Minutes:23 AUG 2015 Member Meeting

AHA Mission Statement
We seek to establish, build, and support a collective of individuals organized around the principles of community-driven education in the arts and sciences, and to ensure ready access to the tools needed to pursue the realization of those principles.

Should we stay or should we go?

Should be within walking distance - preferred upper limit 2 miles of downtown (see Wizzywig)
- Reasonably close to a bus route, for the benefit of students, poor people, etc
We are the makerspace downtown - that's our Thing
Need a group of people to start identifying options *now*, while we have time to look

e.g., under current process, are we doing 0 through n-1 or 1 through n when voting for n candidates?
e.g., what is the procedure if someone steps down in the middle of the term?
- Suggestion: Board appoints replacement until next election, replacement runs in next election to fill *remainder of the year term of the person they replaced* if applicable - thereby not disrupting the staggered replacement cycle (should this affect their term limit? under which circumstances?)

At the previous Board meeting, an idea was floated about using the Sylvia's space and letting the landlord take it as a tax writeoff
Just keeping this in consciousness

Envisioning: corkboard with flyer-like layout, possibly mirrored on Google Groups
Two main ideas: do XYZ and get a reward (money, items, whatever), and/or be a community bucket of people-hours (do 3 hours of something for someone, get that paid back by someone else helping later down the road - community hours held in common, owed to the person who did the work)
Sounds like a good idea

Need people to:
- make posters
- inform poster-posters of where to post posters (UM: Alex White, Tyler Dence (sp?), EMU: Alec M., UM North Campus: Zandi?)
- post posters
Best to put up posters such that they will be up during the week before the event
For the open house specifically, want to integrate with general rush to advertise all things across campus to new and returning students
Want to target technology and arts areas, and big community areas as well as food court areas
May want three sets of flyers: normal (makery/hackery), more arty, and cryptoparty

Cindy: We need to have a Strategic Plan? What do we want to be doing in 1 year, 5 years...? Can we even agree on this?
Alec: Be non-subject specific: plan to have more classes and plan general frameworks for having more classes without anything about what sorts of classes they will be. This limits conflict while coming up with the plan among different personal agendas
Cindy: An idea: How do we help people in this space plug into informal education and networking opportunities?
Alec: Idea: Get people who are interested in subjects to come down here and teach these subjects. Should we tailor advertising to middle and high school kids (and the parents who will have to bring them)?
Don't forget about other forms of advertising: word of mouth in particular, and let's try having T-shirts around to sell to members so they can wear them around town (like 2 or 3 designs). Also portable advertisement such as (general) business cards or stickers (business-card-sized stickers?).
Side note: If we had portable signage to take to an event to advertise our stuff, that would be real neat (e.g., a laser-cut laser-cutter sign).
Side note: There are issues with projects being seen through to their conclusions.

CINDY, ESTY, ALEC, TYLER - help with flyer distribution (once flyers are designed)
ZANDI - give flyer distributers his current cryptoparty flyers
CINDY, ESTY - begin looking into options for moving the space (ask Donnie and Nate Yost for information about current space square footage, price, etc)
TYLER - ask people to help with flyer-making (Cindy can offer beer or other things as compensation)
ALEC, ESTY - draft proposal for "someone resigns from the Board mid-term" procedure
CHRIS S - make flyer(s) for the Open House (rough draft by September 16)