Agenda 13th March 2004

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MINUTES OF HACKLAB MEETING ON SATURDAY 13 MARCH 2004

• Update on the current state of the Hacklab

things are going forward. A lot easier to move around now.

• Long term Hacklab goal and aims - possible leaftlet and/or

manifesto using ideas harvested from email address

educate (about free software), empower (activists and community activists to use technology), experiment (let the geeks have fun).

We need to produce a leaflet that shows concrete ides that people can get involved in, a list of the things that we do. Freedom people see the lab as a computer suite but its more than that, we need to articulate 'what more'.

Explanation of what the Free Software Foundation is. For anarchists, free software is important because it is cost-free, because anarchists don't want to pay for common tools. So we wouldn't work with any software that has been made to make money.

We need to sort out how many computers are usable, how many are going to have what kind of software, or what computers are going to be used for what function.

Question: do we need a manifesto? Answer: no. because it will never represent all participants. It is good to have some political ideas for a leaflet but not as a manifesto, rather for information of what we do. We thought Asa's text was a good start and thought on some re-wording and re-ordering; a group will put a proposal on a wiki and will work on it further there.

• Collective process. Who is a member of collective? Possible

need for tech sub group: e.g.who should have root passwords?

The process is open. Various proposals were put forward for passwords. Agreement was:to have different kinds of machines according to their function in the lab: working machines or workstations(for all to use), production machines (for geeks to configure important things), scratch machines (for geeks to have fun with, trashable), server/s (a kind of master of the network � NOT to be used). Each can have a different root password so easiest thing would be that any one can have the root password for the working machines, and only geeks have passwords of the production and server/s, for now on a need-to-know basis.

We don't need a policy now although we will need one.

• Any progress on bank account?

Javi was in charge of this, but he needs more signatories. We would get a community bank account with the Co-Operative and they ask for proof of identity, address and a bank statement for each signatorie. I think we need 3 at least... I am now waiting for them to send me the application forms. Javi has the money of last benefit (see amount in an email by himself), and i have 80 of the money that we made in this benefit.

A bank account is not completely indispensable but it is useful if people want to make donations; we can put the account details on the web. It is also handy to make regular payments, as we will need to do.

• Running servers 24/7 and electricity contributions

We need a constant income to pay for broadband and electricity; a benefit every month. We can borrow a meter for a week or so to see how much electricity we consume and figure out how much money we will need per month. A group is going away to work on this.

• Meetings.

We came up with the idea of a monthly meeting and a monthly benefit too, but not both on the same date. The Freedom bookshop people hope that we have our meetings there, for better communication. They also would like to see us soon-ish in their own meeting, and have information between lab and bookshop flow, so... we will have our next meeting next week � Saturday the 20th at 5.00pm, then some people can stay for the bookshop meeting at 6.00pm. The idea is to have monthly meetings and monthly benefits, so we would have a benefit on a saturday, two saturdays after we would meet in whitechapel, two weeks after benefit in tufnell park... we will fix dates once we have more info from Freedom.

We need more notice to publicise the benefits.

• Groundswell.

It looks like a grants charity to which community groups can apply for grants. They have expressed some wish to work with us. Awaiting info.

• Internet: should we shell out for broadband?

The wireless seems to have found a black hole in the Mute point, but people are looking out for alternatives.

We decided that while we rise money, we pursue the wireless connection. When we get enough money to even consider broadband, we'll look at the different options. Also awaiting infos from different companies that offer broadband.

• Hacklab Presentation at WTF: WTF's The Future?!

United Diversity. I understood they were hoping that some one from the hack lab do a presentation about it. Need a volunteer for this.

Also, wombles and social centre crossover... would like to have a gathering of social centres and direct action groups (please correct me if i'm wrong). The idea comes from the wombles but they wouldn't like to organise it and invite other groups. They aim to get the groups together first and discuss and get something out, not from a collective, but of different groups. One meeting to go to would be on tuesday.

• Security at freedom � key?

It has happened that some thursdays it was closed so people couldn't access the shop and work in the hack lab. We need to sort out access and keys in one of their meetings, which are on Saturdays at 6 o'clock. If we meet there at 5 it shouldn't be difficult for some of us to attend their meeting afterwards.

• Website progress

The domain has been sorted by a generous person who is happy to have the lab hosted on the server he's using. The address is hacklab.org.uk, although there were concerns for the 'territorialist' division, 'uk'. Also because there is only one person responsible to give the rest of the group access to the server, as opposed to one collective being responsible for giving that access and for the server itself. There was another possibility, to have it together with other hacklabs in the world in www.hacklab.org, and our domain being www.hacklab.org/uk, as a subdomain of them. But this possibility doesn't seem to have been considered.

Another possibility would be to keep hacklab.org.uk as the 'official' address that would go on leaflets etc. but that would re-direct to hacklab.org/uk.

Concern is expressed of the lack of openness of the process of building the website and getting access to it. Also, concern of security, as police has in the past demanded other groups access to their server. A group gets the task of sorting this.

• Responsible disposal of trashable parts - any progress?

We need information from Tower Hamlets but it doesn't look that we will qualify to have our trash properly disposed for free. The people who feel strongly should get moving...

• How is the mailing list split going?

Well, but there is the petition of making the lists to reply-to-sender only, because it has caused embarrassment in the past when you think you're responding to the sender but you're actually talking to the whole list. In the end the petition gets withdrawn for lack of support but we will re-consider this in next meeting.

• [Possible whip-round for money towards Freedom?]

yes we did that.

• [Confirm date and location of next meeting in a month's time]

Next meeting, 20th of march at Freedom to be confirmed. Next benefit, 17th of april in Tuffnell Park to be confirmed with the Social Centre.