Becoming a Member

If you are interested in any of our projects, starting a project with us, or simply hanging out and getting to know a bit more about computers, you can become a member by attending one of our meetings on Mondays at 7:25 pm MIT time (2-151 during the stud renovation). You just need to tell us your kerb and we will memberize you.

Becoming a keyholder

If you are an actively involved member, we will trust you with the key to the office!

Keyholding status in SIPB is granted to a member after becoming socially integrated and “Furthering the Goals of SIPB” for a sustained period.

Becoming Socially Integrated

A big part of the value of SIPB is in the social interaction. Many members spend much of their spare time hanging out in the SIPB office: hacking on personal, SIPB, or class projects or chatting with fellow SIPB members about topics technical and otherwise.

Members are encouraged to hang out around the SIPB office during meetings (they’re Mondays at 7:30PM) and at other times (check the door icon on sipb.mit.edu to see if the office is open). (Coming to at least four meetings is required before you can be nominated for keyholding status, though usually this happens before members are otherwise ready to become a keyholder.)

You can also participate in SIPB activities like hackathons, cluedumps, and IAP classes. Our calendar contains many of our events.

“Furthering the Goals of SIPB”

“Furthering the Goals of SIPB”, or FTGOSing, usually means working on some SIPB projects.

Our technical projects can generally absorb arbitrary amounts of attention. If you are already familiar with the relevant skills, you may be able to find the bugtracker and just get started. Even if you don’t have those skills, if you talk to people involved in a project you’re interested in they’ll probably be happy to help somebody enthusiastic learn the necessary skills.

We also have a number of more organizational projects, such as running cluedumps in the fall, and IAP classes. New members often take the lead on organizing these.

You can also start your own SIPB project if you’re so inclined. The best way to start a SIPB project is to pick some computing-related problem that is important to you, find some like-minded individuals, and try to solve it, discussing your ideas and plans around the SIPB office, and reporting on your progress to the SIPB. The most successful SIPB projects have often been things that the people involved really wanted to do, where they found resources or collaborators to do them through SIPB.

A possible route

There are many possible ways to get involved in SIPB, but one route is:

1. Take a look at the Projects page, and identify a project that looks interesting.
2. Look around the website, the bugtracker, and especially any tickets marked as being good for new contributors (look for terms like “hackathon”, “starter”, or “straightforward”) to get a better sense of what the project is currently doing.
3. Ideally, come up with one or more “tickets” you find interesting. This could be a task from the project’s bugtracker, or just something that bothers you about using the project yourself.
4. Talk with somebody involved in the project for advice on which possible ticket is best to start with and how to implement it.
5. Code your thing, and talk to somebody involved in the project to get it committed.

If you follow something like this process and get some contributions into some SIPB project, you’re probably doing fine at FTGOS. You probably can’t do all of that on your own, though. That’s fine, since you also need to get socially integrated. Feel free to talk to people around SIPB about each of those steps, and somebody will probably be happy to help you through them.

The office

Members are encouraged to hang out in the SIPB office anytime it is open, which it is on a typical weekday afternoon and evening. We strive to make it a fun and comfortable place to work on projects, homework, or anything else by providing an array of amenities:

• Nice chairs, big monitors, many computers, table space for laptops
• Music: ours (CDs or LAMP) or yours (via a certain “printer”)
• Tons of equipment and supplies from video adapters to an oscilloscope to Band-Aids
• A diverse technical library, including popular textbooks
• Soda and snacks for late-night sessions, cheaper, closer, and more existent than Verde’s

Questions?

If you have any questions about SIPB or the SIPB membership process, or ideas for projects, feel free to either drop by our office (W20-557) or contact the Chair at sipb-chair@mit.edu.