Minutes:10 MAR 2021 Members Meeting Agenda
Meeting begins: 1912
Meeting ends: 2100
Participants: David G., Joe D., James K., Marcus D., Nate Y.
Agenda
- Announcements/new business - 10m
- Summer camp - Marcus
- Membership update - 5m - Joe
- Financial update - 5m - Joe
- Events - 10m - Nate
- Old business updates
Notes
- Announcements/new business:
- Posting this meeting on meetup?
- We all agree to give it a shot. Some trepidation about this attracting folks who then become extremely bored due to the business-related matters discussed, extrapolating that lack of fun to the rest of our events. Ultimately we think people will see the event description and have reasonable expectations.
- Posting this meeting on meetup?
- Summer camp - Marcus Darden
- Computer Science Professor at UM
- Marcus does a presentation on how AHA could do a summer camp, make it self-sustainable, bring in interest in what we do, and get some funding also.
- Some existing camps: https://annarborfamily.com/feature/2020-summer-camp-guide/
- Set up meeting to flesh out ideas - James
- Research legal/insurance hurdles.
- Joe will look into legal definitions of what makes a place a "day care".
- Nate will reach out to insurance folks to determine how this might impact our coverage.
- Membership update:
- 16 current memberships, 2 unknown status.
- Nate checked out Tendenci -- seems reasonable but no Docker support. Figure it out or try something else?
- James thinks we can keep looking since there might be better options for support under Docker.
- Motion to replace new-member vouching system with n-hours of volunteering/vote on it? - James
- This has been posted to the email list. Not a lot of feedback received, so we might just go ahead with it as a member vote during the April election.
- James: no real feedback received about the current membership process. Suggests we should move on with defining a better process based on what we know. Probably on hold while we get the CRM/membership item squared away.
- Financial update:
- https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MTjgdvGJI9-FI7OFxkDdw-hJbirdUaxwBpERWVGVSQs/edit#gid=0
- Received a good donation turnout from our last Show & Tell!
- Joe: All finances should be caught up in Freshbooks now.
- Outreach:
- Corporate donations/solicitations - David
- No progress yet -- has been busy with Huron HS expo and show & tell planning
- Huron High School expo event - David
- We give some Huron HS students a creative task to solve and they will try to do the thing!
- Important dates: April 21 interviews, May 19th expo
- Still waiting to flesh out more details with the folks running the event
- Show & tell
- Went very well! Lots of good feedback on the event, and lots of good participation in the event itself. We will be continuing these for sure.
- David has a number of people lined up for the next Show & Tell
- James will figure out donation page stuff
- James will reach out to his contacts to see if we can get more guidance on how to raise funds. James mentions that we could come up with some initial questions before meeting to get better feedback, e.g. come up with some ideas for fundraising that we can compile together to ask them about.
- Corporate donations/solicitations - David
- Events:
- Work with AADL on virtual-AACME -- Haven't heard from AADL yet.
- ATMegaZero class with Eddie - Scheduled for April, and should make it into the Observer! - David
- Companion bots with Alex G. - In a holding pattern! - David
- Get a music event on the schedule by April, will schedule for sometime in May (electronics, chip-tuney stuff) - James
- Operations
- James will reach out to DO about extending credits.
- New network hardware donated, will be able to upgrade virtually our entire network - James and Nate
- Add .well-known to website for easier Matrix logging-in - James and Nate
- Idea to start off the next meeting as a sort of lightning round of space/related updates for all members, so folks can check in real quick even if they don't want to stay for the whole meeting. Joe will lead using this format at the next meeting.
- Re-opening plans need to be discussed. Also volunteer hours requirement to make sure we're still alright with the 20/hrs./mo. requirement there. Use the next Zoom AHA Work-Hour for this.
- Elections for April - Nate will send out the call for nominees before the end of the month.
- Joe is now on point about tracking down our lent-out oscilloscope
- Lonely Space Hardware cleanup/organization effort -- James will schedule it for this month, near the end of March.
- Old business:
- Joe is adding places to promote events to a page on our wiki: [[Promoting][ ...And also adding a cross-promotion section
- Tool lending thoughts from Joe: feels things have been out for a while, feels that we might be losing track of things, and in addition could possibly make use of software to help us out in the future. On another note, he has come across some construction tools that could be lent to AHA.
- Old business:
- Even Older Business:
- Volunteering:
- James would like to figure out how to get our name on the list (presumably through the various schools) for future volunteers. This was also a suggestion from our Nation of Makers call: reach out to schools and other volunteer hubs to attract more help.
- Improve the process to find and recruit volunteers
- Joe recommends following suite of another space that has "job descriptions" for new volunteers, so that they can start up doing something well-defined instead of some nebulous "volunteering time": https://www.acemakerspace.org/monster-corps/ https://www.acemakerspace.org/member-contribution-portal/
- Volunteer hour tracking
- James would like to figure out how to get our name on the list (presumably through the various schools) for future volunteers. This was also a suggestion from our Nation of Makers call: reach out to schools and other volunteer hubs to attract more help.
- Events:
- Joe connected with two people from Nation of Makers who are possibly interested in cross-promoting classes with similarly-sized hackerspaces.
- Another hackerspace would be interested in having us check out their bi-weekly show-and-tell events -- microcontroller/electronic. https://www.meetup.com/Robot-Garden/events/gvcgvrybcqbqb/
- Are we allowed to post upcoming classes in the NoM group?
- Bylaws revision:
- Nothing really to report here since James is busy with a lot of other things; so just keeping it on the radar. We all agree that the bylaws could use a little attention after 5+ years, especially to better fit how the organization has been running (or could be run!). Follow-up again next month.
- Volunteering: