2017-12-12 AGM Transcript

froggy [7:41 PM] AGM MINUTES

[7:42] (done by Kate)

[7:43] Waiting for microphones to turn on

[7:44] 76 present (including proxy votes)

[7:45] Roll call done - we are currently not quorate, but if you could message your friends, that would be helpful

[7:45] There's no new business at the end, but please enjoy tea, coffee, and biscuits

[7:45] Agenda: State of the Union, Financials, Hackspace 2.5

[7:45] State of the Union

[7:46] 574 members - 80 more than last year

[7:46] 10 people a month on average

[7:46] 6.6 people per month, down from 10 the previous year

[7:46] membership payments going up, but not as fast as they should be

[7:46] hackspace costs roughly £11-12 just to exist

[7:47] TURN OFF THE LIGHTS

[7:47] Teams: good re-engagement with the teams, thanks to everyone who attended the team social

[7:47] resources and snackspace team has plenty of people

[7:47] membership and comms are really struggling

[7:48] even if you're not in the hackspace, you can do plenty

[7:49] tools - three pledge drives: new mig welder, surface grinder, cameo cutter

[7:49] acrylic bender

[7:49] inductions have been moving ahead with tools, including planer-thicknesser

[7:49] metalwork is getting there, with planning documentation

[7:50] more tools means more space, so if you've been anywhere in the woodwork area, it's been more wood than floor

[7:50] in the new year, we'll be having a tidy-out day of the wood storage area

[7:50] we've had one complaint this year

[7:51] we did a survey based on tool use

[7:51] 13% of the membership responded to the survey

[7:51] most spend 0-10 hours in the space

[7:51] only 55% of people said they volunteer at the space, spending 0-10 hours

[7:52] Pie Chart! 22.4% love the kitchen

[7:52] 19.9% love the comfy area!

[7:53] 19.8% love the studio!

[7:53] 19.5% love the woodworking area!

[7:53] 18.4% love the blue room!

[7:53] 32% said they're always in the kitchen

[7:53] Do you donate items to the space?

[7:54] 30.6% have never donated

[7:54] 26.4% have donated, but put them in the right tray

[7:54] Things that people use the space for

[7:54] laser cutting

[7:54] electronics

[7:54] furniture

[7:54] model making

[7:55] cosplay

[7:55] woodworking

[7:55] socialising

[7:55] What people would like to see

[7:55] larger open space for bigger projects

[7:55] another smaller laser cutter

[7:55] area to show off art

[7:55] grinding area

[7:55] soundproof booth

[7:55] dark room

[7:56] the sensible-room-temperature-in-the-winter room

[7:58] also received some notices about people not feeling comfortable using the space - if you ever feel uncomfortable, let the trustees know, or let someone who will let the trustees know

[7:58] We want everyone to feel comfortable in the space

[7:58] Financial Report

[7:58] Income: £59,902

[7:58] last year's included grant and members' loans

[7:58] so we're down a bit

[7:58] expenditure - £58,373

[7:59] surplus for the year - £3767

[7:59] down to spending a lot of money downstairs

[7:59] fixed assets - tangible assets £2512

[7:59] stock £83

[7:59] debtors £6850 (rental deposits)

[8:00] cash in the bank £15,266

[8:00] lot has gone down due to expenses downstairs

[8:00] kind of what we expected, which was why we took out the loans and grant

[8:00] still 3-4 months before we need to worry

[8:00] asset breakdown

[8:00] at 1 october: £10550

[8:00] additions £1770

[8:01] depreciation: £3080

[8:01] income

[8:01] member payments £48,793 - £7000 more than last year

[8:01] workshop/events £940

[8:01] snackspace £2654

[8:01] tool usage £4707 - all from the laser cutter (edited)

[8:01] tool inductions £530

[8:02] donations £171

[8:02] member box/rfid cards £24

[8:02] material shop £75

[8:02] expenditures

[8:03] rent - £34000

[8:03] electricity £6861 - down from last year

[8:03] utilities - £659

[8:03] insurance £1231

[8:03] council tax - £1997 - because the larger rooms downstairs means we have to pay tax (edited)

[8:03] infrastructure - £40

[8:03] hackspace 2.5 - £6280

[8:03] member loan repayments - £958

[8:04] teams - £8244

[8:05] council tax should be cheaper in the future, because we'll be reorganising the units to match how they're being used

[8:07] team expenses were down a lot over the past year.

[8:08] member loan repayments was interest and expenses - not repaying loan

[8:09] Question: When we voted for downstairs, we had a guide to what would be success - how haven't we gone bankrupt based on that guide, because we haven't done two of those things

[8:09] Answer: We had a very high list of ideas

[8:10] with a membership growth of 5 new members per month

[8:10] which we have been getting

[8:10] the one we're not hitting is average membership payment - we need to be about an average of £10 per member

[8:11] we never really knew how long it would take us to open downstairs, and once we do have it open, that'll bring in a boost of members and membership payments

[8:11] we're now looking at early next year - february/march time - to open the blue room and the laser cutter room

[8:12] which will also mean an expanded craft room

[8:12] we haven't gone bankrupt because we had this buffer in place - it has gone down, but it's still there

[8:12] Question: is there concern that once we spend for the stairs, there's still a lot we need to cover?

[8:12] Should we have more events?

[8:13] Yes, but we need more people to run them

[8:14] we're hoping to cost out and budget the stairs and work out what we need to do to pay for them - pledge drives, loans, whatever we need to do.

[8:15] Question: Is there a cheap way to do the stairs and disabled access?

[8:15] No, we're getting professionals

[8:16] Question: Suggestion for future years - a column showing previous years in the slides

[8:16] Matt: We can, but it doesn't fit on the slide

[8:16] HACKSPACE 2.5

[8:17] Photos of how bad it was before

[8:17] A box of communion wafers

[8:17] three rhino bags of deep fat fryers

[8:18] over the two years, eight skips full of trash

[8:19] Photos of building correct walls

[8:19] Photos of our surprisingly expensive doors £7000 worth of doors

[8:19] the doors took much longer than expected

[8:20] but now we have proper fire-rated doors

[8:20] photos of rebuilding the classroom, redoing floors and organising

[8:20] new paint and lighting in the blue room

[8:20] cable tray and fancy lighting

[8:21] new hallway and new member storage and new infrastructure storage

[8:21] new member storage will store 240-ish boxes

[8:21] photo of the refresh junk

[8:22] all the stuff we took out from upstairs

[8:22] took another two skips of stuff to clear out

[8:23] photos of classroom - insulation

[8:23] terrible windows

[8:23] (Bizspace has told us that they were going to replace all the windows. They have replaced windows on one side. They have not replaced windows on the ground floor.)

[8:24] (9 out of our 21 windows have been replaced)

[8:25] classroom will also have an insulated drop ceiling and electric heaters

[8:25] Thank you so much to the 2.5 crew

[8:26] We still need structural engineers to discuss the stairs

[8:26] Question: Do we have any idea what the rent review would be like in 5 years?

[8:27] Answer: When we renewed the rent this year for upstairs - the rent didn't go up. The year before that, and the year before that, it went up by £12. Downstairs will probably be around £30-40, and there's nothing stopping us from extending the lease earlier to get a better rate

[8:29] Question: Obviously we've expanded quite a lot - how much further would we need to grow to expand further?

[8:29] We'd have to expand a lot further - we were already up to nearly 500 members when we got downstairs

[8:30] we would like to get another unit with a roller shutter where we could put a mechanics bay

[8:30] we would also like another place where we can do more metalworking

[8:31] if and when we expand next, it'll probably be a satellite space

[8:31] dedicated to some area

[8:33] Question: How big are we in terms of hackspaces?

[8:33] Physical size: Biggest in the UK

[8:33] Member size: Second biggest

[8:34] Question: How are we helping other hackspaces?

[8:34] UK Hackspace Foundation helps all the hackspaces

[8:36] Message from Woodworking Team:

[8:36] Not enough people are looking at the Google Group

[8:37] The table saw - we have had a fire in the table saw due to pieces of wood falling through the saw and friction causes the rest

[8:37] We've put an inspection window on the side and a brush to help

[8:37] If you use the table saw, please inspect before and after you cut to make sure it's all clear

[8:38] Question: There were some ideas about making the table saw an induction machine...?

[8:38] Answer: We haven't gotten into that, but it's something we can look at

[8:39] it would be a trustee decision, with the woodworking and safety team offering their advice

[8:39] we'll list it for an agenda meeting at the next trustee meeting

[8:40] Okay, bigger issue

[8:40] We're currently not quorate

[8:40] We can do a vote using OpaVote, asking if you are happy with the meeting minutes and finances

[8:41] The constitution says that we have to hold an agm three months after the end of our financial year

[8:41] for an agm to be quorate we need 20% of the membership

[8:42] we need to have quorate to vote on things

[8:42] there's nothing about being quorate when there's nothing to vote

[8:43] if there is a member who isn't here, ask them why

[8:43] Question: There have been numerous mentions of EMF - what are we doing next year?

[8:43] We'll be working it out but projects are individual projects, not hackspace specific

[8:44] Meeting adjourned