Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
192 lines (136 loc) · 9.81 KB

2023-Q3.md

File metadata and controls

192 lines (136 loc) · 9.81 KB
Raw

Digital Defiance Q3 meeting 2023-07-22
Location Discord general invite https://discord.gg/8ASAAxzyyM Meeting invite https://discord.gg/tVcWR7FW
Date July 22nd, 2023
Time 9A PT, 11A CT, 12P ET, 5P Portugal
Status The meeting occurred on-time, and as scheduled.

Agenda with time estimates

  • 00:00 - Welcome, greetings, introductions
    • Board
      • President: Jessica
      • Treasurer: Hannah
      • Secretary: Joe
    • Senior Guild
      • Rui
      • TBD
    • Members
      • TBD
    • Guests
      • TBD
  • 00:05 - Discuss Bylaws draft, open for suggestions
  • 00:10
    • Resources
      • Discord
      • Website
      • GitHub
      • M365/Azure
      • TechSoup
      • GitBook
      • MongoDB
      • AWS through TechSoup ($1000 credit for $95 admin fee, only one per year allowed)
  • 00:15
  • 00:20
    • Keybase git repo mirroring?
      • Reliability/zoom grant
  • Any other suggestions?

Table of Contents

  1. [dd meeting 2023-07-22]
  2. [attendance]
  3. [introductions]
  4. [advantages]
  5. [compliance officer : search in progress]
  6. [501c required a quick paid WP setup, won't be necessary anymore]
  7. [sharing operation expense sheet]
  8. [investigate possibility of non US members on board]
  9. public work as proof of work for donations
  10. [members interests]
    1. [collaboration structure]
  11. [ideas:]
  12. [seeking people:]
  13. [informal monthly discord meeting (quarterly mandatory)]
  14. [actions]

Attendance

  • Jessica Mulein - President
  • Hannah Mulein - Treasurer
  • Rui Campos - Advisory Board
  • gum | Jon
  • BDisp
  • ceponatia
  • Joseph Arceneaux (technical issues) - Secretary

Introductions

  • Jessica
  • Hannah
  • Rui
  • Jon
  • ceponatia

Email/Hosting :topic:

TechSoup is the evaluator on behalf of Microsoft to determine our Non-Profit status- and they have, but they determined we were a Professional Association which is a cut-out in Microsoft's non-profit offerings. Jessica has appealed this and expects to hear a response sometime the week of the 24th.

Should Microsoft decline, we have three options:

  • Dreamhost

    • We have already been approved for Dreamhost sponsorship/partnership, and this comes with hosting our primary website.

  • Google

    • We have applied for Google hosting and have been granted a temporary trial while that processes in advance of the decision from Microsoft

  • Microsoft

    • Jessica works for Microsoft and get can 6 licenses a day for $30/year, which puts our current tally of 9 members at an overhead cost of $270
    • After the meeting, Jessica learned that even though we were denied a Grant from Microsoft, we can still receive subsidized accounts from them for $2-$6/user/month=$24-$70 a year depending on whether we want Microsoft Office E1 or Microsoft Office E3. Jessica can get "Business Standard" for $30/year/account.

Opinions:

  • Jessica likes the idea of staying on MS for short term, but depends on her working there for lower costs. We would be covered for one year before we had to make the decision again.

  • Rui thinks Google is fine

Questions regarding coupling between GitHub and MS- GitHub offered unlimited enterprise licenses, but Jessica wasn't sure how the TechSoup verdict affected our grant from GitHub. MS owns GitHub but it runs independently. She will look into it further if or when TechSoup declines our appeal.

Advantages of our organization/501c status

As a 501c, the organization itself has deals on software, hardware, and some services via TechSoup and other direct offerings from vendors. We can also apply for grants and other funding opportunities that are only available to 501c organization. The main drawback is the additional responsibility of disclosure to our donors and the public.

Additionally, Jessica as a Microsoft employee has some access to additional discounts for as long as she is employed there, but this is strictly offered as a personal favor and not as a benefit of the organization.

Compliance officer : search in progress

Jessica will seek a volunteer compliance officer to help us navigate the legal requirements and figure out how best to spare the group from them and do the minimum required by the law to be a good steward and remain in compliance with any and all applicable laws and rules as a result of our incorporation and 501c exemption.

A compliance officer will help prevent us from getting in a situation where someone has leverage to sue us and potentially have a hostile takeover.

501c required a quick paid WP setup, won't be necessary anymore

Getting the organization bootstrapped required setting up a website for the IRS and other vendors to see about what we are and what we are doing. The hosting was rather expensive, but will be covered in the future by the Dreamhost subsidy now that we have the 501c3 status and were able to secure it.

Sharing of operation expense sheet

Jessica will share the expense sheet to members once we're sure what platform we're on and post the appropriate links in the member's channel.

Investigate possibility of non US members on board

Jessica and Hannah will investigate, hopefully through securing a volunteer legal counsel. The option also exists for an Advisory Board or similar who will have direct input into board decisions, though those decisions will be by definition limited to things pertaining to the US membership. After seeking counsel we can figure out exactly what we are allowed to do.

Public work as proof of work for donations #accountability

  • Members receiving Guild resources (email, grants, donations, and resources stemming from those) must be held accountable to the donors, partners, and public. They should post yearly statements of certification that they are using the resources only for open source work and link to any public repos for the work. The example template is located here: [Digital-Defiance/Yearly Statements/template.md at main · Digital-Defiance/Digital-Defiance (github.com)](https://github.com/Digital-Defiance/Digital-Defiance/blob/main/Yearly Statements/template.md)
  • This will be used as a showcase of the Guild's work
  • Any member may submit a showcase of their work for that year. These should ideally be completed around the end of the calendar year. These may be developed throughout the calendar year and will be considered final by February 1st of the new year.
  • Members not submitting this statement may become ineligible to receive Guild resources until that is completed.

Members interests

  • jessica: MEAN/MERN + AI- Mongo Express React/Angular Node + OpenAI

    • ~gpt games, social network with ai creating an opposing world view in a reddit like thread "turing test and social network meet in a bar"

    • embedded electronics:

      • stegophone: bt voice encryption
      • laser based projectors

  • rui: ML/DL, Python, also embedded electronics and lasers

  • jon: anything goes, ideas coming

Collaboration structure

  • common interest project ?

  • independent projects with shared / pair programming

    maybe finding a common goal

Ideas

  • tag teaming to fix a project / feature bounty
  • DUNS number setup in progress to get govt grants for the organization which would provide additional resources, and possibly allow us to hand out "gifts" as rewards for some work. Have to consult legal on this, but at a minimum it will help us secure funding that will let us do more substantial work with ML/AI and GPUs.
  • Our Microsoft grant, if it is approved on appeal by TechSoup, offers $3500 in OpenAI credits.

Seeking people

  • Have to wait for TechSoup before we can add more mails- expected week of 7/24.
  • Talking to other people and bringing more on board is fine, but they may not be able to contribute directly to Digital Defiance repos in the GitHub org without the email. They might have to fork and pull request in order to work with outside emails/accounts.

Informal monthly discord meeting (quarterly mandatory)

Consider having just a hang out once a month where members can talk about projects, ask questions about others projects, or just get to know one another- online game like Pretend You're Xyzzy (pretendyoure.xyz) or Among Us?

or freeform, how we see fit

Actions

Omissions

We ran long and did not cover the Keybase topic, we will hold this for next time. It was intended to cover the reliability of using Keybase for a Git repo backup considering their Zoom grant might get pulled at any time.