Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 2021-03-15 The meeting was called to order at 19:30 by kjchen. In attendance were Student keyholders: kjchen, asahteck, bds, wmoses, emmabat, mrittenb, jeffery, maximo Associate keyholders: quentin | kenta Members: amigdal Guests: Petey, toomas Administrivia: kjchen: This year we would like to increase student involvement and passing down knowledge. Let me know if there is any project you would like to propose (with blurb of what the project is about and what you are intending to do). CPW is also sooner than we think. jwnwagner: The deadline for events submissions is by this Friday. I'm hoping to get volunteers who will be able to take the lead on the SIPB-hosted. If anyone wants to help out please let me know in the next few days. kjchen: Is there a quota for the number of events we can run? jnwagner: I believe ASA clubs do not have a quota. emmabat: I volunteer to run the Quantum Computing Cluedump again (Billy will probably come and help) asahteck: I volunteer to run the SIPB Minecraft Server Room tour. That event was usually well received and I'm familiar with the procedures for it. jnwagner: [...] The other ones are game night with SIPB, which should be pretty casual. And then SIPB Project Fair, just to give them an idea of what SIPB does. And then a computer trivia bee, I think we can probably reuse questions from last year. Those are the three from last year that aren't claimed yet. emmabat: I'm happy to attend the SIPB game night, I just don't want to spearhead it. asahteck: What if we had an Internet-controlled set of string lights like (Stranger Things style), have a camera pointed at it, and let people send stuff to it over the course of the CP* weekend? emmabat: It could be fun! wmoses: SIPB does have a camera that cab Internet stream that isn't pointing at things. I'll might have to ask for Louie Chen's help getting into CSAIL and plugging it in though. emmabat: For context, Billy bought a bunch of things at the end of last year's budget but had them delivered to his empty office in CSAIL asahteck: Including a toaster! emmabat: Yes, a custom toaster, I forgot about that. wmoses: SIPB toast is important. kjchen: For the CP* events, I can run the Game Night or Project Night. If anyone has a preference for one I can jump to the other. wsmoses: This will be what year in a row of us just going to a virtual whiteboard and ad-libbing quantum stuff? emmabat: We are going to have to adopt more SIPB Quantum Computing members if we want to keep this tradition going in the future. asahteck: Recruitment! kjchen: In that case I'll take on the Project Fair and you (Billy) can take on the Game Night. jnwagner: The last event that has not been claimed is the Trivia Bee. Is there anyone who wants to grab it? If not I'll can check with SIPB office one more time. And thanks everyone who just volunteer! I'll get in touch with you through Mattermost and send you the time & past descriptions of your event. emmabat: The trivia bee has historically not been one of our most popular of SIPB events, so if anyone wants to subsitute it with something else, ideas are welcome. asahteck: When I was a frosh, I remember seeing posters of something to do with Raspeberry Pi's. Does anyone remember what that was intended to be? wmoses: The history for that was at one point SIPB decided to have a Hackathon as an event. However, when that event was run, we forgot to tell people to bring computers, so naturally we had prepared a bunch of Raspberry Pi's for people to hackathon with that. jnwagner: Also, I think at some point people were talking about a Minecraft Hackathon? asahteck: I have that included in project updates. We'll get to that in a bit. kjchen: Any updates on the CP* Discord? Petey: There was an e-mail thread that was started for it that Billy and I was on but we haven't yet decided on a project managment platform to use. What would work best for you or other SIPB members? wmoses: I'm down to use Trello or an internal Github tools emmabat: Github might be the one I've used but I can try anything else. petey: How many people have any sense of what we're talking about? wsmoses: There are a few people on the mailing list (me, Shayna, emma) and a few other people who are not here. Petey: Last year SIPB provided a lot of support for getting Swole Tim bot getting set up for moderating roles and opening/closing channels. As we plan to launch CP* Discord around the 6th -9th of April, we'll need some help to tweaking some things. Billy has got it working so it (Swole Time) knows where all the people are. If people don't feel strongly about any particular platform, I would recommend that we use Trello. wmoses: Works for me. In the immediate future, we should setup a brief hackathon for everyone who wants to be involved in the Discord. Also, Petey, is the Pathable stuff same as last year? Petey: I haven't been as involved with the CP* pre-planning, but my understanding is that everything will be run through Pathable, though things like Zoom links and Gather links may still be up for discussion. asahteck: Also we are getting a long-weekend with next Monday and Tuesday off, so perhaps that could be a good time to host the hackthon. wmoses: In case, we'll send out an e-mail (sipb-discord list) and messages Mattermost soon for people to sign up for the hackathon. It will be a fun time! emmabat: To meet the kids wmoses: To know the memes kjchen: This time last semester some people on the old EC had started on the plans for mentorship program where older SIPB members get matched with new SIPB to help get them up to speed with projects and check in with them on stuff. If you have any feelings about this or want to give your input on this, let me know. emmabat: I still have more shirts in my house than I have torsos, so if you are a new member let me know and I'll get it to you, somehow. bds: There was a recent financial training event that I went to, 99% of which was not relevant to SIPB since SIPB does its financial differently from any other club on the planet. emmabat: I remember the time when our financial signatories at IS&T left and no one told us. Good times. Project Reports: asahteck: I applied for the Coop Grant for the Minecraft hackathon and got it approved earlier today. However, I don't know where the $1,500 actually went to, so I might need bds help to track it down. asahteck: From there we can get to planning the logistics for the event (sending publicity materials, updating the website, updating the server, ordering swag and putting it together). So if people are interested in helping organize with me I'll be putting together a mailing list. Hopefully it will be a fun 24 hour of tours and events prizes. We'll also be designing a few new t-shirt and Minecraft mask designs. wmoses: We 100% need new Minecraft shirt designs. emmabat: Maybe we can build the MIT logo in Minecraft and get a design off that. asahteck: If possible we are hoping to host over the April 3rd-4th, which will mark the exact 1 year anniversary of the Discord server opening up. asahteck: Also we will need a lot of non-technical logistical people to help with this event and facilitating things. emmabat: This could be a good opportunity to advertise to sources outside of SIPB . If someone here doesn't want to help with Minecraft but knows someone who's interested, all we need to do is get them to come to a SIPB meeting and talk to Shayna! Petey: Thanks to Billy, we were able to get the new bot to let the new admits in. There are now 621 more new nerds who will be able to join the 25 discord. I believe they are also allowing a moderate number of upperclassman to staff the channels. Petey: Also our yield (% of students who actually went to MIT versus % of students who were admitted) went up unexpectedly last year. I found out in a Wall Street Journal article last week that yields for other peer universities, with the exception of Harvard, actually went way down. I think a big part of that was that we worked much harder to virtualize CP* and involving more creativity and community involvement in hosting our events compared to our peer institutions and SIPB has been definitely a big part of that. asahteck: When can I meet the children? I really want to meet the children. Petey: I'll have to check when current MIT students will be able to join the Discord, but it's also easier for SIPB members who are helping out because we are considered essential staff. jnwagner: I've heard that clubs will also soon be able to submit a list of officers who can join the Discord. wmoses: Lily Chen is interested in extending some of the SIPB library stuff. For context: SIPB has a large library of textbooks and other things, and Lily was thinking of extending it to general things (like softwares and hardware) that could be checked out and stuff. The idea is that it will be similar to a Maker library. If you were involved and want to be involved with this fun adventure, let me and gshay know. Other: asahteck: Does anyone know recipes that can reasonably be made in a dorm kitchen? We can't do scones again due to the new restrictions. emmabat: So things you can make in a kitchen without heating elements, is that the problem? kjchen: What appliances are available besides your instant pot? wsmoses: Okay, something that is extremely fun to make, and should be doable with dorm stuff, have you ever made your own ice cream from scratch? [...] Could be fun, I don't think it should require any kitchen equipment. kjchen: We are not allowed to use any heating elements right? Can we buy liquid nitogren? asahteck: It's an interesting idea. I think the difficulty would be from trying to get a lot of ice in one place. emmabat: A while back Next House used to have a giant ice maker. asahteck: What about microwavable mochi? I've tried that once. It's very finicky with different microwave settings but it's a cool recipe to try. emmabat: It could also be something like mud cakes. Mud cakes are very hard to mess up. asahteck: Is that like dump cakes? emmabat: Noooooo [at end of meeting kjchen told us their story of the time they made dump cake that went horribly wrong. raw cake clumps? applesauce heap soup?? storing in trash bag??? "It was edible at best"] Other Other: emmabat: It went from 70s in Boston last weekend to snowing/ chilling wind the next day, so that was wild. wmose: Apparently crytomining right now is intensely profitable. If you have environmental friendly sources of electricity and GPU, you can make up to $1.00 a day!! asahteck: You can almost wash your clothes every other day with that kind of money! The meeting was adjourned at 20:07. Minutes taken and submitted by huydai.