### N.B. These minutes are DRAFT until this note is removed. ### ### The minutes on Etherpad are provided for your convenience and are ### NOT official. The official copy resides in /afs/sipb/admin/minutes. ### Contributions are welcome! Please fill out your username by ### clicking on the user icon in the top right corner. Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 2017-02-13 The meeting was called to order at 19:30 by . In attendance were Voting members: slz, bpchen, alvareza, emmabat, mcyoung, hcope, andreser | ikdc, nchinda2, dukhovni, madars Associate members: achernya, foner, asuhl | vasilvv, csvoss Prospectives: ermain, ignacioe, cela, aleksejs | yczeng, robertch, twang?? Guests: '() huang(?) asedeno Administrivia: slz: Welcome to the SIPB meeting! After the regular portion of this meeting, we will have elections for all EC members. [ikdc walks in] ikdc: Secretary halt! [nchinda2 walks in] [vasilvv walks in] ikdc: Secretary unhalt! slz: I nominate ermain for membership. She was worked a lot on Scripts and ticket queues. [seconded, accepted] Project Reports: ignacioe: There's some work on getting Cortana set up. There's some issue with the RAM; currently I'm testing each stick. foner: I'm still looking for people who want to do Cluedumps. dukhovni: The Tech Solidarity people are still looking for people to work with at MIT. yczeng: CPW is happening soon. We decided on the events we want to host, including the Machine Room Tour and Computing History stories, the Athena Project Panel, and the Computing Trivia Bee with prizes. Last year we had the Retrocomputing exhibit; this time we'll be hosting a Jeopardy!-style game on the topic at which we give out SIPB merchandise. We will also host the SIPB Party, the GPG Tutorial and Keysigning party, and the SIPB Hackathon. We still haven't decided on the theme of the Hackathon yet, so if anyone has suggestions, let us know. dukhovni: For the hackathon, what level of experience are we expecting people to come in with? yczeng: Preferably, it should be accessible to a wide range of people; basic python should be OK. emmabat: I think Video Games is a good topic because it's easily understandable and low-stakes. yczeng: We might just have no theme and just do a general hackathon. slz: I think a theme is a good idea. Have you sent in the events yet? yczeng: No, we wanted to collect thoughts at this meeting first. We will figure out dates, food, and merchandise this week, and send in the events to CPW planning. Does anyone have any comments? dukhovni: I think the important thing is to make sure it's not intimidating. slz: Don't forget, CPW is only 4 days, so don't schedule too many events. yczeng: Yeah, last year we had 7 events; this year we're hosting 6. slz: I think 6 is doable. The concern is that we shouldn't overlap our own events. bpchen: Do you have specific people in mind to run these events? yczeng: Yeah, mmou and Anish are running the keysigning event. The SIPB party with food doesn't need specific people. robertch and I will organize the Project panel and the Trivia Bee ourselves. We need people to do the Machine Room Tour. achernya: I will train people. [various people uncommit to helping with the tour] bpchen: Make sure that you check with the people running the events when you schedule events. achernya: We've also had multiple time slots for the Machine Room Tours in the past. Having 1 per day wouldn't be unreasonable. Other: '() Other Other: mcyoung: Today should not have been a snow day. vasilvv: Thursday was amazing! EC Elections: slz: The election order will be Chair, Vice-Chair, Treasurer, Secretary and finally Member-At-Large. Before each election, I will read the description. Candidates must be nominated (or self-nominate) and then accept the nomination. If you are elected, you must perform all the duties of the position. All full members are automatically nominated to Member-At-Large and must explicitly decline if they don't want the position. Before each vote, we will have a closed discussion during which the candidates are excluded from the room. [slz reads the description of the Chair position] [dzaefn nominates mcyoung, seconded, accepted] [ikdc nominates slz, seconded, declined] [dukhovni nominates bpchen, seconded, declined] [alvareza nominates hcope, seconded, declined] [madars nominates ikdc, seconded, accepted] achernya: Can we start with your name, course, and why you want to be SIPB chair? mcyoung: I'm miguel young course 18 i want to be chair because i feel i am in a somewhat unique position relative to current members: I am a junior from west campus namely simmons. It's been a long time since there has been a simmons member. I think my position allows me to make better recruitment from webst campus and let sipb be a better home to west and east campus students ikdc: i'm istvan (van) chung, ikdc, course 6, i'd like to be sipb chair because i can do a good job and i think the direciton sipb is heading away from a cruft-heavy organization and a lot of our crucial services and technical knowledge is locked up. People are farther away physically and in time from the board itself. Recently we've done a good job of outreach and getting current students. I'd like to continue making it more popular andn coordinating all the tremendous amounts of resources we have, in order to assist the student body of MIT. alvareza: What do you think is the most important goal of SIPB? mcyoung: it's a difficulty question since sipb does so many different things: athena, scripts, xvm. the stapler. resources for members and nonmembers in the office. projects that I don't have time to name. I think the most important service is not a project we put on our page, but it's a place where the computing culture from many years ago lives on. It's a place with a lot of history for the tradition of programming and computing and hacking. It provides a place for people to be part of and continue this history. [andersk] ikdc: I think that's all very important I'd like to add that if everything else were lost, the one thing we'd like to preserve is the passing down of knowledge. That's it . The passing down of knowledge from people who know it to people who don't know it yet. That's the point of a university but there's a very broad span of technical knowledge that it applies to at SIPB. dzaefn: An important role of the chair is long-term planning of the board. Where do you see SIPB going in the long term? What do you think are the most likely failure cases? What would you do to prevent them? ikdc: I said a little about that previously. Let's talk about failure cases first: A big case is aging out of knowledge where everybody who knows what's going on gradually stops being involved and we end up being an organization of people who are very smart but lack little bits of technical knowledge to keep a lot of thing sipb runs going on. Another thing is SIPB's services becoming less relevant: some of what we might do is in some danger of being eclipsed by IS&T providing support for other things. Basically we won't do things relevant to the student community. As for general direction, I want to prevent that from happening. A lot of effort is going into publicity which I think is good because it keeps us in touch with the student body. mcyoung: I'm going to take see as where I see it one concern is we're not membering enough people as ikdc said publicity is very important and because I'm west campus I think I can help make people over there see that they can join becaus eI've seen there is a perception that it's a thing only East Campus people can join. There's also a distinct lack of cooperation with other computing groups at MIT like TechX, who had an informal discussion here right before the meeting, which made me happe because we could work on mutual causes. I think this segues into failure modes: The concern that projects seem to become less relevant. I don't think it's a problem of IS&T superseding them as we're running out of people to run them, a symptom of the lack of members. I will continue slz's goal of working hard to member them. Working with other student groups again. Me becoming chair could be useful because they'll see me and see that I joined a few months ago and think they could work and join SIPB. People are afraid to try to join SIPB because they think they need to commit a a lot of work to create a project. I want to make it so it doesn't seem an imposing thing to them. hcope: Time commitments over next year? Time to dedicate to SIPB? ikdc: As always, moderately ambitious courseload. I definitely can't quantify in hours. Qualitiatively, I'm involved in two other student groups, TechSquares class coordinator and Anime Club president. I believe I have enough time to perform the duties of the chair. mcyoung: I'm taking two pset classes. My other classes are on the writing papers side, so I expect lots of time. I also have to student groups commitments, one is ending soon since HMMT is happening. Pokemon league usually just means I have to judge tournaments on Saturdays. While intense they are intense over short periods slz: availabilities over vacations? ikdc: Here for spring break and IAP, not summer. mcyoung: Not sure about spring, probably here for most of summer for UROP, here for IAP achernya: Traditionally, chair and vice chair work closely together. Your speeches make me think both of you would be more suitable for the position of vice chair. Traditionally, chair is more responsible so soft social and vice chair for hard technical aspects. Particularly at Van I think you're excited about continuity of knowledge which seems a more vice chair position. twang: Can we have a statement of vice chair? [slz reads statement] ikdc: I think I'd also be interested in being vice chair. Due to the particulars of how elections are ordered, I can't run for that first and then come back. mcyoung: I'm more interested in the chair position because it involves soft social things. In my experience in being a judge for Pokémon Leaque, I have a lot of social experience dealing with conflict: explaining rules to people, making sure they don't get frustrated. I don't do much of the social side of HMMT but I hold some roles. I'm not particularly interested in the role of the vice chair. ermain: Suppose someone lodges a complaint against a prospective or member of SIPB. What would you do? mcyoung: I've been in a disagreement with a SIPB member. If relevant, escalate, but it's hard to give a general procedure, as it depends on the nature of the complaint. Reach a mutual understanding is my go-to way to resolve a conflict. In more serious cases, it would have to be dealt with case by case, very dependent on the complaint. ikdc: I don't have anything to add to that. The only point is that the EC would be the first place to escalate to. mcyoung: I agree with this. twang: tech side: one side you had was to increase membership, but is there any other explicit steps? Members help but I think more important what they're doing. mcyoung: Very connected with what I said earlier to get working relationships with techx and ieee. It could mean we could get members from those groups membered here. I don't think we have many people in the frontend things, while techx does. It would be useful if we could get some of them to contribute. ikdc: I think the point you're making is lots of people and projects and not everybody is working where they should. I think one thing would help is better docs for projcects. Important projects that are getting worse maintained have a high barrier to entry. It's hard to go to a project and be able to work on it. The doc amount vaires between projects. Having a good base of projects, who's working on what, not nominal but people we could actually talk to to get useful information, al these would help sipb members be able to work on projcest more easily without having to track down one person with an arcane secret. nchinda: how do you feel about remembering sipb members? mcyoung: I enjoy my membership election. They're pretty amusing. It could be a social event where you can get to know people you didn't know better and disseminate sipb humor. dzaefn: I think you should call it an AMA. ikdc: I think the appropriate answer would be yes, I think we should have more food mobs and social events. slz: We will proceed to the discussion phase. Will the candidates step out of the room? [meeting enters closed session] [1 vote for ikdc] [12 votes for mcyoung] [0 abstentions] [mcyoung elected chair] [meeting reopens] slz: Congratulations mcyoung you are chair-elect slz: We will proceed to the vice chair election [slz reads responsibilityes of vice chair from constitution] [dukhovni nominates ikdc, various seconds, accepts] [mcyoung nominates hcope, dukhovni seconds, declined] [ikdc nominates bpchen, dukhovni seconds, declined] [mcyoung nominates dukhovni, emmabat seconds, accepted] slz: will the candidates come to the board? achernya: Name, course, why you want to be vice chair ikdc: I was the same person I was a while ago. I want to be vice chair because it's more closely tied to the mission that SIPB continues to be a center of technical knowledge and we preserve a lot of it we have. I want to be vice chair because I want to ensure we can run the scripts projects and make sure they stay relevant. I want to make sure we have the technical knowledge to maintain them, start new ones, and continue to provide the services to the genrla MIT Sam Duchovni, dukhovni, 6-3, I'm a senior, I'm MEnging, I want to make sure our knowledge doesn't bit rot and support the community, also make sure it supports digital activism and privacy which is something our community could benefit from mcyoung: What would you like to see happen with regards to the SIPB machine room ikdc: don't know enough to say anything about it dukhovni: easier for people to get hardware instead of, make it quick and easy for people to say I want a project and we say here's a server hcope: we have a bunch of servers, it's not clear who's keeping track of it, how do you feel about documention for that ikdc: i'd be interested in workin on ghtat directly dukhovni: definitely something we should keep track of ikdc: we should have a catalog or database of all servers we have, not just our projects. Everything needs to have documentation. slz: As the only undergraduate member on debathena/root, what's your opinion of the future of debathena specifically? Ways you think it could transform, in light of the rapid closure of clusters? dukhovni: I thought debathena was super useful as a frosh. These day I kinda just carry a laptop so maybe it is becoming less relevant esp where classes where they want you to have a laptop. I think debathena should keep happening, but for making it more relevant to people's needs, not sure ikdc: Although clusters are getting less useful, I think dialups are very useul and a lot of work happens on debathena software even if not the physical clusters. I think debathena has a lot of software that isn't well-maintained, in my impression. Some people maintian some of it but that could be a way it could improve. Debathena could provide software that's already installed and configure correclty dukhovni: Help people access debathena on their own computers without having to ssh. AFS is very useful, few people know about it or how to set it up on their machine. If we could get people to set this up more and andersk: For the record that was the whole point of debathena dukhovni: People odn' tknow about how to do it, need to lower barrier to entry somewhat slz: How do you feel about webification of some client components? ikdc: Empirically this is good thing, people use zephyr+ and other web clients while previously the only practical way was barnowl on a dialup or debathena installation. Plenty of people I know would use the sevice but wouldn't if they had to install debathena. So this is a good thing. Shouldn't stop maintaining debathena components just because there is web, but there's no point if nobody 's using it. slz: How could you achieve that organizationally ikdc: Scope of a dedicated SIPB project for spectific components you want a web version of. dukhovni: If there are official components people are using or could be using, webifying them is good. If AFS is useful, find a better way to access it from the browser. vasilvv: Involvement with existing and planned SIPB projects? ikdc: Created and maintained mailprint server, if you mail pdfs to it it'll be queued on Pharos. dukhovni: ilbreplanet, alcu party, whatever thing with tech solidarity, with scripts but not on scripts much, still trying to get a diaspora pod running and decentralized alternatives in general. madars: Computing is evolving: people use containers to replace VMs. What do you think SIPB supporting containers and longjobs (IS&T service where you could, nominally supported by scripts but you can't really run a batch computation at MIT) dukhovni: if people want this, we are a good group to support it and we should pursue it. ikdc: I'm not equipped to comment on the technicality but it sounds like a good project slz: If this is a thing, how would you help it happen as vice chair, on a high level? ikdc: I'd want to talk to xvm maintainers and see if this could fit with its project; they sound similar. But best way is to find people who are interested in working on it themselves and have more info on technical dukhovni: find people in sipb who have the interest and expertise, make sure they have all resources then need, talk to XVM and IS&T and see if they have advice achernya: oversight of sipb projects, which have historically run autonomously. As a vice chair what would you do with the projects? dukhovni: Have good documentation on what the projects are, what resources they have, who's in charge ikdc: People are really important, note who has the knowledge: projects should be actively maintained and those who don't still should have somebody they can talk to about slz: Feelings about SIPB projects that should be retired? ikdc: It happens. SIPB projects like LAMP become irrelevant or we don't want to support them for various reasons. In that case they should be retired. dukhovni: retire the irrelevant ones that nobody hase ever heard of (which I don't know because I haven't heard of them) but I think cataloguing all of them will help nchinda: Alternating: name five people and projects they're involved with. ikdc: nchinda you worked on doorpi dukhovni: cela scripts ikdc: mcyoung iap dukhovni: emmabat works on publicity [3–4 pairs elided] vasilvv: name a project achernya hasn't worked on? slz: we will enter discussion phase. slz: one last question, availabilities during vacations? dukhovni: around for most of iap, summer, might be gone a few weeks during winter or summer break but will generally be around. [closed session] [dukhovni receives 4 votes] [ikdc receives 8 votes] [1 abstention] slz: congratulations van you are vice-chair elect slz: we will proceed to elections for treasurer [slz reads treasurer's responsibility] [mcyoung nominates dukhovni, accepts] [madars nominates dzaefn, declines] [dukhovni nominates bpchen, alvareza seconds, accepts] [ikdc nominates slz, declines] hcope: Have you ever been Treasurer for things before? bpchen: I am ESP Treasurer right now. dukhovni: I am Anime Club Treasurer right now. ikdc: Are you, or have you ever been, part of the Student's Democratic Society? dukhovni: Only in spirit. slz: Do both of you pledge not to use SIPB funds to acquire Airgas? dukhovni and bpchen: Yes slz: As you may or may not know, SIPB's budget comes from IS&T, and in the last few years our budget has been steadily decreasing. How do you feel about that situation, and other than asking IS&T to increase our budget, what do you think we should do in order to bring resources to SIPB. bpchen: As I understand from previous discussions, a big part is demonstrating to IS&T that we have a good use for our budget. This probably involves collaborating with the Chair and Vice-Chair on finding good projects and publicity. We want to demonstrate that we are using the money to a good end and effectively. dukhovni: I agree. In addition, we could also solicit money from alums. bpchen: We could also distribute costs across groups by collaborating with others. slz: This year our budget was slashed by about $2K to $3K. Our budget is now just over $10K. mcyoung: We could move to punch cards to increase costs... achernya: A few years ago, XVM was in a pinch because its hardware wasn't up to snuff, and SIPB didn't have the funding to buy new hardware. We actually went out and acquired $15K in funding from Dropbox, and another $15K from Battlecode buying advertising from SIPB. What do you think about these transactions? dukhovni: I think the Battlecode advertising is fine because Battlecode is aligned with SIPB. I think corporate funding is trickier, since we want to remain impartial. Do we want Facebook sponsoring our Diaspora pod? bpchen: I agree. I think corporate funding should not impinge on our mission or prevent us from pursuing our goals. I think that if XVM needed it to survive it was probably necessary. achernya: Do you think that it is within your duties as Treasurer to seek outside funding, should our projects need it? dukhovni: Well, I think it is within our duties to make sure our projects have what money we need to stay active. bpchen: I think that if they need it, we should do it. achernya: What are your feelings on what is or is not an office supply? Historically, there has been some dispute as to whether small electronic devices like chargers are office supplies. dukhovni: I think that as an accessory that helps you do work in the office, I would classify chargers as office supplies. bpchen: I would have to check our office supply allocation. achernya: The allocation is ballooning until we run out of budget. slz: As far as I am concerned, the office supply budget originates from time immemorial. bpchen: Well, some office supplies cost more than others. slz: We could classify all of our resources as office supplies. dzaefn: I think that ice cream isn't an office supply. slz: Any relevant questions? Oh, right. What are your time commitments? bpchen: I'm taking four classes and have several commitments in ESP. I will be here during the second half of IAP and am not sure yet about the summer. dukhovni: I'm taking five classes right now and am the Anime Club Treasurer and will probably be sucked into at least one side project at some point during the semester. I think I have enough time to be SIPB Treasurer. [meeting enters closed discussion] [bpchen receives 8 votes] [dukhovni receives 5 votes] [bpchen elected SIPB Treasurer] slz: Congratulations bpchen, you are the Treasurer-elect. [slz reads the description of the Secretary] [hcope nominates emmabat, seconded, accepted] [mcyoung nominates hcope, seconded, declined] [dukhovni nominates slz, seconded, declined] [mcyoung nominates dukhovni, seconded, accepted] [ikdc nominates alvareza, seconded, declined] slz: Introductions, emmabat: I am Emma Batson, I am a freshman thinking course 8. I would like to be secretary because I want to get more involved in this club and want to help out however I can. I don't have a lot of technical skills yet but I can obtain some and this would be a good way to obtain them. dukhovni: I am still dukhovni. I want to be secretary because I think someone should, and I think I'd be good at it. mcyoung: WPM? emmabat: I'm not sure, but faster than my friends. dukhovni: Shall we test it now? slz: No. slz: Time commitments. Do you have Monday evening classes? emmabat: No. I'm taking 4.5 classes, and I'm doing publicity for MIT Democrats. slz: Do you commit to coming to every SIPB meeting you are able? dukhovni and emmabat: Yes. slz: Summer? dukhovni I'm availablve over the summer. emmabat: No. bpchen: How good are you at names and faces? emmabat: Working on it. dukhovni: For reference, there are only 3 people here whose kerberoi I don't know. dzaefn: What is his name, his name, her name, and his name? emmabat: That's Alex. dukhovni: Alex emmabat: ... andreser: I'm Andres. dukhovni: Erin emmabat: ... dukhovni: ... ignacioe: I'm Ignacio. ikdc: What text editor do you use? How do you plan to keep the minutes well-formatted and easy to read? emmabat: I usually use Microsoft Word. As for formatting, I would probably come up with some general template and write it like a script: "name: text". dukhovni: I use emacs, and I'd copy the format of old minutes. slz: For the record, SIPB minutes are generally kept as plain-text. bpchen: Previously I think there was some discussion of having old minutes digitized. What do you think? emmabat: I think getting old minutes readable is a good idea. dukhovni: It seems like a reasonable thing and I'd be happy to help out with it. [closed meeting] [dukhovni receives 5 votes] [emmabat receives 7 notes] [1 abstention] [emmabat elected SIPB Secretary] slz: Congratulations, Emma, you are the new SIPB Secretary-elect. slz: Let's do Members-At-Large. [muted enthusiasm] [slz reads the description of Member-At-Large, and reads the description of valid ballots] slz: Please do not write an invalid ballot. All active full members not currently elected toward other positions are automatically nominated. If you do not want to be nominated, please decline your nomination now. Note that mmou has declined her nomination. [votes: andreser: 4 alvareza: 8 andersk: 8 dzaefn: 9 hcope: 7 jakobw: 3 nchinda2: 3 madars: 5 slz: 12 dukhovni: 11] [slz, dukhovni, dzaefn, andersk, alvareza elected Members-At-Large] The meeting was adjourned at 21:43. Minutes taken and submitted by ikdc.