Planning and organizational meeting. June 11, 7PM at Red Emma's

[Adam Bachman]

Hey baltimore node supporters, we're scheduling a planning and
organizational meeting for June 11, 7PM at Red Emma's bookstore.
(http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=800+St.+Paul+St.+Baltimore,
+MD&ie=UTF8&ll=39.302624,-76.614275&spn=0.025969,0.086517&om=1)

Our goal is to start to feel out level of commitment from potential
members/organizers. Our guiding model for the time being is the Hacker
Space Design Patterns document (http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/
Design_Patterns), specifically the section on critical mass (http://
hackerspaces.org/wiki/The_Critical_Mass_Pattern).

We're looking for critical mass.

So far confirmed in attendance will be myself (@abachman), Mark
(@mehuman), and Kelly (@kellyegan). Join us, or add your thoughts to
the discussion here. The events calendar is still shaping up, but I
suspect that by the end of the meeting we'll have settled on a date
for our first workshop (end of June, beginning of July), so bring your
calendar if you can make it.


- Adam

[Joe Reinsel]

Adam and all,

I will not be available for the meeting. I would be interested though in hearing the developments.

Joe

--
"There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot." -John Cage

[Erich Steiger]

I will be at the meeting and interested in participating.

Erich Steiger
er...@antilog.org
http://antilog.org
@s0nictitan

[mattyfo]

June 11th sounds good, I'll be there and hopefully with some ideas!

-Matt

[Matty Fo]

Hey guys, here's a blog post I came across that I thought was pretty cool
and worth sharing. Particularly I love the idea of invisible ink (digital)

See ya'll tomorrow!

http://blog.bumblebeelabs.com/the-killer-app-for-iphone-3gs

[Adam Bachman]

Sorry I kind of went into silent running after the announcements,
thanks to everyone who spread the word on twitter.

I just wanted to drop a few bullet points I hoped we could cover
tonight, in the interest of moving towards preparing for and acquiring
a space. I'm probably over-thinking this, so don't consider it an
agenda, just some questions I'm using to guide my thinking.

* Activities - this one's simple, what do you want to do, what do you
hope to see other people doing in/with/around/because of the space?

* Purpose - why should node exist and why should it help you do those
things? I'd suggest our purpose (the purpose of the founders,
specifically) is less to do their own thing, and more to support the
infrastructure so that *everyone* can do their own thing. Unselfish-
selfishness. One question that I found to help change the way I think
about the space is, do I think it's _fun_ to create (to do what we
hope to do), or _important_?

* Groups - who should we reach out to, what kind of organizations
would find a space like this useful?

* Success - how will we measure our success?

* Form - what form should the organization take? from corporate
|----------------------| off the books. If we never officially
incorporate (apply for non-profit status), that would be fine with me,
but I don't know this kind of thing works.

* Startup Cost - money and time. This is a frontier activity, starting
a hackerspace in Baltimore. It may be uncomfortable being the first
ones in. I'd like to talk a bit about expected level of commitment for
founders (time and $) and ongoing membership models.

* Space - the biggie. We're supposedly gathering around this idea
because we want the space, but where, when, how, how much?

That's all, I'll be taking notes tonight and will probably open up a
new thread once we're done meeting.


- Adam

http://adambachman.org
http://twitter.com/abachman

[Kelly Egan]

That list sounds great. Really we should be asking "what are we each looking for?" and "what are we willing to do to get it?"

Kelly

[Matty Fo]

Sounds like a good list of issues to go over; looking forward to talking about them!