General Assembly 6

General Assembly 6 Tue 27 May 2014 0:00 till Tue 27 May 2014 0:00 What: General Assembly Tagline: General Assembly Where: HSBXL Brussels,Belgium Cost: your membership if you're late payer Who: all members (and _only members..) URL:

http://www.piratepad.be/p/HSBXL-GA6

Last year notes

General_Assembly_Process

Notes:

1. 1. member count

- paying members are 35 now, 19 people present

1. 1. bookkeeping

- Tom volunteers to do the bookkeeping - we made a loss in 2013 --> no overview -- we're paying rent, vinyl flooring, oscilloscope, other wood, - we're going to announe finally that we put 15 euro

1. 1. board members

- everyone stays in the board

1. 1. past decisions

- cleaning lady / boy --> Johnny proposed for the vacany ==> ok -- amount or frequency decided by maximum amount / 12

1. 1. Patterns and rules

- some rules added -- say hi -- don't leave your friends in the space when you leave - we put the code of conduct offline on the wall

1. 1. better new member process

- all the process stays the same except for you get a /tmp/-card from the point you get two people to vouch for you -- postponed for the 4 witnesses or 2 vouchers to next tuesday

1. 1. Goals of the org

- HAM radio communication in the statutes (formulated as a goal) -- to get real ham radio operation -- sebastien does the necessary -- we wait untill some statutechanges come together to make it official and hack - hsbxl going to be our name, to release hackerspace.be for all hackerspaces in brussels -- wiki links? --> meeting for dns redirecting

1. 1. members *||cleanup||*

- keeping members active -- monthly activity --> gives some actual constraint to do something --> more active agenda that recurrs -- actual activities are quite organic, people around deciding on the spot ==> better to have a dynamic around a monthly event -- fixed date for public event where people can do something (not teacher <> receiver setup) ||==> merge with bitnight, last saturday of the month __ -- active projects of the members ==> Nico sends first mail with proposal and .... - new member type? -- Nah

1. 1. house status

- insurance --> need to get - about 300 euro a year - owner==> nothing is on paper | decide later on strategy

1. 1. hackbase discussion

- 1st of July would be the date to move in for the hackerspace -- MATH

  | 150 / month | fixed costs
  | 500 / month | rent

= | 650 / month | total

  | 525 / month | income
  
  -estimate for electricity => new hardware = 5k
  

- Everyone is in favor to conditionally raise the membership fee to 25 euro for people with normal estimated income and 15 for others - Everyone is in favor of moving to the hackbase if all pieces fall together

The reflexion behind it is the following :

@ Tazio we would bleed out 125€/month (see MATH sectioin) Our war chest would be completely hanilihated by the move (rent deposit + necessary work in the tazio space) Even is Marte is covering the rent deposit we wouldn't be in a viable situation (fixed expenses not covered by fixed incomes) an leave us completely unable to face any financial blow or needed investment .

This is not a viable situation for us, retaining and attracting new members is necessary to our survival and expantion, physical and intellectual, beeing able to have a viable (time wise) space capable of investing in the space is a necessary condition for this

___

• meeting starts at 18:00
• headcount & membercount
• the board
• the Statutes

• drink / party ?

agenda

TOPICS

* member list & member count (check current member list & quotum check) 
* opening of the meeting 

* financial overview of 2013 (needs preparation !!!!)

* the board :
  * decomissioning board members 
  * New board members?

* overview / quick followup of decisions last meeting
  * House status 
     * contract, stuff we did, stuff we said.
     * http://www.piratepad.be/p/TechTue263
   * insurance
   * cleaning

* Possibly moving the hackerspace to the new hackbase

* strategy
    * the rules of the house : discuss, add, reformulate ?
    * the goals of the space : discuss, reformulate ?
    * our space : slowly looking out for a new ?
    * activities : what happened when / why (not) ?
      
* members
  * keeping members around and active
  * Add a member type: supporting members
  * We need a better 'new members' process. (or revive & stick closer to the old way of doing)
    * some ppl have a key, but are not aware of the functioning of the space
  * make members (old & new) know (and sign?) the rules of the house.
  * the door : whats's going to be workflow around 'the black knight'  (avoid chopping of arms and legs)
    * Collecting RFID hashes
  * what can non-members expect from us
  
* varia
  * Modify the statutes to add radiocommunications(ham-radio) into the hackerspace association goals
  * Request from BxLUG to use the same physical address than the hackerspace for the 'siège social'
  * Where is the cleaning person we agreed on last GA?  -- warning: variable $somebody undefined.
 
 ** 

---

member list

- check that everybody paid up till current date

financial overview

- bank statements are imported - need to chase wouter for cashbooks..

New board members?

decommissioning current board Anyone can put himself forward for the new

• i volunteer (tom)
• Me too (Askarel)

Move the hackerspace to new hackbase

Multiple options:

• We move into hackbase (and hsbxl becomes a member of hackbase)
• We don't move

strategy

rules of the house

https://hackerspace.be/smw/index.php?title=House_Rules

goals of the organisation

• HAM-radio (more info below)

space =

• we can always use a new home -- everyone on the lookout for it
• multiple places an option ?

members

Add a member type: supporting members

We have around 45 paying members, but only a fraction are really involved. For the general assembly this is quite an uncertainty. Will we be enough or not? A proposal could be to have 'supporting members'. Supporting members get all benefits of a regular membership, except their vote would not be needed for a GA.

We need a better 'new members' process.

Perhaps instead of signing a paper, you can send an e-mail to the public list. That's verifyable and digital at least.

House status

Roofing first floor

We put some fresh roofing on the side of the roof, where we thought the leak situated, but to no avail. The problem is quite strange. Some moments when it rains hard, there is no leakage, sometimes the other way around. Possibility could be that it comes from the neighbours. Anyway, we bought all the material, and it is just a matter of doing it. Even if we put a fresh roofing on the whole floor, and it still leaks, it will show our goodwill to the landlord.

Support ceiling, front ground floor

We didn't really think through how to fix this. Personally (Tom), I would hire a professional for this, and get his views on this first. ==> you can always ask for a price indeed (Is this the place to put personal considerations already? What's the format of this?)

Fill space next to front door

• Yvan came by and he will work on this. No worries, if he slacks it's easy to point a finger and he's a friend of the owner in the end.

Why is this all slacking? Do we pay a professional to do it for us?

Because most people active in the space are also active in other domains. The pace of fixing things is rather low because of this. Talking for myself (Jurgen) -> my time is limited and I don't get signals about us staying in this space much longer. In this case, I'm okay doing some cleaning up and small maintenance - but if I can only come a few hours a week, I rather use these working on projects (3D printing useless gimmicks, using the space as my quiet devroom, ...)

Where is the cleaning person we agreed on last GA?

We made a rookie mistake here : we didn't assign I person to task. Should do this now. I (Jonny) have cleaned the space prior to and after events and cleaned aspects others would ignore. Happy to continue doing so in this vein. Perhaps if this needs to be done more intensively I could barter this for covering my membership? I have noticed people being more proactive after (Tom and Jurgen spring to mind) I put in some work though, perhaps we need to push a little more to riase expectations?

Three practical suggestions from me (Jonny): get doormats for the front and back entrances to reduce floorgrime; formalise recycling and bins on each floor to aid general tidying and moving of refuse; provide table for plates next to sink to compensate for poor kitchen layout.

Add the radiocommunications (ham-radio) into the hackerspace goals

Adding provisions for study of radiocommunications (ham-radio) into the statutes will allow us to get in touch with the BIPT as an association related to ham-radio. This will allow us to get an official club license (with a nice callsign like ON4HSB) directly from the BIPT. Equipment is then officially part of the station of the space and there is no further discussions possible. Unattended stations can also be left running, thing that was not possible using the previous situation. Cost of the BIPT "control tax" : approx 40€/yr.

Owner - progress (and next hackerspace?)

I've discussed this issue lastly with Yvan and he said that we just need to let the owner complain. That's what he does. It's just something you need to accept. If we just show goodwill and do our best to fix the agreed things, we might just get an extension. Isn't a 3 year contract automatically extended to a 9 year contract too if you slack for too long. In my head, I can imagine a situation where this happens On the other hand, ptr_ told me that officially he can actually sell in 2015. He couldn't before. We have to keep this in mind.

Nevertheless it's important to already be on the lookout for a next possible place. Please decide on geographical limitations. Must it be Brussels, or are f.e. Anderlecht, Vilvoorde, etc... also options?

Name Change to HSBXL

Since it is a bit unfair that we claim a generic name "Hackerspace Brussels" while there are two hackerspaces in Brussels and in the future maybe more, we should stop using this name. Being the "first" does not really make our claim less unfair. We are very well known by our acronym HSBXL and most people use this to refer to our space an hardly ever use the full name in writing. The proposal is to only use our acronym HSBXL as name and remove "Hackerspace Brussel" from our website and our documentation. HSBXL becomes a meaningless acronym ( cool ;-) ) which historically meant "Hackerspace Brussel". We use the domain hsbxl.be ( which we already own ) for our web site and make our current domain hackerspace.be redirect to hackerspaces.be, which lists all Belgian hackerspaces. There is no need to change the official statues ( expensive... ) because they already mention HSBXL. "HSBXL is our name and we are one of the hackerspaces in Brussels."