You're not quite Ken Raeburn, but you're close Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 09/30/96 The meeting was called to order at 19:30 by yonah. In attendance were Voting members: cordelia, fubob, yonah, hartmans, cat, marthag, sit, elliot, sorokin, kretch, mkgray, nygren | foley, emhavens Associate members: ghudson, wesommer, jtkohl, eichin, tlyu, jemorris, proven, mhpower, leira, nocturne, sgw, marc, jweiss, raeburn, abbe | warlord , srz, jhawk, shabby, len18, mcmullan, mycroft, jcb Non-voting members: Prospectives: aurora, amu, joanna, gutnik, pipa, seph, jfmurphy, amsmith, daveg, rdl, katyking, annmarie, jmorzins, sgens, justom | jdaniel, jwlfnord Guests: Treasurer's Report: kretch: We have a treasurer. Chairman's Report: cordelia: I would like to say that I was reading the bylaws. The bylaws state that we will give a prospective member a four week period in which to become familiar with SIPB. It doesn't say we should wait until they are a God of Perl, C, or something else. So, I would like to nominate some prospectives who have met this probationary period. How does the SIPB feel about nominating 10 people simultaneously? pipa: I see this discussion taking a very long time. Could we possibly table until the end of the meeting? [Discussion happens and someone (srz?) asked cordelia why he nominated people.] cordelia: Because these 10 people have not been nominated over the last year. mkgray: In my experience, a 5-6 person election was not very effective. I prefer election of three or less people. nygren: We should have election of three or less people. There are a number of issues people have been talking about. I think there is going to be a lot of political discussion. I think there is a danger that if we nominate a large batch of people now, it will turn into a political issue rather than looking at those individuals. marthag: I don't think it's fair to the nominees or members to nominate that large of a group. They are more likely to be voted down. Some members talk to people who have been nominated; it would be hard to do that; it would be crazy. mhpower: I think that we have a good number of active members. To increase the number of active members by 50% wouldn't work. jmorzins: These are hypothetical questions; cordelia didn't ask if we should nominate a bunch of people, but how it should be done. cordelia: I would prefer to make people's name available at once. If we nominate people now, than have three elections per week or something. [There is discussion of what the straw poll should be about.] cordelia: Option one: nominate everyone and elect everyone next week. Second option have all nominations now, have three elections per week. Third option is to nominate three people per week. none for option one, lots and lots for two, seven for three. 3+sgw abstain. sorokin: In response to the issue of office space. The reason we were thinking of membering these people was because they were around the office; how will we have less more office space if we don't member them? I have never seen an election where there wasn't politics. Many members thought that the reason these people were not nominated in the past was politics. abbe: It sounds like cordelia is going to nominate some people. How about nominating then discussing. kretch: Would people be interested in coming up with an idea of what it should mean to be a SIPB member? pipa: In relation to what kretch said. I've participated in a few conversations about this issue with a few people. It might be a good idea to have a large discussion so everyone gets the right idea of the consensus. yonah: In addition to everyone having slightly different ideas there is what is currently written in the bylaws. That should have some weight. jweiss: Before nominating someone you should ask yourself whether you think it's possible for SIPB to member the person. jmorzins: As I've been talking to people. The SIPB appears to be confused about what it is about. I agree with kretch that it would be important to have a meeting to discuss what it's about. sorokin: First, many have said that while elections might not be the right time to have these discussions, I have a good idea of what I think a SIPB member should be; there are people I'm considering nominating because I think they meet this definition. Secondly, who the members are define what the members should be. There have been times when people think that the SIPB doesn't represent what it should and they have gone out to get members. Finally, I think jweiss's point is well taken, it is good to remember that the closed portion of the elections meeting is designed to allow this discussion to happen so people can be membered. cordelia: One of the scariest things I've heard is that if you nominate so many people, we might not have time to get to know them.Anyone who says I don't know who those people are should learn who new prospectives are. I feel that is the member's responsibility. jhawk: I think that some people like to talk to people during the week before the election. cordelia: I know Sam and I have talked about what it is to be a member. Part of the reason I was assigned to where I am in the Air Force is that I came out of MIT and SIPB; that is a name that is known. However, I don't think keeping SIPB as something you can put on a resume should be the driving factor in who we member. hartmans: I'm not sure that the bylaws accurately reflect what we believe should happen, and I'm not sure we should try very hard to follow the spirit of the bylaws. [Also summarized discussion with cordelia] jweiss: My second point was that at various points in the past and at recent elections there have been a lot of abstains. That could mean they meant to vote no but didn't feel strongly enough; in this case, I encourage them to vote no if they really mean no. If you abstain because you don't know the person, you should think about this when people are nominated. srz: [reads article 8 of bylaws] Also asked cordelia why he is nominating people. cordelia: I'm leaving in three months. I would like to leave knowing I'm a member of an organization I'm proud of. We've had gender issues that have been a problem. If you looked at one of Martha's Zephyrs, it showed that SIPB was a discriminatory organization. I would like to see SIPB not only nominate more women but nominate more prospectives. marc: First, each person votes based on what it means to be a member. Sometimes I ignored the discussion, thinking that this person is good for the SIPB and voted for them. Potentially, I could ignore the discussion and vote against someone because I think they would not be good for the SIPB. SIPB used to be a lot less formal. warlord: [reads from "How to become a SIPB Member"] We're not following this. mkgray: Some of these issues are intractable. Three aspects of SIPB: as a technical, service and social organization. To some extent, I think that discussing what SIPB should be is unlikely to change minds. People should introduce themselves to people in the office they do not know. I hold both prospectives and members responsible for this. Finally, SIPB doesn't recognize the value of having members even if they are not in the office; it makes SIPB more approachable. sit: Along the same lines as warlord. [read definition of active member from bylaws.] mycroft: In response to jweiss: Perhaps I'm going senile but my recollection is that nominations are in the open meeting. I think many members don't want to say no to someone in the open meeting. In response to cordelia: There are many different personalities. To me, saying that members should learn who prospectives are tends to make SIPB a social organization. pipa: People have been quoting bylaws, the prospectives FAQ and other documents. Either SIPB should follow these documents or the documents should change. I've been around for a year, and I'm not sure what my responsibilities are to become a member. Not everyone likes to code; not everyone likes to write documentation. There are different strengths and weaknesses. This organization can be very strong. It shouldn't be that hard to know people if you are around. The approachability of SIPB is kind of bad. I've run into people who think that SIPB is a bad organization. That should be changed. sorokin: We are not doing right by our prospectives; we have always had this problem; we have always tried to fix it. Since I was the first person who brought up the issue of the women we have and haven't membered. Abbe and I walking into the office doubled the female presence in SIPB. As chair, I went out of the way to work with the women who weren't speaking up at the meetings and tried to get them involved. As a result we membered four productive SIPB members. On average, women who come into SIPB tend to work on documentation and user support. A large part of the SIPB has a real hard time determining that this is an important SIPB service. It might be worth everyone's time to think about what's happening and why that's happening. Even if you personally are completely blameless you should think of how to solve the problem. srz: I'm only taking a guess because I'm not going to vote on the nominations or elections. There has been no breathing room on this issue. To the people who are going to be nominated, there is a risk that you will get caught in the issue; it's not 0% and it's not 100%. sorokin: This is true. However, this is an issue I've been trying to raise for three years. It's hard to get people to talk about these issues except when they are thrown in people's faces and they have to make a decision. len18: Back when I was membered, if a person was in the office and were known and didn't have something actively bad about them, they were membered. cordelia: If you are afraid that people are going to trash the office, then you should dismember most of the current membership. People have been holding up FAQs and stuff. I agree that those should not be the guiding philosophy but this should be somewhat of a touchstone for our policies. marc: When Kevin Iga was membered, he didn't want to be membered because he didn't want additional responsibility. If you are doing as much as the members around you, then you are doing enough to be membered. In response to cordelia's point, I'm proud to be a SIPB member and I'd like to keep it that way. jmorzins: I often feel that I'm being left out of what is going on around SIPB. It would be nice if there was a better way to educate the people in the office. Although changing the bylaws might be a poor idea, writing an interpretation might be a reasonable idea. kretch: People are starting to repeat themselves. abbe: Demonstrates another membership document used at midway two years ago. I'm probably one of the only people who has read this document other than perhaps who wrote it. Perhaps, the membership should agree to the documents we put out rather than just writing them. jweiss: [wanted to establish precedent that voting no at nominations was not bad.] pipa: In response to jweiss: I would rather be turned down for nomination than being turned down for membership. aurora: Anyone in the SIPB office is showing some interest in the organization. You should keep an open mind about them. nygren: In response to jweiss. One reason it may not happen is that while I'm a member I have never seen people vote no on nominations. It may have happened in the past. I agree with marc that we shouldn't be membering everyone, however . . . . There are four factors to consider when membering someone: giving them a key the office, trust people with bits, FTGOS, present public image of SIPB. mycroft: One thing I noticed over the last year or so is that certain people believe that meetings are their nominal obligation to SIPB. Personally, I tend to thing that meetings shouldn't be 30 seconds. Things should be said in the meetings. We should actually have something to say. Have introductions but include information about what people do. jcb: In response to marc, I am not proud to be a SIPB member. It would be nice to be proud to be a SIPB member, but I don't think we are there yet. Prospectives with sysadmin bits have presented a problem for people who wanted to be a prospective working on services. jmorzins: Often when I come to the office, the ratio is 2:1 in favor of prospectives. Shouldn't the ratio be the other way around? [a few mumbled no's] shabby: We used to have introductions. We should bring those back. ghudson: I was the chairman who managed to shorten meetings a lot. Many people were complaining that meetings were too long and nothing was going on at them. nygren: I think mycroft had a very valid point with regard to people getting to know people. I move that we add an introductions report. [second] sgw: I think it's a good idea. I think that taking it in the level it's proposed and then work with it. [Discussion, withdrawn to postpone for a week by nygren] liera: Back in my day, people did show up for four meetings and were membered after four meetings. If you look at the questions that were asked, they didn't go so long and they weren't so technical. cordelia: The people I plan on nominating tonight are people I feel meet the definitions of membership presented at this meeting. marc: SIPB has in the past had a problem with groupies--people who when asked didn't want to be membered. abbe: There was this email discussion. I would like it if people would decide what list this should happen on. whither-sipb? mkgray: I nominate annmarie for membership. [second] 10-1-1 passes sorokin: I would like to nominate aurora. Documentation and user support. [12-0-1 passes] hartmans : Move to nominate daveg. [second 12-0-0 passes] mkgray: Move to nominate gutnik. [second] [12-0-1 passes] sorokin: Move to nominate pipa. [second 10-0-3 passes] abbe: I move to nominate katyking. [second 10-0-3 passes] warlord: I move to nominate amu. [second 11-0-2 passes] cordelia: I move to nominate jlwfnord. [second 4-3-6 fails] cordelia: I move to nominate jdaniel. [second 3-2-8 fails] cordelia: I nominate jmorzins. [second 6-0-7 fails] mkgray: I will be reviving clue dumps. Office Report: pipa: aurora and pipa busted our butts to clean the office. We moved five machines, cleaned tables, cleaned equipment, decided the mac isn't brown. I would like to see the office stay in some sort of reasonable shape. I would also like to get more fantastic. jweiss: We can buy fantastic out of auction proceeds. marc: Could we just ask the Physplant people for cleaning supplies.? ghudson: I think we should have motions for auction proceeds. sorokin: I move to allocate $15 for fantastic possibly from auction proceeds. [second; white ballot] sit: What is the status of the shelves? kretch: I'm lame; they are coming. That is, they are not coming in the sense that they have been ordered, but that they will arrive in a few weeks. sit: I would like to allocate $40 to buy the second addition of the Perl book. [second white ballot] eichin: We're running MK Linux on the mac. The next release is out on CD. I move we allocate $25 to get the CD release of DR2. [second] sgw: What is the utility of this to SIPB? eichin: A few people are hacking on it; SIPB Athena has been ported. [white ballot] jweiss: Due to lameness on my part, the auction will not happen this week. I will send out mail. aurora: There is a box in the back of the office with a bunch of cruft. If it's yours, make it go away. jhawk: I removed some items from the bulletin board. ghudson: We have a new SGI called steve-dallas. mhpower: Has anything been decided about the status of hodge? ghudson: Hodge is not a color head. If people want to vote . . . mkgray: I move to put hodge in the place where oliver is. [second] jweiss: I will note that pickled will be on service contract until December, while oliver is currently not on contract. 9-10-12 fails jweiss: I move to remove desk space from milque to give hodge desk space. marthag: I would actually like to see us lose platforms. I have stopped building programs for the SIPB locker because building programs 10 times is too much. 22-jhawk-4+sgw passes. ghudson: People have been looking for drawers. Someone should examine the file folders in the back of the office. Someone should go through these. liera: I suggest we get someone very old to do that. abbe: Could we create a SIPB archive somewhere outside the SIPB office. sgw: I have been interested in doing some work on milow. Does anyone know where the CDs are. [yes; flurry or activity.] MIT Computing Report: ghudson: A patch release went out last night for Solaris. The key repeatrate problem should be fixed. jweiss: The Hesiod.gen program update was enhanced to output preferences. This should help people with new attaches and new Bind implementations. DWYW wrt the sipb locker. jweiss: Thee cluster cards say the combo is supposed to be changing. When I forwarded a peace of mail about tellme to hotline, someone from dcns-cluster said this was the first time they heard of the change. They may not change October 1. Computer Services: warlord: I have been waiting for Redhat to release 4.0. I don't know of any bugs in it. Enough people are having problems with 3.0 that I'm considering just releasing it. marc: I think it's a bad idea. mhpower: news on beacon broke today because we ran out of file descriptors. mkgray: I officially declared zion (Perl zwgc) beta today. SIPB Backup Report: hartmans: AFS has not happened in two weeks. ghudson: Falcon shipped us back the drive last week, but we have not seen it yet. cat: I returned the cleaning tape but have not ordered another one. marthag: Everything else happened. Publications Report: jhawk: We are out of iZephyr. I think that is in aurora wait. jhawk: I would like to announce iKernel ____ which is short but is growing. aurora: iZephyr is almost done. My next target is iAFS. jhawk: When commenting on documents, scribble your name in the comments. daveg: iDotfiles is approaching completion. It's not quite ready for textual reviews. marthag: I move to get 25 copies of iZephyr. [second] abbe: Friendly ammendment to 5. [revised to 10 white ballot.] amu: I have been working on iLinux Athena and people should comment on it. jemorris: We have iMatlab. R/O Report: IAP Report: kretch: I failed to communicate. elliot: jhawk and I are interested in a course on the technical workings of the Internet. CokeComm Report: aurora: Don't break bottles when you try to recycle them. pipa: I think we need more flavors. We have too much diet stuff. jweiss: The proper place to send those is to cokecomm@mit.edu. Other: amsmith: I'm writing an Athena Mini Course on Autocad 13. I would like to talk to peopel who have used it. jhawk: Sendmail 8.8.0 was released last week. mkgray: I saw jik on campus today. jhawk: Usenix Lisa is this week. annmarie: I really want a SIPB teeshirt. mhpower: Does the SIPB care if non-members purchase shirts. marthag: In the past only members have gotten jersies. Other Other: marthag: I have new glasses. cat: I will be showing people how to order office supplies after the meeting. pipa: I'm getting purple-pipa-ether.mit.edu, a new machine. kretch: The dome turned into a beanie with propeller. liera: In memory of this hack, there is a propellerbeanie order going in; talk to me. The meeting was adjourned at 22:11. Minutes taken and submitted by hartmans.