don spearheaded moving stuff out of the old space into the new space and basement.

Director Reports

Vice President's Report

Top priority is to get all our equipment back online.

NetPLC has long been fully ready to replace the old occupancy sensor, as well as provide RFID/IoT physical access control. Our current space has a wooden door frame. Now we just need to install the electronic door strike.

Shelf screws joining the back posts are known to withstand ~150lbs each. Please do not approach that limitation until additional 2x4s have been added.

Moving went surprisingly well. We still have valuable resources AND walking space. Much thanks to Don for spearheading the physical moving process. Also many thanks to those who provided feedback on the space layout. However, our unfunded mandate to move did incur significant hidden costs. Setting aside >$1.5k for future moving services, construction, temporary/cheap storage, etc, would be wise.

Treasurer's Report

Current Paypal balance: $1901.17 Dwolla ballance: $1780.00 BBT Balance: $4090.23

Rent check has been delivered for Oct, Nov, and part of Dec. (-$2680). Has not yet cleared.

Back dues paid during sept: $600. Paypal income from dues for sept: $1450. Dwolla income from dues for sept: $750.

Total paypal income for sept: $1564.

Secretary's Report

We gained a couple of members, so we're at 34 paying members now. We finalized a sponsorship arrangement with Accelebrate. They do online and on-site IT courses in... tons of stuff: SQL, R, and Python to Cold Fusion and Photoshop. They gave us some money and their logo is now among our Sponsors on our website and MeetUp site.

Important: HacDC has been invited, along with a few other charities, to have an informational table at the Naval Research Laboratory near Annacostia. This will be a couple of hours around lunchtime on a Wednesday: October 28th, and we need at least two preferably three volunteers to be at this table explaining and promoting HacDC. Also NRL is a controlled-access facility and we need to submit the names in advance, this week. So if you can and want to do this, please let me know ASAP. Anyone not know what the CFC is?

We've had almost all our previously planned events including a well-attended lockpicking class[1], 3D Thursdays, Amateur Radio meetings and exams, Capture the Flag and a couple of Farmers Market events. But for the bulk of this month we've been consumed with this recent move and we still are. We haven't focused at all on starting any new events like knitting or the CryptoParty or finding someone to take over Microcontroller Mondays or starting a Raspberry Pi meeting, which another MeetUp group is now doing nearby. We haven't reached out to any other MeetUp groups to host events here lately. We didn't follow-up with a contact at the White House OSTP, we shelved contacting the Mayor's office or looking into any grant opportunities we might be eligible for. We didn't seal the deal with a second sponsor yet. We haven't made t-shirts or even called for design ideas. I haven't had much time to do a crowfunding video with the footage I have, although I did scrape together a preliminary lockpicking class video.

I'm sure we have some 3D printers online, the electronics cart, the HARC station, and the basic classroom amenities are back up and maybe better than before but other major tools became or remained offline last month: the CNC mill and lathe, the laser cutter, the SEM, the optical table is again unusable because of all the junk on it yet again[2]. I'm not sure we have a proper soldering station or decent accessible parts store right now. Some things were stolen from the hallway during the move and the lockers are still out there. The SEM has been reassembled and tested in the classroom mainly due to lack of space in the basement, manpower to move it properly, the cost of movers, and flooding issues down there. The internet and phone service seems OK but the occupancy sensor is offline and the lighting improvement is going slowly; I don't think any electricians showed up to quote installation of workshop lights but Bobby and Condew may have an LED solution for us. The asbestos concern in the basement was a false alarm but flooding and poor lighting are still problems.

I added both Bobby and Nick to the members email list even though they're not currently members. Both of them were putting much time and effort into the move and I felt they should be part of the move discussions ongoing on the members list, and I didn't want to move or copy all those discussions to the public Blabber list. Discuss this decision?

[1] We still owe TOOOL the $425 we collected for their lockpick sets. Let's please reimburse them... [2] I think the optical table is Juri's realm and she can toss whatever irrelevant junk is placed there, no-questions-asked.

Project Awesome Reports

Project SUPPLIES

Raspberry Pis purchased last month cost a total of $110.93.

Member Reports

mirage335

Borrowed some stuff to free up space, notably the high-power surround sound audio equipment brought-in by Shawn Nock long ago.

Please keep the shelves neatly organized and functional. Especially, please keep the top shelf free of debris, it is specifically intended for lighting, networking, and audio equipment.

Personally spent $409.42 on shelving materials. Would appreciate reimbursement.

Taz_Mega

Mechanical assembly complete. Project nearly finished, which will help me get back here more often with more interesting resources.

Enrique

• Spent $106.09 on shelving materials at HomeDepot; would like reimbursement.
• Spent $62.33 on thirty copies of the new door key at HomeDepot; would like reimbursement.
• I owe HacDC $25 I received cash for one of the lockpicking sets, so subtract that.
• Still have one carload of HacDC trash at home to deal with, don't particularly want more.
• We may have a Cypherpunks United (CPU) meetup here next week. That meetup has been postponed repeatedly for many months, so no promises. The topic is introduction to encryption, managing large keychains, key signing, etc. I have a placeholder on MeetUp that I'll update as soon as I hear back from the CPU organizer.
• I got in touch with someone at the Tokyo Hackerspace; they're starting their own ham radio club and for some reason need a US-based mailing address. They are looking at mail forwarding services but don't want the junk forwarded to Japan, just the important FCC mail. So I offered that HacDC could probably help them out. Don's onboard, so maybe we'll be helping out some Hams in Japan soon.

Adjournment

Adjourned by at 9:16pm by Enrique