February 20th, 2018 IRC Meeting

Decisions/Endorsements

Fundamental Freedoms Act

More details on this bill at warrantless.org. There is a lobby day starting at 10:30am on Monday, 2/26.

The bill may not go far enough for us, but it is something we should consider helping Restore the Fourth Boston in supporting. If we approve, will email people in the Boston-area and put up a blog post on it.

Projects

Video Newsletter

• Planning for next video.
• Videos of the November candidate workshop have been processed
• Checking in on the other equifax video

2018 Elections

Trainings:

1. Videos
2. February 24: Worcester
3. March 3: Somerville

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.

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.

Digital Right of Repair

Details.

Computer Donations

https://piratenpad.de/p/MassPiratesComputerDonations

Yearly Conference

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.

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.

Statements In Process

• 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

• 2/24, 2-4pm, Pirate Party Candidate Training, Worcester Public Library, 3 Salem St. Worcester Register. Facebook Event
• 2/28, 6-9pm, Somerville Cryptoparty, The Sprouts, 339R Summer Street, Somerville
• 3/3, 11am-2pm, Pirate Party Candidate Training, Somerville Public Library, 79 Highland Ave Somerville Register. Facebook Event
• 3/6, 5:30-7pm, Worcester Cryptoparty 3/6, Event Page, register, if you want
• 3/7, 6pm – 9pm, Community WorcNite #18, The WorcShop, 243 Stafford St, Worcester, MA 01603. Registration
• 3/10, 1:30pm to 3:30pm, Mass Mesh Meeting, Somerville Public Library, 79 Highland Ave Somerville
• 3/10-11, 9am-5:30pm, MassAlliance Grassroots Campaign Training, Greater Boston
• 3/17, Boston Socialist Unity Project Conference cryptoparty, MIT, Cambridge
• 3/24-25, 9am-5:30pm, MassAlliance Grassroots Campaign Training, Worcester
• 3/24-25, LibrePlanet 2017, MIT, Cambridge
• 3/28, 6-9pm, Somerville Cryptoparty, The Sprouts, 339R Summer Street, Somerville
• 3/?, ?pm, Democracy/IT meeting. Email info@masspirates.org for the location