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🌻UKbotNotes2025-Year-To-Date

Notes Year-to-date 2025

Here are the current state of things, requests, and changes that need to be accounted for but aren't yet addressed (to my understanding).

I say all of the following lovingly, as someone that loves this place, wants to see it survive and thrive, and has heard many thoughts from others on what's needed to do that.

This is based on rough notes I've been taking over the last 5 months, based on in person conversations at lz, meeting with people 1-on-1, matrix chats, and my own personal journal.
This took a while to compile and organize.

  • A. Cyberia Computer Club's state filing is expired and should be re-filed. We need to decide what type of non-profit status it should be. [see cyberia matrix channel on past 501c7 vs 501c3 discussion]

  • B. LayerZero doesn't legally exist. By default then, legally it is a sole-proprietorship or partnership to the lease signer(s), who have personal liability for what happens at the space.

  • C. If Cyberia and LZ are meant to be separate legal entities, they're too enmeshed financially and materially - so much, that if audited, would likely be determined as a single legal entity. [see all of the minutes for 2024-present on wiki]

  • D. Too much falls onto one or two people to keep things running. We need thoughtful change in structure to spread that out and prevent it in the future. [see point B]

  • E. There is personal tax liability on whoever receives OpenCollective by default, unless its pointed to an active legal entity [see points A-D above]

financial:

  • F. We don't have enough donations/dues/whatever to pay rent for LZ, which has been historically (and is currently) covered by one or two people [see point E]

  • G. We need more members or dues or donations or something

physical/lz:

  • H. The LZ space is underutilized. It has been unused 5-6 out of 7 days on average for the last 5 months at least. (going by catsignal roughly) [see point G]

  • I. Friday nights are specifically hard for many folks, like M-F 9-5'ers, students, live-music goers, low-spoon havers [see point G].

  • J. LZ has felt full and loud most Friday nights (yay!), nearly hitting comfortable seating/noise capacity several times in the last few months. May need more quiet/social spaces, especially if outdoor fires are limited. [see point H]

  • K. LZ is not physically accessible with the bathroom in the basement and poor door jambs, among other issues. This has been mentioned in several meeting minutes, frequently in-person at lz, several times to me 1-on-1, and several times on matrix. It's dependent on moving and finances. [see point F]

social:

  • K. The 'can we host public events at LZ' question has been on the Cyberia Congress agenda the last 4 sessions and remains unanswered. Technically, to @mara's points, this is an LZ-not-cyberia decision anyway. IMO, this confusion is why it remains unanswered. [see wiki minutes]

  • L. The written-record of how decisions are made is disparate, hard to discover, and sometimes contradictory. Some things in wiki, some in git, some on cyberia website, some on lz website, some irl printed at lz, some in matrix.

  • M. We say we do 'vibe' based decisions, talk about wanting to preserve the 'vibe', but the 'vibe' is really just social norms. If we want to preserve desired social norms, we can make them explicit and document them and make them accessible to newcomers, and reinforce them with returners. [see point L]

  • N. If we want more members, what is needed to make the social environment welcoming to them? Where/who/how do we wish to recruit new people? What is our public presence/persona? Are we thoughtfully looking in communities beyond our immediate social circles? How do we help people find a place and feel motivated here? [see point G]

operational:

  • O. More labor is needed to maintain (and significantly more to improve) the existing or needed club infrastructure, like matrix, wiki, git, transcription, security, identity, payments, email. How do we organize this? [see point D]

  • P. Onboarding is painful [see point G]. More automation or single-sign on or something is needed. [see points O, G]

  • Q. We need a more cohesive, discoverable directory of 'stuff' the club has. Or socially advertise it to others. Or both. [see point G]

  • R. The blog hasn't been updated since 2024 [see point N].

  • S. Matrix leaves something to be desired and not everyone likes it. Sometimes matrix is too ephemeral and hard to follow. Wiki is too public/official/non-social for other things. We need mystery 3rd thing - forum, thread, or blog -based. [See point O]

  • T. The wiki only has title search and not text search. [See point O]

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