2019-11-06 Transcript

Drawing

Meeting Drawing by Mike H

Minutes

Members meeting 6th November 2019
Roll Call
Jake Howe, James Spence, Mike Haber, Daniel Swan, Andrew Armstrong, Bob W, Jake Brecknock, Nck, Julian, Matt, Mark, Ali Maq, Helen, KatherineRussel Davies, Dan Spencer, Dominic Morrow, Samathy Barratt
Announcements and Events
- Tables have been ordered and will be coming soon.
- AGM You should all be aware of the AGM!
 3rd December, 7:30 at Antenna, Beck Street. Event start at 8pm
 ( It is also Samathy's Birthday ) (edited) 
 Please inform other members of the AGM! Encourage them to come!
- Hack the Space weekend: 16th, 17th November.
  - The Space will be closed during Hack the Space!
  - The tasks that need doing are on the Trello board. You should have a link to that in the email you had
   - Members can come along and help make the Hackspace better!
   - A plumber ( with spare parts! ) would be really helpful skills.
- Workshops
   - 3D printing/SLA Training weekend this coming weekend. (Connor Shearwood)
   -  SLA Printing iduction weekend for those who pledged running this weekend ( Dave Spence )
   - Boomerang Workshop running this weekend too!
( Ian Dickinson enters )
- Artemis: Starship Simulator! 29th November ( Andrew Armstrong ) - RedShirts optional (edited) 
Minutes Review
    - All approved
Team Updates
- Laser (Ian)
    - Firstly, thanks to Bob and the team for all their help in getting laser area rearranged to accommodate the A2 laser.
     The A2 laser has now been operational for nearly 2 weeks, and as of Sunday it had been used by 13 members for a total of 793 minutes (just over 13 hours).
    - The gas struts have been replaced on the A0 laser. So no need to hold it open with your head any longer.In October 78 members used the A0 laser. 
     It was run for 180 hours 14 mins 22 seconds and brought in £540.727 inductions were completed in October.
- Woodworking: Nothing
- 2.5:
   -  Laser area remodeled
   - Donations shelf moved downstairs. Discussion on of we should have a donations shelf follows:
       - ( Ali Maq ) We should keep donations only as things people actually agreed to accept following a Google Groups post.
       - ( Bob W ) If donated things can go directly into a storage bin, we can accept them without a Groups post.
       - (Dominic) Do we have a list of items we can accept and want? We need to curate
       - (Samathy) Electronics can probably accept most small components
- Membership (Ian):
   - 710 Members!
   - We always need more people to be here on Open Days to give tours!
- Electronics ( Samathy )
   - Lots of sorting and tidying! Sorted components and stuff in the long brown boxes.
   - Cleared out a lot of junk and aggregated  things into less boxes.
   - The electronics area is much tidyer now.
   - Lots of things will be happening during Hack The Space
Financials ( Dominic )
-No Matt tonight, so no financial update
- The next update will be at the AGM
( Bob ) Is there anything we can do to reduce the massive electricity bill?
    - ( Dominic ) We don't buy our electricity directly. BizSpace provides us electricity at a markup. £855.61 Was spent on Electricity last month.
    - We could probably actively manage our electricity better to reduce that cost.
    - (Andrew A) Can we access our electricity meter?
    - We have some metrics, but the graph that we have is updated manually at every meter reading (Daniel S).
    - Lighting upstairs may well be using an awful lot of power - especially since they're often left on.
    - Can the drinks machine be turned off in the winter? (Bob)
    - Can we have a policy to turn off computers? (Bob)
    - (Ali) Last winter, heaters were often left on over night. Using a lot of power.
    - (Dominic) Currently we can only work on encouraging other members to remember to turn things off when they leave, especially if you're the second to last member out.
    - (Ali) Sometimes the Bridgeport is left on in the early morning.
-  As you know we have been continually working to reduce our outgoings and improve our financial situation. and it is going quite well.
-Funding emergency comments/questions?:
    - "What is the shortfall at, at the current time?"
        - (Russel) We can currently fulfill all our costs as they are, until July 2020. Which is significantly further back than it was previously.
    - (Ian) We've been doing well out of workshops, and one-time-donations
    - (Dominic) We've had people leave because they feel they need to increase their membership, but they don't come to the space often enough to justify it.
     Thus - we now have A one time donation link on HMS member's page.
     We also have *hms.nottinghack.org/donate* for non-members to donate.
    - (Ian) Running more workshops would also be very helpful to increase the income of the hackspace
    - "Would having more members help?"
       - (Dominic) Personally, having a lot more members might not help - but having more members is the only way, to increase income out side of workshops, grants and donations.
        But having more members puts more strain on resources like Maintenance and induction teams and increases current costs. Unless people join and become very active and helpful members reducing the cost of them joining.
    - Being in LeftLion might have been helpful.
    - How do we find out why people who come on a Wednesday don't join? Is that an easy problem to solve
        - (Dominic) The best direction towards solving our financial issues is Member Enguagement We need to get our members to engage in the space more.
    - Putting leaflets in shop windows, Community Notice Boards would be really useful! If you want to do this, leaflets are available, already printed, in the Blue Room. Or speak to a Trustee (edited) 

    - (Andrew A) We should, could have a survey for our members to try and get a better idea of who we have and what they want.
        - (Dominic) Trustees have been discussing this a lot, but we won't have one ready before the AGM
        - @Andrew Armstrong and Dominic to work on that.
        - @hotpinkbulb to work on trying to process and understand the data we have, and potential survey data.
    -  (Dominic) Some people don't want to be involved in the politics of the Hackspace. Which is understandable. They just want to use the space.
    - ( Jake H ) Some people didn't even know that the hackspace is in danger of closing!
    - ( Mark ) Everyone who comes into this space has to swipe in, what about changing the enter string on the door?
    - ( Dominic ) We could just write blog posts more often!! On the website! Our main intro to the space.
        - ( Jake H ) What about opening up the rights to write blog posts to other members? To generate more fanfair around the space publicly? (@hotpinkbulb) Trustees to consider this idea
Any Other Business
- Cleaners?
   - (Dominic) We're currently not enguaging any cleaners. Trustees will look into this over the coming months.
- (Bob) Shelves offered up on slack, do we want them?
    - No, we don't want the shelves.
- (Dominic) The hackspace was approached by Nottingham Trent Uni about bringing students to the space from the furniture design course. We have previously had issues with large groups coming and consuming the hackspace.
    - Dominic met with the course leader.
    - The model is about understanding what access to tooling they'll have upon leaving the University.
    - Dominic went to deliver a talk about Hackspace to students, emphasising history, community, and the focus of the space.
    - Dominic and Bob took a tour of 28 students around the space.
    - "Long story short" Students will have a membership for a month for £15 a month. After which, they will all be suspended with the option of rejoining individually as members.
    - Lots of the students were very keen
    - (Dominic) We hope that once they see a hackspace, when they leave the University, they'll want to become members of Hackspace and open-workspace communities like ours.
    - (Ali) Will the students want inductions on tooling?
       - (Dominic) Yes, they might. But they have a direct line to Dominic and Bob should they need to make queries like that. Hopefully that will allow us to arrange inductions.
    - (Daniel) When does this month start?
       -  (Bob) now! They started at the start of November, and have until the 24th to complete it.
- (Dan) TIG Welder is broken
Meeting closes