Minutes:14 OCT 2026 Members Meeting Agenda
Meeting begins: 7:06 Meeting ends: 8:35 Participants: Jade G, David G. (out at 7:30), ., Andrew C. (left at 7:50), Nate Y., Joe D (in at ~7:10) Agenda
Announcements/new business
new meeting time -- standing rule modification.
Operations
unifi security gateway no longer receiving security updates
Financial
Membership
Outreach
Education
Tools
3d printer upgrade and support
first order of business, new meeting time
jade - we don't have to modify the bylaws or standing rules to have a different time, just need to communicate it to the membership with more than 2 days notice
nate - yeah only seems to be directors at the meeting rather than members
david - yeah we should change it
nate - yeah the second part is when, how do we run that by
david - we have a lot of conflicts with the current time. Like maybe 6 on wednesday or 7 on tuesday.
nate = can't conflict with other events on zoom, but we tuesdays wouldn't be bad. we could do a poll maybe. we could ask the members
david; what's the mechanisim we'd use for that
nate - like we used to use ??
david - how do we reach out for members
nate - like the mailing list or the matrix
david - i thought the mailing list wasn't complete or something
nate - yeah there's an issue there ... there's no great solution to talking to people
jade - no we don't have a list of all of our members aside from our list in unifi. there's no process for a member to update that email on file, they're different from the mailing list,
nate - yeah they can't log into that can they there are the member applications, we should try to improve the solution
david - couldn't we do a mail merge through all of the files
nate - yeah, then we'd have to do that multiple times but then we'd have to do that each month
jade - no it should be a one time thing and we just have one-truth somewhere and keep that up to date
adcurtin - a couple things to say on this, i've been coming to these meetings for 5 years. and this is something we've talked about regularly for 5 years. a spreadsheet is not tentable, it has not worked in the past
nate - we haven't tried it
adcurtin - we have talked about some crm solutions and some other options, and that might be a good way to help progress the makerspace. trying to do that in a new solution
nate - <something about a short term solution rather than a long term solution> we tried civicrm which is very complicated and another one too--
jade -- member matters?
nate - there was one that was used by i3 at one point
nate - either we make a concerted effort to make something long term, or we find something that works for the next few months
nate- okay back on topic we've decided that we're going to figure out how to change the meeting time, use the service whenisgood to determine the mutually meetable time.
jade - i think we should send the form to all of the members to determine the time. and i think the bylaws and standing rules sort of mandate that members are involved in this. i haven't reread that section right now, but i think they do matter.
nate - <we got push back last time and didn't change the meeting time properly/couldn't change the time.> we ended up pissing off some members who wanted to come to our meetings because we changed more meetings than we haven't at this point. if we want to change our time we should do that and pick a time and stick with it going forward
david - joe is there a good time that works well for you
joe -- i'm just busy september and october.
nate - yeah that's the thing sometimes things just come up
joe - but a time that works better for david would be better with no hard 730 out
david - thursday at the same time would be good for me
joe - lets choose like 3 options and put that down for the membership to vote on - its not a meeting if the board doesn't show up. we need to make sure that we can all make it to start with.
jade - so a when to meet for the board, then send the results to the membership for decisions.
multiples yeses
joe - we can work that out in chat
nate -- we'll try to come out with different options. For the record thursday would be great because i'll be at repairsday
jade -- right repairsday won't work because of that
anyhow moving on
< unifi discussion, was involved in conversation and did not get the notes >
board consenus was say yes to getting the system upgrade but looked at for the black friday sales.
switch to finanicals and membershop update
- finanicals update
joe - we have 11k in checking and a CD with a lot more - and the interest from that CD basically covers the covid loan.
so like, absolutely we have 500 for unifi
the finanicals are done, I uploaded them but the minutes haven't been updated yet
jade - i have minutes as well in a seperate document
<back to unifi>
consensus confirmed on unifi to get upgrade on black friday
membership -
nate - i know we've had one new volunteer starting - that was dom. and will has been shadowing for volunteering. I think we've lost one or two people actually. so its again like a net loss of zero.
joe - not negative nate - exactly
nat e- so we had a couple people who were pretty enthusatic about starting and then dropped off/got busy with things, as it goes. I don't like how to like, get that energy to stay around. I guess like reaching out and keeping contact would help, but that's a lot of work that i don't think we have the manpower to do.
nate - anything else for membership?
nat e- okay so outreach, we did a bunch of events. So i did the trash talk tour thing, the fall festival. That had pretty good turnout. No one was like, yeah im gonna come down and see you afterwards, but we did a good amount of mending.
nate - there was again the kind of issue that we are distinct places, makerworks and us.
nate - green fair, that was vinson and dom were there, right? yeah. green fair, i think they did like a clothing swap there, and we were doing mending, according to vinson and then we had tech trek, which jeremy and david helped out with
nate - we're still doing mending, and I'll be doing the one next month. I haven't done a whole lot there.
jade - i think based on what you've said about these events we need to make sure that we have a standardized marketing technique for these, so when we're doing mending we have our banner, and other things, need SOP for events with talking points
nate - sort of like the soft skills, so if you don't know what you're doing you know how to talk about AHA. like, new people are hesitant because they don't know how AHA works or functions yet.
joe - yeah, i think like one sheet with less than ten bullets that goes in the demo box could be useful
jade - describe what classes we have, how to use the space, what can I do at the space, what do I get as a member,
nate - like a tool library
jade - try not to use things you own specifically as examples of what can be done at AHA
joe - so it sounds like you want people to use a friendlier tone
jade - I agree, providing the reference, means there's something to refer to as a method to use to improve the outreach
joe - if we create the sheet, then we can maybe lead by example, and that will maybe rub off on the other person. maybe run a 15 minute training on how to host an event.
nate - we could try a brief training, not sure how that would help
jade - we do get people who show up but aren't sure how they can represent at an event
nate - <lost to time>
joe - being with someone who's new and has never volunteered before we could have a known person who can assist them at an event and have someone who's more experienced
nate - yep, more reassurance
joe - so jade do you want to make an faq sheet
jade - i'll start one on the wiki and others can add to it
== fundraiser
nate- we should probably work on our end of year fundraiser if we would like to do one. There's no point in half assing it so if we don't commit to it we shouldn't do it
joe - we could add to the newsletter if anyone would help us organize our fundraiser.
education --
joe will do some classes next month.
jade - mending - we should take the banner to city hall and put it on the table.
nate - people know we're there cause they put it there
jade - lydia also wants to promote us more, so i also have a logo release form from them to be able to use their logo. and they want to use our logo as well for their social media marketing for these events.
jade - like we need a little bit of a press packet.
jade - tomorrow's repairday is international repair day
education returned
joe - i will try and teach some classes next month, and get indigo trained up to teach at least one of the classes.
tools
3d printer
<notes paused due to active in conversation>
tldr no on the printer, we have enough printers
jade protested despite the feature set but still no, we'd rather use the 800 on a laser cutter camera or a thermoplastic machine than another 3d printer.
joe - we could offer cad classes. In order to make good use of the cnc, laser cutter, 3d printers, you need to know how to cad.
nate agrees
nate - on that note, a 3d scanner might be useful.
back to crm -- we're going to try hackerspace.sh