UCC Ordinary General Meeting Minutes 2016-10-19 =============================================== Attendance ========== Present: -------- - [DJF] Chris Forbes [Treasurer] - [HYT] Hock Yew Tan [Fresher Representative] - [LDT] Roland Kerr [Education Officer] - [SAS] Samuel Shenton [OCM] - [JMA] Jake Alexander [OCM] - [BG3] Mitchell Pomery - [BOB] Andrew Adamson - [NTU] Nick Bannon - [TAY] Taylor Home - [M12] Jeremy Cole - [CJS] Chris Squire - [BLZ] Cain Nixey - Edward Kammann - Liam Spence - Benjamin Slusarczyk - Gavin Tay Fernandez - Simon Lawrance - Ruisi Chen - Geordie Wilson - Reece Gherardi [Non Member] - Kevin Cui [Non Member] > Chair: Samuel Shenton [SAS] > Secretary: Mitchell Pomery [BG3] > Meeting Opened: 1317 Agenda: ======= - Election of Returning Officers - Election of Secretary - Discussion/Consultation of Proposal to Fit out a New Clubroom - Quorum was not met at the start of the meeting - Election of Secretary Defered until the 8th Febuary meeting - Meeting proceeds without quorum, and therefore is unable to take substantive action. Discussion/Consultation of Proposal to Fit out a New Clubroom ============================================================= Sam: - Meeting opened for discussion on proposal - Provides background on the proposal - 5 Requirements/issues - Security of the room - Accessibility - Cleanliness - Space - The machine room itself - Ventilation/ability to climate control - This proposal brings together several years of work - Background on loft move Proposal ======== - UCC to help the Strategic Resources Committee (SRC) with remodelling costs of 190, 191 for UCC to inhabit, to resolve the 5 issues UCC has with it's room. - Sam opens to questions - Taylor: What is the minimum that you could be granted that UCC would accept? - Sam: Proposal is for specific space - Would have to come back for consideration - Taylor: During Renovations, layout could change. Would a single room of 50m2 be enough? - Roland: Space is not the only thing, location, power - Different configurations of that area could work, but - Taylor: If SRC comes back and offers 50m2 would you bring that back to a meeting or just continue? - Sam: Different proposal would be bought back to committee - If it was substantially similar we will proceed - It would already be brought back as that is already in the motion as per the motion - Liam: Issue of security has been brought up. Has security improved since the webcamswere installed? - Roland: Most major theft in UCC history has been since the webcams were installed. - Bob: 2003-2009 thefts every 1-2 years of multiple computers - Mitigated computer theft with cable locks - nontrivial costs - Only prevents coputers being stolen - Doesn't stop thefts of things like Cash - Liam: Were all the thefts done through the ceiling? - Bob: Most thefts from breaking through ceiling - Liam: Was anyone ever caught? - Bob: No, but spartan did get visited by the police after one of the thefts, because the person on the webcam looked like him - Security cameras only do so much - Sam: Cameras are a deterent, but don't prevent like walls + a ceiling - Reece: Where did this idea come from that the spaces in question are outside the juridstriction of the tenancy committee? - Sam: Tenancy wouldn't consider it at the time - SRC covers all tenant locations, commercial or otherwise - And given that UCC is looking to invest a substantial amount of money into that space it makes sense to talk to SRC as they have the space on their radar. - Reece: As I said in the allocation meeting, those spaces would go up for reallocation if and when we know whats happening with them - Sam: SRC needs to give those rooms to tenancy to allocate - Reece: There is the possibilty that they will not be there. They haven't yet been taken away from tenancy. So if and when they come available to tenancy, they will be put up for allocation, so I am asking why are you not waiting until then? - Bob: Tenancy allocations have just happened One of the problems is that we were told if you were allocated this room you have to take it - No appeal unless something was done wrong - No time to move - Because of cost of UCC move, move is contingent on fitting out the space - Jeremy: UCC and Cameron hall have been told to wait for the guild for a long time - Yes there's a method to the madness of waiting until it is under tenancy's perview - At the same time, this club and plenty of other clubs have been waiting for the guild to decide what is going to do - Who is going to have juridstriction over what? - It is hampering the club - If we have a path forward, time for the club to take it - Roland: there is an important caveat to that - Can't do things with the current clubroom without knowing when we will move - There has been a notion that a move has been 12 months away for several years - It's not just the idea that we have to move for our own wild dreams, it gives us some certainty - Sam: Period between SRC and tenancy, plan for UCC to use that to fit out the room before next tenancy allocations - If we take this to SRC now, they can consider it before things become set in stone - Proposal is the first step for SRC to give us direction - Taylor: Has any effort been made to rearrange the current layout of the UCC room to make it more efficient? - Bob: Hasn't been done in a while - We have our machine room - Desks are attached to the walls - Cabling is in the walls - Not willing to spend that money - Taylor: Discarding computers on the edges, what about storage, couches and coffee table? - Bob: Have tried alternative layouts - We have moved what we can move - Sam: UCC has been in the room for 26-27 years - There have been layout changes, just not a lot recently - Ruisi: What happens if business plan falls through - Mitchell: Move the machine room or rebuild it - Look at what we are stoing and where we are storing it, but we are currently doing this. Long and slow process - Bob: Carpeting it - Look at current room, and refurbish it - Extending walls to the roof, but that requires structural engineers - Roland: If we were ensured that we would not be leaving cameron hall for a while and it was structurally sound we would look into building a roof, but that would also nees a wall previous UCC roofs have been shot down by guild for health and safety - 3 of 4 UCC walls are temporary, therefore need engineer approval - Carpeting, way more achievable, but huge expenditure for a room that we have constantly thought that we would be leaving - Bob: Only clubroom that can not airconditions if we renovated, we would have to maintain services while renovating - Reece: Do you know about the comms room. Trying to get that into tenancy - Bob: Has a rack in there. Endpoint of the fibre to cameron hall - We have already considered that - Does not have an external wall. - Machine room needs 6kW of cooling - Taylor: The room already has a functioning fan in there - Bob: Can't be passive cooled - We want the machine room to be visible to members, not less visible - Would make more sense for UCC to get UniGames - Reece: If it comes to a choice between security and visible machine room - Bob: I would have to take that back to the club - Nick: One idea for the current machine room was to open the machine room but put the machines in enclosed racks idea to increase visibility - Jake: We currently have a problem with people moving stuff, unplug stuff and move stuff around - Jeremy: I do think there is an inherint difference between people moving mice to use and people pulling cables out of servers - Jake: People don't want to touch things in case if they break them - Roland: If people see things broken in an easy enough way, they will fix them - Nick: Machine room is not a strong structure, people have broken into it previously - Reece: Going back the the security of the machine room, if we (tenancy) were to get mains, you could get mains and we could put a window in where the shutter is so that people can see it - Ruisi: That hallway is actually lockable, so doesn't help visibility - Bob: To actually disappaite the heat generated, you need a window to the outside of the building - Jake: Would it be possible to put the machine room into the UWASCA/Panto room? and someone gets allocated to the comms room - Bob: The comms room could not be allocated to a non technical club - Taylor: The room is too small to be allocated to any club - Jeremy: Isn't that room technically operated by facilities management? - Sam: yes, BITS would have a problem with us having direct access to that room. - Reece: You said that you needed direct access to the outside wall? why did you say that Unigames would be good when it does not have direct access? - Bob: Yes,yes I did - Sam: I think the solution to that is that we were going to pipe the hot air to the outside via UCC's room - Bob: I completely forgot that we discarded that as an option due to the lack of external wall - Sam: Access is solved, visibility is sorta solved, but cooling is up in the air. - Jake: Would it be possible to pipe the air from mains to the outside? > [General Discussion about the layout Cameron Hall and where the comms room is] - Sam: This solution only addresses one point - Jake: This would be less effort and cost than moving - Bob: That would miss all of our criteria - Sam: adds a new problem - Wheel has determied that moving the machine room there degrades the technical direction of the club - Jeremy: A lot of what is being put forward is dealing with one issue that we've put forward or combining two points as a possible solution - The overall cost to benifit of the proposal we have put forward is good - The cost to do these smaller improvements to UCCs curent room do not bring anywhere near the same order of magnitude of benifit - The business case does mention the other options, but this is us putting our best foot forward. - We are looking 15-20 years into the future - Taylor: I agree with you on that and one of the reasons it is better is that it is significantly different, but it is also significantly unlikely - The fact that you would be applying for two rooms, the competitiveness of the space is going to be more - Bob: It sounds like you are knocking this on it's head before it has even had a chance to happen - Jake: The issue is that the current UCC room is not fantastic for really everything - As not having a roof causes issues with every club - Most other clubs currently in cameron hall would be uncomfrtable with this space. - Bob: And yet I feel like other clubs are trying to stop this from happening - Jake: As they would - Reece: It is kind of unfair if SRC allocates this space without other tenants having achance to apply - Sam: That is the choice of SRC - Jeremy: Current clubroom comes up as clubroom space or communial space, and based on what current areas are being looked it, it would probably become communial space, benefitting all of cameron hall - Jake: I don't think that communal space would be a good idea considering the past security issues with Cameron Hall - Jake: In respnse to other clubs coming here today to stop this - My primary issue is that a move for UCC, will have physical detriments to it - A lot of people are members of several clubs in cameron hall - Major events run for several days in cameron hall - Taylor: have you considered that this may be detrimental to other clubs? - Reece: Cameron Hall has collective bargaining with Tenancy - Bob: Discussed at wheel meeting of social implications of the move - Our clubs are only linked by geography, it's convenient - Of the things listed, why do joint events have to stop? - Jake: Will not affect people strongly linked to UCC and other clubs - If UCC moves, then people will not do other things, because nothing will be around - Bob: People already cycle between cameron hall and the tav - Geordie: If this plan went ahead, how would this be done? Need people to manage the move. - Sam: The proposal establishes that working committee with SRC to look over plans and proposals - This would invovle getting quotes - Wheel would be part of the process to make sure it meets technical requirements - Geordie: This would take several months - Sam: The ref is already going through a renovation stage - The plan is to piggy back off of that as it would greatly assist the effort - Geordie: But this would take time - Same: Yes, this would take time, but we plan to use existing time - Jeremy: Anything that you would want to do right takes time. We want to do this right - Nick: Social aspect is a big downside. There may be gains with the new frontage - Losing Geographical closeness is a problem. - Currently you can walk down clubroom to UniSFA, Unigames and the other clubs - What could be done if we moved to reinforce connections. - Could all the clubs get phones? - We already have webcams. - Jake: The issue with it not immediate affects. Most people would have no issue with it. - There may be a demographic change in cameron hall - Bob: I do envisage that the crossover for members with UCC will change - Over the past year, we have run events with other clubs outside of cameron hall, such as University Physics Society - And yes, those crossover events are better and better aligned to UCC's objectives - Jake: I believe that Unigames and UniSFA have much better crossover in UCC's objectives than other clubs on campus - Taylor: Actually unigames specifically excludes computer games in it's constitution - Taylor: I would predict that the next 5 years expect to see a lot of collaberation - We already had discussions about charity vigil this year about having charity vigil over two buildings - If UCC is in another building it means that they can't participate in charity vigil - UCC being in a different building would sever the ties. - Because of the reallocation, Coders for Causes now in old UniGames - Because of this, people who come to cameron hall and like computers will find this club instead - In terms of longevity of keeping Unigames, UCC and UniSFA connected, once all of us are gone, the connections could break down, and we become two separate groups - Because of us having crossover in membership, there will be clubs that will lose membership - Jeremy: I find it concerning that multiple clubs here are implying that individually they don't cater for a broad enough spectrum of people that people to want to move between clubs - All of the clubs in cameron hall and all these new clubs has their own strengths - Putting across the idea that while these clubs are stronger together, that the clubs themselves will weaken, rather than the bonds between them - The reason why these clubs crossover is their geography, but not distance between the clubs, but how the minds of the people in the clubs are similar - At the end of the day, there will be a lessening of the bonds - But I think the magnitude is being overworked, purely on the basis that there is more benefit for smaller clubs having a big club around - Bob: UCC can't get bigger - Jeremy: Unigames can get bigger, as they just got their new clubroom - Taylor: Facking Ayy Yo! - Jeremy: The point I am trying to make here has been made - UCC is using their room to the highest utility they can and they are now having to set more constraints to try to make it work. - Bob: UCC is killing our club - Jeremy: Cameron Hall isn't killing us, but it is holding us back - Jake: These are all people that are members of UCC who have an interest in keeping the club in Cameron Hall purely for their own utility. - Chris: You mentioned Jeremy, that geography is the biggest strength - Based on the point of UWAnime, which was compltetely separate to the rest until last year - UCC, Unigames, UniSFA consistantly tried to bring them in to events like Charity Vigil - Taylor: They didn't want to - Chris: It wasn't that they were in a different bulding - They had no valid reason to not participate in the community - In 5 years time we will not have people like Me and Taylor being friends - Bob: When UWAnime didn't want to participated, everyone accepted it, they didn't fight it - Chris: It's only now that we see proper consistent effort is what makes the community and crossover in membership, not the geography - Liam: If UCC gets to move and gets the new room, will probably work together for the next few years - After we all graduate, there will always be oldgaurd around - In the long term, moving will certainly affect the union between the clubs - Roland: It is being a little unfair to complain about us trying to collaberate with clubs outside of Cameron hall - Potentially a lot of us are trying to do that - It just turns out that we are just an island of clubs that are somewhat functional - Clubs outside CH are different beasts in how they function - Those clubs have titanic memberships, but in many ways you could be considered less active than us - Conversely many of the smaller specialist clubs that are similar to us may no have thier shit together and things may fall apart - Maybe be can foster some of these smaller clubs into better clubs with the move - I feel it's a little bit weird to hold it against UCC that we attempted to run events with clubs against Cameron hall - Taylor: We didn't. We all run events with clubs outside Cameron hall - Roland: With respect to this other point as to what we could do to lessen this isolation - Maybe we haven't been radical enough. Is there actually any possibility of making the spaces accessible to each other - Sam: The guild had a plan a couple of years ago, there was a vision to have bridge from 1'st floor commercial to CCZ, CCZ to Ref, Ref to CH - The problem is that briges are expensive - There is the potential and guild has considered it, but it is probably a very very future thing - But as soon as you touch Cameron Hall there is a lot of work to do - Jake: In response to Bobs dissatisfaction to people in the meeting being linked to clubs - I think that you are going to find, that at the next OGM, theres going to be a large number of people that you wouldn't consider traditional members of UCC, in that they spend their entire game playing video games will turn up. - I think you will find this very hard to push this through, because these people will want UCC to remain, specifically because they are perhipheral members of UCC and still gain all the rights of the ability to vote, and do not need to spend time in the clubroom and do not need to worry about cleaning out dust. - I don't know how you are going to deal with a large number of people who turn up are perhiperal members who do not care about dust getting into computers - How are you going to convince these people that this move is good? - Bob: I would encourage them as UCC members to vote in the best interests of the club - Jake: People vote in the best interests of themselves - Jeremy: What this proves is that there needs to be greater education on this vote - You mentioned how members don't care about when computers die - Well, every time something dies in the clubroom we need to replace it. That means we can't put the money into making things better - We are in this continuous cycle - Jake: I'm not saying that's a good thing - What I'm saying that the perhipheral members- - This will not affect the core members. People who are only members of UCC. There is no reason to not vote against this. - This is a good move for them. - Who this is not going to be good for is people who are people spend a lot of time in UCC, but are still members, and therefore have a right to stop this. - Ruisi: Can I try to rephrase what Jake is trying to say, is that the structural argument is good. Perhipheral members priorities consider cultural aspects. - UCC Enriches Cameron Hall, and they would like to keep that in Cameron Hall. - Geordie: To contradict what Jake said, I have only ever been member of UCC. - I got involved in UCC because I have an interested in FinTech - It has been a shame to see that UCC has not had technical presence over the past couple of years - Gaming has been on the rise - If we move, will not have cycling of the membership - Might make the gaming aspect of the club much worse - Reece: If the business case does go through, what will I do with the current tenants going to do? - Sam: Current tenants have allocated a room in the short term. - SRC is currently looking at this. - If SRC wants them to keep their room, our proposal will be declined. - Simon: So on what Jake said on perhipheral members - For the most part I'm going to be in UniGames and UNISFA - For the most part perhipheral members are not going to read the minutes. - They are going to be coming in with the idea that they are already going to vote against because they've haven't heard of the benefits of it - Sam: Next meeting will be cycling between benifits before and benifits against - Will be a time for people to have their lists of benifits for or benifits against - Won't have interuptions like we have had today - Jake: It will not be a time to ask questions or have extended debate - Taylor: Did 30k estimate include new computers? - Sam: From the preliminary costings done on the back of an envelope by bob and emailed out, it did not include more computers - Bob: In general we want to increase project space. The club is currently unbalanced towards the gamers. - Taylor: Bigger space will mean a demand for new computers - Sam: Preliminary costings have been sent out - Taylor: Can that be released on the event page? - Bob: The email should not be put there as it is a back on the envelope costing. - I want to get more concrete costings before I post it - Have a meeting with FM - Taylor: Something got mentioned in the last committee meeting about using the loft for LANs. - Either everyone would have to be in the loft or everyone would have to be in the room - Sam: Loft is not the only place we can run Lans - Lans have been a declining event - Having people in the clubroom and the loft has been ruining LANS - We are looking at clubroom machines up into the loft at future LANS - We will be arranging it so LANs are in one central location - Jeremy: responding to Geordies point - The idea that we are going to invite more gamers/supposedly problematic members is going to be addressed by a generalized change in the space - Currently over 90% of the usable space is taken up by gamers - The idea of this move is not expand everything on an equal basis - Opportunity presented allows us to have area dedicated to desktop machines and have a good proper area for projects like the Vive and the 3d printer - Final Point - there is a lot of rigidity on opnions - There is a full on dividing line down the room - Needs to be a lot of in person conversation on this - If people come into this room with only one view, we have failed them all - Everyone should be taking it on to educating people on the pros and cons on this - If we don't make an educated decision on this, we have failed - Bob: What he said - We have been trying to grow the club for years. We looked into the loft a couple of years back and we had opposition to that as well and that was within Cameron Hall - Jake: I totally understand that, and I think that there hasn't been a single convincing argument as to why moving the club would improve the tech stuff - Roland: We actually proposed that the additional space that would be gained by the move would be utilized for tech rather than more desktops - The club dies if we can not maintain a continuity of technical members to look after it - Jeremy: The people in this room talking about the perhiphery members and how they have not been engaged, how do we engage them on this topic? - The fear that is being presented and the fear I understand entirely is that there are going to be people that turn up to that room that haven't had discussions and that they will go "I don't want UCC to move because it doesn't work for me personally" How do we move in everyones minds here away from the idea of singular logic and towards an informed decision being made - Cain: So I think one of the biggest challenges facing us, that when it comes to convincing perhiphery members that moving is a good thing, is that ultimately it isn't a good thing for them personally - You can see the singular mentality in the commentry around this move - People want UCC to stay However, as UCC, this strange entity moving is almost definitely the best thing, and it's going to be hard to convince people that they should vote for the club, not for what they want - Sam: More of an effort needs to be made to be made in convincing that it's not a geographical issue it's more of a relationship issue in terms of what effort we should be putting in between clubs - There should be more proposals in how we can keep together in the event - Taylor: I think one of the reasons we have this divide here today is that UCC did disregard the other clubs in this discussion - No one on the other committees found out about this decision until I on tenancy committee recieved UCC's proposal, went back through UCC's minutes and found that it had been discussed and told other people and the shitstorm started - Sorry about that. - I think a lot of people feel that they have been completely overlooked, as they have not been consulted and it will take a lot of effort to rectify this. - Roland: Did you (Unigames) hold an OGM to consult, when you made applications to move to UniGames? - Taylor: Mate we've been very public with our memberbase - Sam: Did you hold an OGM? - Jake: That wasn't the question - Sam: no that was the question - I think that Rolands point is that we are going to extensive efforts to consult - Taylor: I don't think we needed it - Since before I arrived in Cameron Hall, there have been talks in UniGames in moving into UDS - It's right next door, has all the same shit and is bigger - And we were very very public with our members that we we're going to apply for that room - Sam: I will acknowledge that notification was not ideal - Consultation and dicsussions were had, but maybe not to the level that people would be happy with - The efforts are being made - Consulting on the idea of we want to move but we don't know what to do is quite hard to consult on - A proposal has been made and committee has decided on what we want to do - Now we have the proposal we can go to our members and get their feedback on it - Committee has been able to consider this, wheel has been able to consider this, and now two general meetings have been able to consider this - Taylor: I want to clarify, this is not about the fact that committees feel like they should have been consulted - It's that like, hello your services are going to be interuppted, can you give us some notice? - Sam: One the application was not fixed on those rooms, it did not say that we definitely want those rooms. It was to open a discussion - As soon as that was started then we could go to the members, UCC is officially considering this and start talking to other clubs about it - It has been well stated in the new business case that we want to maintain as many services as we can to the clubs that we provide services to and we will be able to with many solutions to choose from - We definitely want to make efforts to miantain links with those clubs, especially as it is a large part of our culture still - I belive this consultation has been put on a better path now and we should be considering this proposal, with this path with everyone - People should come the table on this and have a good discussion on this > Meeting Closed: 1450 > Discussion continued after this point un-minuted