Minutes:08 Feb 2017 Board Meeting Agenda

From All Hands Active Wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search
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:
  • Meeting starts at:
  • 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.

(15m) Open For All

  • All Are Worthy. All Are Welcome.

Fire Safety - Breaker box behind laser cutter is continually blocked. We need to maintain access to this. We moved the mirrors that were in the way during the meeting, still stuff in breaker closet we need to dispose of. Going to contact landlord on disposal of old bulbs. Need to label breaker closet.

Minutes Approval

  • December 2016 Board Minutes.
  • January 2016 Board Minutes.

(90min) Standing Committee Reports

Education - Nate Y.

3D printer class slides need to be updated. -- Alex W. is going to try to get fixes for 3D printers last month

Josh decided to make the $15 we owe him for October Arduino a donation. Alex was going to ask Lauren how to record it if we did pay him. What was the result?w.

Did we get back to Brain Monkeys? Nate was going to reach out to Katie again and see if she's still interested. Result?

Tyler sent an email about the rental fee for the board@allhandsactive.org address on 1/12. Sent reminder to respond on 1/27.

Previous:

  • Laser - 5 people
  • 3D Printer - 5
  • Amateur Radio
  • PCB Making - 10

Upcoming:

  • CNC class
  • Root Kits
  • Amateur Radio

School in Dexter interested in having us there. Outreach becomes harder to justify running. Maybe we should consider scaling back. Nate says we should start now and put out a call for folks at Detroit.

Finances/Membership - Alex W.

ATT transfered to AHA card.

Rerun is setup - Lets us handle recurring payments using credit card and feeds into Xero! All setup and we'll be using it for Spark. This lets us handle when we can't use Paypal for people without accounts.

Did we figure out what is up with HumbleBundle and picking AHA as donation spot?

Alex and Tyler met on 1/28 to discuss how we intake money and decide what to do about stripe. We presently take cash, check, re-run (credit cards online) and PayPal. We lack a good way to charge for classes both online and at the space. That is what we want to resolve.

  • Investigated meetup and how it handles fees for classes. Comes to about $1.70 per person for a $15 class.
  • Look at Paypal Business extras, allowing us to take a card without a Paypal account from the web or a Kiosk. It's $30 a month.
  • Stripe can be added easily with Stripe.JS but then we need to manage the code and stay up to date. Hesitant since we want less to maintain.
  • Square is similar price to Stripe for web store. We can easily get a Kiosk tablet for the space to add in person usage. Android 4.4 tablet fastened to wall with Square Chip reader lets us handle the rest of this use case.

We went and built out a Square web store for now to see if that meets most of the need. It will let people pay using credit cards when they show up for class by using our website. We have to add items to the store for each class. If we need to take cash in person then we can investigate the Kiosk. We still wanted better Xero integration but Tyler isn't sold on the trade off of maintaining our own solution.

x dollars in the bank. Will it go up in Jan with the new space? Slightly profitable at the moment. Not burning!

DTE meter issue. Alex got a call back. Alex needs to get meter numbers from Kelly to get payment taken care of.

Members - Alex needs to count members yet. *** From Greg. Please update when you can. It would be nice to have a monthly report of +/- Change in Members per month, and a break down of what these members are (paid, student, volunteer).

The electronic membership form, mostly finished. Tyler got it up on the website and we've been tweaking it.

Tax - Alex working with Lauren to resolve fine issue. Waiting on reply from Michigan sales tax. He's talking to Lauren tomorrow.

Fundraising - Greg G.

Google

We need to submit ideas to Google for community grants. We can ask from $500-$15/$20k They are vague about The limits. But said they'd like to help a lot of people. I'd like to ask for around $10-15k. As the work in writing is roughly equal to $500. We neee project ideas. Google is interested in STEM. We can fairly easily write a High School component to the research being done over the summer that is manager by aHa and works to integrate the greater community into this effort. But I'd like to hear others opinions.

Spark

Spark wants to give us a Credit Card. We are working on PMT system that recharges monthly with simple email/web interface. Spark has teams interested in the space, and one (a drove company) came down in Jan 2017 to tour AHA. This is good news as it means that Spark should continue to invest in us for the near future. Goal with recurring payments is to "set it and forget it".

NIH

Partially related to AHA. Backyard Brains received good scores on an NIH grant that calls for an injection molding machine to be purchased. We could even justify getting a nice CNC mill to make molds. Grant will be known in March/April timeframe.

Marketing/Events - Unstaffed

  • Maker Faire - Needs come up with ideas for next year and float them to members. Tyler sent email to the list on 1/27 to check if people have ideas. If not, we will not be having a booth this year.
  • Adam is still at work on sandwich board sign. Tyler will check back again with him in late Feb.
  • Kim finished signage for front of building. Tyler got quote from FastSigns. Waiting to hear from landlord what materials we can use. If plastic is okay will have it printed on vinyl and apply it ourselves.
  • Need to find time to cut vinyl for magnet sheet for inside. Tyler will order magnet sheet
  • Tyler had sign printed for back door - Needs to mount

Google Adwords

  • Alex met with Greg and Google Marketing
  • Need to add more keywords
  • New campaigns we can run.
  • Nate suggests google docs!

Marketing Greg Updates

Feb 2017 Email: Currently ? Total Audience on email. Will send on Feb 1st. Nate Y. working with Florencia E. on a monthly newsletter.

Operations/Volunteers - Tyler W.

1 Hakko returned from Erik, now have 3.

Erik's parents formally donated the miter saw.

1 Sewing machine returned. 1 still in need of repair

Larry fixed door stop for loud room.

Moved desk to Annex, capped pipes, mounted white board, Brian fixed track lights, sorted fixtures, installed projector, and Nate replaced light bulbs.

Ordered bench for Electronics area, work begins on 2/2 to construct new one.

Picked out tables, but need funding to buy them for main space. Home Depot doesn't presently stock them in our area. :/

Nick and Nate continued to work on the door.

Website Old - Updating information, simplifying, and removing out dated content. Posted Anti-harassment policy. Swapped for new membership form and simplified membership page. Added web store.

Website new - Collecting photos for stream of projects happening at AHA. Haven't touched the code much as we found more stuff on old site to update before migration. Worked on stripe integration with Alex on 1/29 Source: https://github.com/tsworman/AHA-Website2

NAS - Investigated problem with LDAP users not able to change passwords. It's a Synology issue. Have contacted support and am working to resolve it. Found other reports of users with the same issue.

Marketing Material - Updated Cache of Marketing stuff used on the website on the NAS. Will place new signage there too when we have it.

Annex

  • Want to find sink, microwave, fridge, and cabinets still.
  • Move desks to New classroom, remove crap.

Classroom:

  • Gave keys to Kelly for Rekey
  • Need to move desks there
  • Relocate all kits to a rack in there
  • Mount projector
  • Remove wall
  • Relocate Electric covering wall entrance.

Signage

  • Greg was going to get in touch with Vanya to fix up door logo From Greg: it wasn't Vanya, but a chilean designer. Trying to get into her schedule. Will try more this month.
  • After Hours rear stairway sign - Printed need to mount.
  • Front of building - Design done, quote from fast signs for two signs is $411. Checking with Kelly to see if we can do plastic. If so I'll order vinyl printed and will apply to Acrylic ourselves. It won't last as long (3-5 years) but I imagine we'll update it soon.
  • Sandwich board - Heard back from Adam, he still needs more time but is planning to do it still.

Recycling

  • Contacted city again on 1/27/17. They've straightened out the recycle program and we will be serviced by the DDA. We have to pay a one time service fee for the outside bin of $26 then they will deliver. Tyler will pay the fee on 2/1 as it has to be done in person during business hours.

(30m) Unfinished Business

  • Greg would like to have a meta-discussion about board protocols.

- Discussed off list, and filled out a form then never heard anything.

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.