Teams Discussion Post Covid

Overview

We’d all like to see the space working as well as possible using the knowledge and skills of members.

• Teams are a part of running the hackspace and are mentioned in the guide and wiki.
• Post Covid many teams have 0 or 1 members. There has been a lot of interest in members helping out ! This is good.
• This page was created to start a discussion with members to understand the current workings of teams and to see how to move forward.

The post meeting Team Proposal March 2023 covers the discussions in the meeting.

Many teams currently have 0 or 1 members or are currently run 'unofficially' or without a 'Team Leader'. Trustees are currently doing work on teams in various roles.

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The trustees would like to thank all members who help with the running of teams, and appreciate that there is a LOT to do. Hopefully this discussion will make teams more legible and encourage people to help out where possible.

Helping on a team should not result in 'burnout' however we define this. Let's try to make things work and avoid over reliance on individual members.

This discussion is to create and share an understanding of how teams might function, not to produce more rules for teams.

There are 3 main areas teams are mentioned in the documentation for the space,

• The Guide https://guide.nottinghack.org.uk/organisation.html#teams
• The main wiki page https://wiki.nottinghack.org.uk/wiki/Teams
• Individual Teams wiki page https://wiki.nottinghack.org.uk/wiki/Team:Woodworking

From the Guide it's clear members manage the day to day running of the space and teams do specific things.

"The Hackspace is not a service and as a member you're expected to contribute to the running of the space when you visit." is the stance.

You DO NOT need to be on a team to help out, clean up, organise or do general day to day things. This is an expectation of membership!

https://guide.nottinghack.org.uk/organisation.html

Teams

The day-to-day running of the Hackspace is done by every one of our members. Even quick and simple things like tidying up or putting tools back into their proper storage are a great help.

More specific activites are managed by teams within the Hackspace, a list of which can be found below. Please remember the Hackspace is a community and not a service; we can’t guarantee tool uptime or material availability. The teams are all members like yourself, who volunteer their time to help make the space better.

Want to get involved in a team? Drop them an email, or ask them when they’re in the space. You can find more information about Teams on the wiki: https://wiki.nottinghack.org.uk/wiki/Teams

Governance of Teams

From the wiki

All teams in the Hackspace are ultimately responsible to the Trustees who have delegated certain powers and responsibilities to the teams.

This suggest that the trustees can undelegate powers and responsibilities.

There is a position of Team Leader in the wiki (woodworking is Bob for example). Other responsibilities are inductors and maintainers. It's not clear if the trustees delegate the choice of people to these team positions to the team leader or not.

The governance of teams also includes the completely undocumented use of payment cards, and the processing of payments for inductions. Payments cards are loaded with cash that can the be used by Teams.

Currently there is no documentation these cards or the handling of cash.

See Person Specification

Who can be on a team ?/ What does it mean to be on a team?

The guide says just ask about being on a team. There isn't any other info. Team membership is managed on HMS, and inductiors are given permissions on HMS. There is a person specification below.

Person Specification[edit] In order to be a CNC Team member, you need to be good at communicating with the membership, personable and easy to approach.

You should be visiting the space fortnightly to check on the CNC area.

The requirements are

• good at communicating with the membership
• personable and easy to approach

Membership of a team would be something from the trustees, or delegated to the Team Lead.

What do teams do

The guide has lots of differing language for what teams do. Like

• The 3D Printing team are responsible for
• The CNC team looks after
• The Communications team look after
• Craft & Textiles team manage the
• The Electronics team is responsible for
• The Infrastructure team manage major ..
• The Laser team are responsible for
• The Membership team manage the & Membership team are present at ....to ensure visitors....
• the Metalwork team take care of
• The Network team are responsible for
• The Resources and Snackspace Team look after
• The Software team are responsible for & the Software team support the ...
• The Woodworking team manage the

The wiki has a more standard 'Teams look after...' scope although only the craft team is required to develop the facilities into an exciting, appealing area!!

what roles might there be?

Roles that are mentioned

• Team Leader
• Maintenance (requires some sort of skill)
• Induction (requires some machine skills and people skills)

There are also 'jobs'

• researching replacements for worn out tools
• buying consumables
• improving the layout of the agreed space
• going to the cash and carry
• stocking snackspace
• writing software
• running tours
• being at events
• creating advertising copy
• posting on social media
• writing newsletters
• updating the website
• helping at events
• listening to members suggestions
• taking tools/machionery to be serviced
• getting stuff from screw-fix

These might be done by team members maybe in addition to maintenance and inductions?

The individual wiki pages for the teams has a (perhaps incomplete) list of things that the team needs to do.

Important things not mentioned in the documentation

There are some important things that don't appear to be mentioned

• finances. Most of the teams have cards that can be used to purchase consumables.
• inductions management (creating induction scripts and managing money from inductions), managing the queue of inductions
• creating and presenting meeting reports
• answering questions at members meetings

There is a wiki page for most teams with more details of the roles required. Purchasing tools is not mentioned.

When should a team be formed or dissolved

The wiki mentions team 'awesome projects' and 'events' as occasional teams.

There is no official team for sorting the metalwork area.

A new Team Bike was recently created to manage the bike maintenance area.

People come and go

There is no documented process for what to do when people who were previously active in a team become inactive, however the authority to do this lies with the trustees.

Some Questions

• What is the scope for responsibility for teams? Responsibility is delegated by the trustees, but there is currently no guidelines of what is in/out of scope for team members. In particular, should changes to the amount of space a team has for equipment be a decision for the team?
• How should finances be managed?
• How should team members be managed when there are difficulties (everything works when everyone gets on)? Is this already covered by 'Responsibilities delegated by trustees?'
• How should inductor roles be managed (I'm including running tours in this). Does there need to be a discretionary decision?
• Does 'Responsibilities delegated by trustees?' includes a named trustee contact for teams. These might need updating. There is also the assumption that trustees are not also running the teams.