========================================================= NOTE: These are DRAFT minutes until this note is removed. ========================================================= Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 2012-05-21 The meeting was called to order at 19:30:00 by achernya. In attendance were Voting members: achernya afarrell davidben dwilson ezyang lapentab phurst rye Associate members: andersk geofft jhawk klee lfaraone mats_a quentin | mitchb Prospectives: glasgall steb Guests: Administrivia: achernya: There was discussion about services running on office heads. While I think prototyping is OK, I think we should move services off of them. I'm thinking about getting a Raspberry Pi. jhawk: Goals without reasons are pointless; the machines are nearby. achernya: There was an outage for two weeks because someone forgot to set it up. I don't see any reason to run them on the office heads. quentin: We already have APC hardware that can monitor temperatures and sensors. achernya: Then we should consider using that instead. quentin: I'd be happy to get a Raspberry Pi to play with it. geofft: I talked to achernya about it; I think that as long as it's clear that the intent is not 'you should not set up services on office heads' it's ok. Once a service is stable we should move it off something else. jhawk: I think it'd be a waste of effort to ask the creators to do so; if someone else is willing to do so without decreasing flexibility, then great. geofft: I agree. lfaraone: Over the weekend we decided the office was really dark, so we removed the grates. As you can see, fiat lux. Alex and I talked with the CAC and determined we should go and get better coverings to make the office more inviting. jhawk: The ballast is the starter, it has nothing to do with the quality of the light. achernya: The important thing is that we discovered we can't replace the grating ourselves. jhawk: Did someone determine that the grates aren't just dirty? achernya: No, but one of the CAC members said that they're for taller rooms. achernya: Either way, CAC should do this. afarrell: Either way, they'll still get covered with dust. jhawk: I think the lighting is a lot harsher. glasgall: I think it looks significantly more inviting. phurst: I do too. quentin: I like it. lfaraone: Second. jhawk: What's our budget? achernya: Unclear who's paying for what. Looks like the building would be willing to cover for some of it. jhawk: I'd suggest you throw out a number and see what the board is willing to pay. achernya: I have no clue how much it'd cost. jhawk: Let's say each one costs $200. That's about $2k, and we might be asked to cover half, so this might be a $1k expenditure. achernya: Noted, but I don't feel like this is the correct time to make a motion. lapentab: We should try to fix the rattling. geofft: I can't hear you over the rattling. lfaraone: Would the office be willing to put up a 'you are welcome here' sticker? quentin: What does it mean for offices as opposed to individuals? afarrell: It means that the organization that inhabits the office is ok with it. jhawk: I've felt that those cards serve to shame the people who haven't put them up and to imply that people who haven't are LBGT-unfriendly, even when they may not be. On that level I find it problematic; while I support the office being LBGT-friendly I don't think it's the right way. afarrell: If that is in fact the case, we should have a card. jhawk: The more cards that exist, the more people without them are stuck with that problem. afarrell: I'm comfortable with moving dwilson: I want to echo the impressions that jhawk mentioned. I am not aware of any problems that SIPB has had in this regard, and as far as I can tell SIPB has been welcoming, but I don't think we need to advertise that with a sticker, because I think the sticker can send multiple messages. People may interpret it as a political message, as shaming other groups. phurst: As a person who identifies as LGBT, I think that this is useful because while it might be implied that SIPB as an organization is LGBT-friendly, the fact that SIPB as an organization would actually be willing to *say* something is what's useful. lapentab: I agree we don't need a sticker, it feels kind of clique-y. I've never seen anybody be treated any differently. ezyang: I don't really understand why everyone is against it. It's not a very large signal because this is MIT, but I think in this case the incremental benefit is totally reasonable. klee: Words have meanings to people; when you've lost someone and they say 'I feel sorry for your loss', you know they're sorry but the words matter. The other concern seems a lot more abstract to me. If we're concerned, we can put up a 6-point, 11-paragraph thing. jhawk: I wanted to clarify. The problem isn't with SIPB putting the card in our window, it's that we're a campus where people feel obligated to put the card up. achernya: Could anybody raise their hand if they feel obligated? [nobody does.] jhawk: My principle is that these cards shouldn't be up. There's a benefit to SIPB to putting it up, and a benefit to the world if everybody didn't put it up. If you ask me, I would say no because I think it's a bad system. While it's too late to stop it, I don't want to encourage it in my personal view. That said, maybe organizationally it sounds like there isn't wide agreement and so the benefit outweighs the principled stand. glasgall: The benefit is sending the message to people who have felt excluded that they are in fact welcome. I think that's a huge benefit. mats_a: It does help solve a recent issue we've been having. lapentab: I don't think that the welcoming we have problems with is that kind of welcoming. How many people have not seen this, and walked on? glasgall: The issue is that there are a lot of people will assume that organizations are going to be against them because they've had a crappy life experience. dwilson: My issue is that the sticker then strikes me as very narrow, because you're telling a specific subset of people. We don't have stickers for every discriminated-against minority group. lfaraone: I think the idea that an organization such as Admissions is taking a political statement by putting up this sign is totally not the intention. If people perceive it as such I think it's inaccurate. geofft: I want to throw out something: this is a discussion that one that Debian has had. Someone proposed a diversity statement that listed a good handful of diversities we respect. It was six lines long and didn't really have the value of the affirmation. Eventually they settled on a short statement. I think this is orthogonal to the issue of this specific card; if someone wants to make a 'we welcome everyone' campaign. afarrell: I move we put up the card. ezyang: Second. jhawk: It's perfectly fine to take an action that supports one minority that has been under particular stress. We can easily say that LGBTQ are under stress and deserving of special consideration, but I think saying 'we can't be comprehensive about all minorities so let's not deal with any' is a bad idea. quentin: I move that we call to question. achernya: Second. [Call to question passes by white ballot, motion passes 12-2.] [mats_a lifts up nyan cat video to nyan cat]. quentin: I move to allocate up to $50 to purchase whatever hardware is necessary to make the nyan cat play the nyan cat song. jhawk: Is the color scheme of the nyan cat supposed to be consistent with the LGBT color? glasgall: Sometimes a rainbow is just a rainbow. mats_a: We don't know who put that up. Thank you whoever did. quentin: I think it was Christy. dwilson: The dragon is cooler. phurst: Second. SIPB Projects Report: quentin: I noticed the machine room is low on some kinds of useful screws like hard drive screws. Unless anyone objects I'd like to have $10-20 screws purchased as office supplies. [No objections.] davidben: I've begun work on a JavaScript implementation of Kerberos for Project Webathena. achernya: Scripts will be having a training session today. The goal is to have many new contributors. geofft: In my copious spare time, I'm trying to port config-package-dev to a modern packaging system for Debian. If people know perl/are willing to learn, please help. Part of the goal is to see if we can get what's in the debhelper-extension package into debhelper itself. glasgall: I'm willing to help in the name of destroying cdbs. Other: '() Other Other: dwilson: It's finals week. geofft: MokaFive is hiring full-time folks and interns. I've been doing work ranging from designing encrypted filesystems to hating Linux wireless drivers, to hating Windows wireless drivers, to hating Java. We're in Redwood City, CA, we're 50 people. lfaraone: Hello from the nation's capital. jhawk: Can anyone recommend a hardware/software frob for testing permutations of audio over HDMI? geofft: I'd suggest playing with this thing that the chumby developer made. The meeting was adjourned at 20:02:40. Minutes taken and submitted by phurst.