January 9th, 2018 IRC Meeting

Projects

Computer Donations

https://piratenpad.de/p/MassPiratesComputerDonations

Planning for 2018 Elections & Organizing

Training schedule:

• January: Boston
• February: Worcester

Once we set dates for the trainings we will put up a poll asking about our 2018 conference and whether to change it into several regional conferences.

In 2018, towns decide when their elections are held, but most are held in the first half of the year. State & county elections are in November. What offices are up in 2018 is listed here. We have been asked to hold a town election training in Milford this year.

Nomination papers for federal/state/county elections are available in mid-February. State/county candidates have until the end of May to gather all of their signatures, while federal candidates have until the end of July. The number of signatures needed vary from 150 for State Rep. to 2000 for US House of Representatives.

The electronic election for our officers went well in 2017, and we should consider doing it again. Such a change would allow us to decentralize our yearly conference and hold multiple regional conferences in different parts of the state. We could schedule monthly conferences starting in March or April. We could limit them to about 4-5 hours long, with the first half being training and the second half being discussion. If we want to go this route, we should ask our members soon and see who wants to organize their regional conference.

Digital Right of Repair

Details. Making calls to volunteers and members.

Statements In Process

• GOP Tax Bill (we opposed)
• MA Bill H.3641: An Act relative to electronic tolling - Approved our opposition to it. Past position is to remove the tolls on the Pike since it has long been paid for.
• US S.1241 - Combating Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing, and Counterfeiting Act of 2017 - Approved our opposition to S.1241. Need statement (Joe)

Other To Dos

FOSS Tutorials

Worcester farm group is interested in having some FOSS tutorials. Perhaps:

• how to do basic labels in GIMP,
• work through a few sample spreadsheets related to seed cost and
• similarly applicable real-world situations, depending on the needs of the group

Basically how to do graph design & product management with open source tools. Malt will put together a one paragraph description of what we need and we can mail it out to ask pirates to help.

Tech/Outreach

• Review regular IRC meeting day. Poll sent to email list - Sent (jokeefe)
• email Loomio invite to supporters (jokeefe)
• set up torrents for PirateCon videos (creynolds)
• post remaining audio for PirateCon talks (srevilak)
• finish setup of myBB (jokeefe)
• install mattermost as slack alternative (jokeefe)

Mayfirst is looking at setting up a Discourse instance we could use.

Upcoming Events

• 1/31, 6-9pm, Somerville Cryptoparty, The Sprouts, 339R Summer Street, Somerville

Participants

• jokeefe: James O’Keefe, Somerville
• Malt: Samuel Capradae, Worcester
• Joe: Joseph Onoroski, Lowell
• testingwithfire: Amy Brown, Beverly (sorry, late)

Observers

• ChanServ
• igel
• Hirppa
• hvxgr

Minutes

 


[9:03pm] jokeefe: tentative agenda: https://masspirates.org/wiki/January_9th,_2018_IRC_Meeting
[9:05pm] jokeefe: ids
[9:05pm] jokeefe: James O’Keefe, Somerville
[9:05pm] Malt: Samuel Capradae, Worcester
[9:05pm] Joe: Joseph Onoroski, Lowell
[9:06pm] jokeefe: anything to add?
[9:06pm] Malt: nyet
[9:06pm] Joe: I would like to add something to the fundraiser.
[9:07pm] jokeefe: please do
[9:07pm] jokeefe: let’s cover it when we get to it
[9:07pm] jokeefe: Projects
[9:07pm] jokeefe: Computer Donation
[9:09pm] jokeefe: Working on finding people to take donations. Reaching out to right of repair folks
[9:11pm] testingwithfire: Amy Brown, Beverly (sorry, late)
[9:11pm] Malt: welcome
[9:11pm] testingwithfire: thanks
[9:12pm] Joe: Ahoy
[9:12pm] jokeefe: welcome, testingwithfire
[9:12pm] jokeefe: Haven’t made any more progress with the computer donations project
[9:13pm] jokeefe: Net Neutrality/Community Meshnets
[9:13pm] Malt: yeah?
[9:14pm] jokeefe: 1/31 there will be a meetup in Somerville and a followup meeting on 2/10
[9:14pm] jokeefe: Looking at what we need to do to emulate nyc mesh net
[9:15pm] jokeefe: https://nycmesh.net/blog/how/
[9:16pm] jokeefe: more updates as it happens
[9:16pm] jokeefe: Tech Mtg/Hackathon/Fundraiser
[9:17pm] jokeefe: Joe?
[9:17pm] testingwithfire: just curious: has there been discussion of other community meshnets as models? Philly MeshNet, for example, uses cjdns and Hyperboria, and they have remote nodes (one in France of all places)
[9:17pm] Joe: I think we should make these separt events
[9:17pm] testingwithfire: NYC Mesh is of course doing really well and is a great model
[9:18pm] jokeefe: Looking at Guifi and Freifunk as well
[9:18pm] jokeefe: Thanks for the update on Philly MeshNet
[9:19pm] testingwithfire: ah, ok
[9:19pm] Joe: So
[9:20pm] Joe: I think we should do a hackathon, Tech mtg. and the fundraiser as different events.
[9:20pm] Malt: why?
[9:20pm] Joe: I think the fundraiser would be best as a meet and greet.
[9:21pm] Joe: Make it short and sweet that way
[9:21pm] Joe: 4 hours
[9:21pm] jokeefe: testingwithfire, we have done a cryptoparty on cjdns and hyperboria in the past, but haven’t done much with it since then. 1/31 meeting is our restart of the idea
[9:21pm] Joe: Eat, then after eating we can simply chit chat
[9:22pm] Malt: is this the $50 a plate place?
[9:22pm] Joe: In this case, I would suggest the lower 50 price and then we don't have to worry about as much set up. Just a giant photo of Jamie. 
[9:22pm] Joe: Si
[9:22pm] jokeefe: haha
[9:22pm] Malt: i don;t think anyone is going to spend $50 to support an organization they aren't familiar with
[9:22pm] Joe: Let the conversations flow naturally
[9:23pm] Joe: Then we fix that. Dan have the files sir?
[9:23pm] jokeefe: uploaded, emailing him the link after meeting
[9:24pm] Joe: So we are on schedule.
[9:25pm] jokeefe: My concern with a fundraising event that is $50/plate is that attendence will be low and we will end up losing money on it.
[9:26pm] Joe: It was just a thought, if you think we will do better as the previous then we shall.
[9:26pm] Joe: What time would we want this to happen?
[9:26pm] Joe: Am or Pm?
[9:27pm] jokeefe: Pm if it is a party.
[9:27pm] Joe: Pm could have a stronger student pull.
[9:27pm] Joe: I plan to paper the colleges around here.
[9:28pm] Malt: what's the pull, though?
[9:29pm] jokeefe: So we have an email list with hundreds of people who are interested in what we stand for. I suggest we focus on them, than asking people who don’t know about us to give money.
[9:30pm] Joe: I was under the impression we wanted to do a hackathon, that would have a strong pull for a collage crowd.
[9:31pm] Joe: But emailing everyone would also be a good idea.
[9:31pm] jokeefe: A hackathon tends not to have an entry fee of $50, though.
[9:33pm] Joe: Could we do the hackathon at the place that's free?
[9:34pm] jokeefe: Public Libraries are free, but we cannot ask for money in them
[9:35pm] Joe: True, this is quite the situation.
[9:37pm] Joe: So, by asking for the $50, it would be considered a donation.
[9:38pm] Joe: The max donation is 5k. We have to get the money and I think a dinner with plenty of time to meet everyone would classy. Just my thought, I am open to change it if we have a better idea.
[9:39pm] Joe: Worst case situation, we get Jamie drunk and we have to get an uber for him.
[9:39pm] Joe: >8-)
[9:39pm] jokeefe: That would be very difficult
[9:40pm] Joe: lol
[9:40pm] Malt: who is everyone?
[9:41pm] jokeefe: A dinner event is fine, but the question is how do we get enough people to attend.
[9:42pm] jokeefe: The past fundraising event had $100 site fee, $100 food and someone donated music.  We more than made back our outlay.
[9:43pm] Joe: Then we should shelf the idea?
[9:47pm] jokeefe: No, but we need a rethink it and a few other ways to fundraise.
[9:48pm] Joe: I am fine with shelf'ing it until a better solution can be found. I am very happy to focus on the video campaign or networking. These would be better use of our time currently.
[9:48pm] Joe: And revisit this idea when we do have a following.
[9:49pm] jokeefe: That works for now. BTW: I make great pancakes if we want to do a pancake fundraiser 
[9:50pm] Malt: same!
[9:50pm] Malt: used to make my own sap
[9:50pm] Joe: See, now we are talking!
[9:51pm] Joe: A bake sale could go a long way too.
[9:51pm] jokeefe: When the weather is warmer
[9:52pm] jokeefe: Planning for 2018 Elections & Organizing
[9:52pm] jokeefe: Malt, how goes the rescheduling?
[9:52pm] Malt: haven't heard back yet
[9:53pm] jokeefe: ok, thanks
[9:55pm] jokeefe: That is all I have. Any other issues folks want to bring up?