Minutes:12 Oct 2016 Board Meeting Agenda

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.

• Meeting attendees: Brian, Alex, Nick, Tyler, Corey, Greg (via phone!)
• Meeting starts at: 19:10
• Meeting ends at:

Board Meeting Protocol

* Standing Committee Reports - Individual Updates by Assigned Director/Officer presented in the time allotted.

* Open Time: For anyone to bring anything up to the Board. IF the Board agrees the item requires action, it will be put into New Business and addressed at the end of the meeting.

Follow up

Corey - Did you schedule a marketing meeting? ETA is the 20th @ 5:00. Marketing meeting didn't happen. Corey and Greg both missed it. We need to make more use of the downtown location.

(15m) Open For All

• All Are Worthy. All Are Welcome.

Fish tanks - Nick asked for update, they will be back soon!

Corey reached out to Sarah about marketing, she hasn't gotten back to her.

Corey is organizing members to do recurring events. Potlucks and such.

Minutes Approval

• September 2016 Board Minutes.

4 of 5 present, all present approve.

Education - Nick R.

Nick - KiCad and OnShape classes, these are shelved for now. Nick can follow up with us about running these in November. Will see if anyone wants to a practice.

3D printer class slides need to be updated. -- Alex W. will work to update slides for the Makerbot. Kosel parts are here, Alex needs to make a new bracket, Nick offered to help. 2 printers work. Replicator needs a bit more servicing.

Need to discuss paying teachers something for hosting classes. $15 if over 5 people show up? $30 if over 10? Checks are okay to pay people, everyone agrees we should do this. We need to work on prepay for classes. November meeting to overhaul website and make this better.

Previously:

• Advanced Learn-to-Solder (surface-mount) using Penguicon badges. -- Nate will revisit October.
• Amateur radio General license review class -- Now in January.

Upcoming:

• Ann Arbor Academy. We've had a couple folks get in touch with us about running an Arduino class here. Alex will reach out -- Tyler and Nate both agreed to take time off if the group is committed to doing a class. Alex sent an email in october but hasn't heard anything.
• Mark Strader and Kaitlin Singer, are hosting a class in beginning of November. Fundamentals of Spritekit, one of Apple's mobile game development frameworks.

Finances/Membership - Alex W.

Lauren got the books setup and Alex and Greg have access. Sweep is working for paypal account. Want this setup so we can talk about finances a bit better.

Alex is going to look at API for Xero to import paypal data automatically.

TCF - Rent starts october

Members - x paying members currently, we need to get more soon.

The electronic membership form. Alex said forms will be separated by 9/21.

Alex transfered over Xero.

Nate will look into getting an AHA referral code for Amazon purchases. Smile works! -- Haven't gotten a code yet, but did do a little reading. This is the program I was referring to: https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/welcome/getstarted . You advertise Amazon stuff on the webpage with your referral code, they give you a percentage of the purchase.

We need a Stripe setup to take membership dues and other payments again. Alex will let Nate know what he needs, and Nate will purchase.

Fundraising - Greg G.

Emailed Bill Mayer of Spark on Oct 12:

Hi Bill -

I hope all is well. I wanted to schedule a time to meet with you to discuss some ideas for funding opportunities. When we met on the street, you had mentioned that MEDC wasn't immediately receptive. I wanted to find out if we could spark interest through and event, or perhaps by writing a whitepaper that demonstrates why it's important. We are about to invest in some architectural drawings to accompany a grant... but if funding chances seems, we may use those funds for something more immediately useful.

I am heading to Dubai for a series of talks tomorrow, and will be back on Oct 20. Let me know if you have any time in the following week to meet up, and figure out if there are any next steps that could help make the incubator scene a bit more complete downtown.

Regards,

Greg

Google Community Grants is still on the table for Jan 2017 (Application here). Funding requests typically range from $5,000 to $25,000 and has a 10% cap on overhead expenses (rent, utilities, insurance, legal). We could schedule a meeting with Google to determine how best to apply for funding. They suggest to stop by Google Ann Arbor for our weekly Community Office Hours. Office Hours are every Thursday, 11 AM to 1 PM. Signup is here. There were again no openings when I checked.

Plans for Phase 2 drawings of AHA still on the table, see email below. Greg will cover this cost, but only if we can submit a grant in 2016.

Hi Greg.

Stage 2 – conceptual and preliminary design is 10 euros per sqm. 40% of the total amount for stage 2 would be ok.

Also, I need to open my own paypal for this payment and will send you the info. If that's ok with you, we can start the work and you can pay 40% later when I open the paypal account.

Before we start, it would be great if you could check some dimensions. We will send you a info sketch drawing.

Best, Aleksa

AADL came out on Monday for a tour. 30 after came through. 1 came by after and wrote down times and dates for courses.

Greg looked into NSF grants. They are more for companies that build tools for Makerspaces vs Makerspaces directly. If we came up with something we could sell to schools or Makerspaces then we could apply to these types of grants. Might be good to have someone from the school of ED on our team.

Charlie of i3 said he'd write email to board on possible grants we could apply for.

https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2015/nsf15086/nsf15086.jsp

Marketing/Events - Corey T.

• Greg found out name of designer of chili space to do initial design work. Once we get mail campaigns running he wants to standardize look and feel.

• Greg wants to setup a meeting the week of Halloween. Between the 20th and the 1st of November.

• Greg wants some things to show all events and the things we do are interconnected.

• Maker Faire - Corey will come up with ideas for next year and float them to members. ETA is 9/23.

• Content Calendar - (Greg) To make things a bit easier, perhaps we can start with 1 item a month for the content calendar. Did a marketing meeting take place?

• Mailing List - Any progress with Mailchimp? Tyler sent account out.

• Google Ads - (Greg) We have Free Google Ads. AHA has $10k/month credit for cost per click credit, but we are limited to a value of $1 per click. This means we have to limit our scope of search terms... (children, charity, etc.) are going for $4.00+ per click I suggest we make Laser cutter, 3d printer, hackerspace, incubator campaigns and see the the cost for ad words. We may need to create landing pages for each campagin with Call To Actions (Signup for the mailing list, get more information about becoming a member, schedule a tour).

• Google Analytics - (Greg) It would be nice to include a monthly report on emails and web statistics to see how our digital footprint is growing. Alex and Corey will get it set up, give Nate the info to put on the webpage.

• Tyler will put our new letterhead graphics on the NAS.

• We should get in touch with Vanya to fix up door logo, get other signage running.

• Greg mentions another UROP tour is tentatively scheduled in November.

• Corey brings up a Kickstarter for a hobby-grade waterjet, is interested in getting others to kick in a bit of money to get a little discount. Will put together a proposal for the Board. How did this go? Tyler checked and the media is expensive for the amount you need. Small runs of an hour will chew up 33lbs of material that needs to be washed down the drain/tossed.

• Greg proposes a marketing meeting, 9/23 at 4PM.

Operations/Volunteers - Tyler W.

Upcoming improvements

• Hang mailbox (it's at the space)
• Nate will work on securing new space - This has been put on hold until the existing system becomes reliable. New (hopefully more compatible) card readers should be arriving sometime next week. The good news is that the latest round of software updates made seems to be holding up with the existing reader, and not crashing or taking up All The Memory. Exit button is still finicky: going to add a RF choke to the line in the next week to see if that stops a possible electrical noise problem.
• Light bulbs in new space - Tyler has a bunch
• UPS to be mounted in rack.
• Order new work tables for current front room and move desks across the hall? Found some nice adjustable ones at Home Depot.

Recycling - Haven't followed up with city again. We've been leaving cans in bags for people to collect outside the dumpster (other tenants do that) and I've been recycling the non-returnables at home.

Tyler AHA phone number switch. Alex W. suggests looking into VOIP/SIP?

Member meeting - Next planned for Early November. We'd do this the night of the election maybe?

Volunteers:

• We're short still. Been covering through generous members.

Do we have plans for installing a monitor / switch for Laser? Greg can help build a circuit. Just needs help understanding how to talk to our server.

(30m) Unfinished Business

Stephanie is here to help AHA with marketing, has a Engineering/Business background, working with marketing automation software (Buffer currently, not chained to anything in particular). She believes working with her hands is a valuable experience, enjoys informal/impromptu teaching opportunities; but is also a good planner. She brings a unique perspective given the background. She and Corey will meet afterwards to talk about marketing. -- Still not met up, is waiting for us to on-board her. Corey proposes getting her into the upcoming marketing meeting.

Alec wants to have some kind of long-term agenda of "things to do" (recurring events), view-able in the minutes. - Happened 16th of June need to circle back.

Upcoming:

• Tour of AHA by AADL - 2nd week of October
• Halloween costume themed build night - 2 weeks in early october
• WeMakeHealthFest - Late October
• i3 Halloween party - Late October
• Christmas ornament laser class - Weekend after Thanksgiving. Training on InkScape and Laser
• Festifools - April
• Mini Maker Faire
• Penguicon
• Makerfaire

Alex W. - Drafting a Storage / Clean Tabletop Policy - Still working on it. Alec suggests also having a cheap "storage box" solution, you could rent a cardboard box to put your projects in for a limited time. ETA is August 20th. -- Alex has a draft storage policy, and printed out "parking permits" for existing projects. Still working on the locker policy, and amount to charge for longer-term storage.

Nate suggests adding incentives for members to do their required volunteer hours. We could have a "volunteer of the year", or allow people to pay more to skip the volunteer hours entirely? Harassment policy - Alex has a wonderful draft done. Ana commented. We haven't resolved the comments yet.